John of Catskills Photography captured this young buck posing with some velvety new antlers in the Sullivan County hamlet of Rock Hill on June 2 and shared it in the Watershed Post Flickr pool.
Correction: An alert reader points out that deer have antlers, not horns. Forgive me -- I wasn't on my fact-checking game this morning. For more on the difference between antlers and horns, check out the National Park Service's helpful fact sheet. - Julia
Above: A marcher in the 2013 Trout Parade. Photo by Ted Pilonero.
Livingston Manor's annual Trout Parade, a mountainous version of Coney Island's famous Mermaid Parade, marches through the Main Street of the Sullivan County hamlet tomorrow with giant puppets, people dressed in costumes that evoke "The Wizard of Oz" (this year's theme), and, of course, the parade's signature trout float, held on sticks by dedicated marchers. (See above.)
Above: Jan Mulroy of Franklin, an opponent of gas pipelines and compressor stations, delivers a petition containing over 500 signatures of like-minded residents to the Franklin Town Council. Photo by Robert Cairns.
A farm in the Delaware County town of Franklin could be the site of a new natural gas compressor station, while the Schoharie County town of Schoharie could be home to two of them.
The stations would be placed along the route of a proposed new section of the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) pipeline, a project of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company LLC, a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan.
The new section of the NED pipeline is slated to run along a route from Pennsylvania to Schoharie County that is similar to that of the Constitution Pipeline, which received federal approval last year and is now awaiting state permits.
Above: One of the many vertical climbing walls in the Shawangunks. Photo by Flickr user Laurel F.
An experienced rock climber died on Wednesday, June 10 while climbing without a rope in the Mokonk Preserve in the Ulster County town of Gardiner, police say.
Andrew Barnes, a 46-year-old man from Niskayuna who had ten years of climbing experience, fell 50 feet at 8:20 p.m. on Wednesday night, according to a press release from the New York State Police. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police say.
Barnes's death is being investigated. The New York State Police, the Ulster County Sheriff's Office, the Monhonk Preserve Search and Rescue Rangers, the town of Gardiner Fire Department and the town of Shawangunk Fire Department all responded to the scene.
Above: An injured eagle was found on the side of Route 17 in Sullivan County on June 9 by a passing trucker. Photo via the New York State Police.
An injured male bald eagle found by the side of Route 17 in the Sullivan County town of Rockland was rescued on Tuesday, June 9 after being spotted by a truck driver who called 911, police say.
Mario Giorbano, a truck driver for New Jersey dairy distributor Balford Farms, noticed the eagle in a ditch on the side of the highway around 10 a.m., where it appeared to be stuck in the mud, according to a press release from the New York State Police.
Giorbano stopped his truck, examined the eagle, realized it was injured and called 911. State troopers from the Liberty and Roscoe barracks responded to the call, as did wildlife rehabilitators from New York and Pennsylvania.
Rehabiliators Kathy Michele, from Narrowsburg, and George Banta, from Beach Lake, Pennsylania, used a blanket and a dog crate to maneuver the eagle into an SUV and took it away for x-rays and possible treatment, police say.
Sean Eldridge, a young political upstart who lost the election for New York's 19th Congressional District from Republican Chris Gibson last year, has finally made it public: He won't be running for election again.
Eldridge, a first-time Democratic challenger, lost the race for Gibson's seat by 30 points in a drubbing that received national attention.
That's because Eldridge is one half of a prominent gay power couple. His husband is Chris Hughes, a multi-millionaire who helped Mark Zuckerberg found Facebook.
Right after the election, Eldridge refused to answer questions from the Watershed Post about whether or not he would run again in the 19th District, which covers much of the Catskills and the Hudson Valley.
A 71-year-old woman was killed and her husband was injured in a head-on collision with a 19-year-old Prattsville man who was arrested for driving while intoxicated in the Delaware County hamlet of Grand Gorge on Sunday, June 7, police say.
The crash occurred at 5:48 p.m. on Route 23, according to a press release from the New York State Police.
Nineteen-year-old Thomas M. Schmiedel was driving east in a 2004 Chevrolet Silverado when he moved into the westbound lane where 71-year-old Elvira Vogt was driving a 2010 Toyota RAV4 west, police say.
Elvira Vogt died at the scene, police say. Her husband, 71-year-old Robert J. Vogt, was in the passenger's seat at the time of the crash and suffered a broken arm and other injuries. He was transported to Albany Medical Center, according to the press release.
The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center has issued a sweeping tornado watch for much of New York and New England this afternoon.
The tornado watch includes Delaware, Greene, Schoharie, Sullivan and Ulster counties in the Catskills from 1:40 p.m. until 8 p.m. on Monday, June 8. A large storm system will march through the region, bringing winds, possible hail and a chance of flash flooding.
The emerald ash borer – a destructive insect that eats ash trees – is continuing its relentless push through the Catskills and New York state, killing thousands of trees and impacting the budgets of homeowners and state agencies, according to officials and experts.
“Any ash tree that is untreated will die from emerald ash borer at some point in time,” said Cornell University Forest Entomologist Mark Whitmore, who has been working with communities and agencies across the state to help slow the spread of the foreign-borne insect.
Whitmore and other experts say that it’s not a question whether the emerald ash borer -- first confirmed in the U.S. near Detroit, Michigan in 2002 -- will hit a community, but when.
Source: Ulster County Department of the Environment.
No bigger than the size of a cooked grain of rice, the metallic green insect was first confirmed in the Catskills in the Ulster County town of Saugerties in summer 2010.
Joanna Murphy, an artist and muralist based in the Catskills, is putting the finishing touches on a mural at the eastern edge of the Delaware County village of Margaretville that depicts a vintage cauliflower label featuring Rip Van Winkle.
Cauliflower used to be one of the central Catskills' biggest exports, and cauliflower farmers decorated their crates with colorful labels that depicted pastoral scenes and happy country women.
(Until this year, the logo for Pure Catskills, the region's buy local program, was an adaptation of a cauliflower label from the Walton-Hamden Cauliflower Co-op that featured a girl in a red dress. WAC employees call her Fran.)
Murphy at work on the mural on Tuesday, June 2. Photo by Julia Reischel.
