DAY THREE

Graylen Gatewood and Noah McKaskill

Today, our M-term group took a trip to some historical sites in Sag Harbor and the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge in Noyac. Our first stop was the Annie Cooper Boyd house in Sag Harbor. This house also acts as the Historical Society of Sag Harbor. Annie Cooper Boyd was a local artist, and a lot of her work is in the house. She even painted murals on the walls and doors! Our next stop was The Sag Harbor Whaling Museum. The first thing we did in the Museum was watch a short video about whaling back in the 19th century. Whaling was harsh work. It was estimated that one out of three people died either from an accident or disease. The length of a trip could average from 12 months to around four years varying on the amount of whales they would catch. Out of all the types of whales in the ocean the most favored whale for oil was the Sperm Whale, because it had the most valuable oil in one section in his head. After we visited the museum and ate lunch, we drove over to the Elizabeth Morton Wildlife Refuge in Noyac. It was drizzling outside, but that didn't stop us. The teachers brought along bird seed so we could feed the birds. At first we all took cracked corn, but the birds, which included black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, cardinals, woodpeckers, and titmouses (titmice?), among many others, didn't like that very much. We also had mixed wild bird seed and sunflower seeds, and we discovered that they liked the sunflower seeds the best, and many of them ate directly from out hands. We also saw a group of humungous wild turkeys.