Concerned Citizens of Montauk has released results of ground and surface-water tests for illness-causing pathogens from samples taken in January.

Four of the 13 sites in East Hampton scored high for the presence of enterococcus bacteria. One site had a medium score; the remainder were low.

The highest counts recorded in East Hampton were taken from a man-made swale behind the Methodist Church, across Montauk Highway from the East Hampton Post Office, which registered 1,010 colony-forming units, and at the Village Green bioswale, opposite the East Hampton Library, where 710 units were detected.

By comparison, medium levels were found at the Georgica Pond kayak launch off Montauk Highway and low levels were detected at Pussy's Pond in Springs.

The study was conducted by C.C.O.M. in partnership with the Surfrider Foundation's Blue Water Task Force.

The study is designed to establish a baseline of pollutants at individual sites over time. The information may be used to identify the sources of bacterial contamination and to develop effective wastewater management.

Water samples are collected monthly in Montauk, Amagansett, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and in other Long Island areas.

In tests taken this month, the Methodist Church swale bacteria level had declined to 86 units, a medium level; the Village Green site remained in the high range, C.C.O.M. announced on Wednesday.

Other sites with high bacteria counts in the February tests were South Beach and West Creek in Lake Montauk and in the creek at Fresh Pond in Amagansett.

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This article has been updated to clarify that the United States Geological Survey in not involved in the bacteria testing. The U.S.G.S. will be a part of a new project to try to identify sources of contamination in Lake Montauk.

The leaves, except the very lowest, are off the local hardwood trees, most of which are oaks, with fewer hickories, beech, sassafras, and maples. As one drives along the back roads and looks up to either side, the globular bundles of dried leaves and twigs stand out. They’re mostly the size of soccer balls — we would have a hard time trying to fit inside — but they are the perfect size for gray squirrels, our most common mammal larger than a rat.

Squirrels, especially flying squirrels, like holes with cavities in the boles of trees, but these are hard to come by here and most are taken by the likes of woodpeckers, bluebirds, crested flycatchers, owls, and even white-footed mice. So the majority of our gray squirrels tough it out during the cold winter months in what are called “dreys.” Almost no one who isn’t a squirrel zoologist or mammalogist uses the term drey, but it can be handy when writing about squirrels.

Because the acorn crop was unusually bad in 2017, while other nut-bearing trees didn’t make out so well either, one might surmise that the number of dreys would be down compared to the very good nut year of 2016. Also, gray squirrels crossing roads looking for nuts have become the most common roadkill, outnumbering cottontails, raccoons, and opossums in total.

But a drey can be the perfect place to get the population going again. The female spends most of her winter months preparing for the young that will issue in mid-spring. In some cases a drey is used again and again, with the drey keeper taking time out from her busy day to keep it tight and nearly rainproof. 

I’ve been counting the dreys of Southampton and East Hampton lately as I drive from place to place on business, the way I count deer, birds, roadkills, and other things of natural history interest. On Monday I cruised the back roads of East Hampton for two and one-half hours looking for dreys. One can windshield-survey about 50 feet in on either side of the road, so you miss a lot of the deeper-in ones. My hypothesis was that there should be fewer this year than in previous years because of the record low acorn crop. I started on Route 114 between Sag Harbor and East Hampton, then I checked out several back roads all the way to Old Stone Highway in Amagansett. 

Several roads in northwestern East Hampton have as many conifers, almost all pines, as hardwoods, and you don’t find many dreys in such areas as Swamp Road or Old Northwest Road. The southern flying squirrel, which has been building its numbers and spreading its distribution on the South Fork since the late 1990s, prefers conifers for nest building and very much prefers cavities to leaf nests, but it does make them.

Monday was mild and calm, so it was a good day to check out the diseased pines that had been cut down and were still lying out in plain sight. I was quite surprised at the extent of them; they started on the east side of Route 114 and appeared on and off all the way over to the west side of Three Mile Harbor. By the looks of things, the southern pine beetle is far from finished.

I wondered whether the busiest roads I traveled, such as Route 114, would have as many nests per mile as the less traveled roads, and would dreys be more common around houses than in sparsely populated areas where there is much less feeding of winter birds? 

The former guess seemed to hold water, as I couldn’t see one drey on either side of 114 throughout its length. Last week I traveled the length of Sagg Road in eastern Southampton Town. It runs from Sag Harbor all the way south to the ocean and has many fewer houses per mile than most of the other roads here and not nearly the traffic that, say, Noyac Road, the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, or Route 114 has. From Montauk Highway to the end of Sagg Road in Sag Harbor, there were at least 30 dreys to be seen on either side of the road, with the west side outnumbering the east side.

On Monday the road with the most dreys, 29 per mile, was Neck Path in Springs, which runs from its junction with the north end of Accabonac Highway and Old Stone Highway east for a mile to meet the eastern part of Old Stone Highway. It revealed 36 dreys from one end to the other, from 20 to 40 feet high in trees on both sides of the road. It has very few houses and relatively little traffic. Three Mile Harbor Road, from its intersection with Abraham’s Path to where it becomes Hog Creek Road at its northern terminus and running east to Springs-Fireplace Road, had 8.66 dreys per mile, for a total of 39, followed by Springs-Fireplace Road, at 6.9 dreys per mile.

In all, 36.5 miles of East Hampton roads produced 232 dreys, or 6.5 dreys per mile. If one had X-ray eyes and could see hundreds of feet into the forests on both sides of the road, the number would be several times higher. The very busy Noyac Road, which runs about 10 miles from North Sea to Sag Harbor, accounted for only eight nests on Monday morning, suggesting that in spite of the fact that it is mostly bordered on either side by oaks and other hardwoods, its heavy use is a deterrent. 

On the same morning, but earlier, Route 24, which connects Hampton Bays with Riverhead and runs for miles, had only one or two dreys. It may be that its low squirrel population has to do with the fact that the bordering hardwoods are not as numerous as the bordering pitch pines.

So it would seem that the roads well traveled and the roads ensconced in evergreens had fewer squirrels than the other kinds.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

February is over and March is coming in like a lion, or so it’s said. In less than a week, ospreys will have returned, the first peeps of the spring peepers, just up from the soggy ground, will be heard, robins will be filching worms from the grass roadsides, and hundreds of grackles and redwing blackbirds will utter their metallic calls almost nonstop. Yes, we are on the verge of yet another spring, another new year, another chance to set things right.

But will we? That is always the question.

By last account we are still killing each other across the face of the globe. If not with guns, bombs, poison gas, then with opioids and other addictive drugs, or on the highways and in the streets. Will it ever stop? Maybe this is the year that it will.

I am 82, born in the Depression, and then grew up and old with one war after another. World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. It seems that the wars, both great wars and not-so-great ones, will never end. We have gone to the moon, will soon set foot on other planets, and are on the verge of eternal life by way of artificial intelligence. We’ve done a lot in a matter of a few millenniums, but we are still killing one another with the same horrific gusto without showing any signs of slackening, so it would seem. We are humans, after all!

It is the season for nesting. Robins, ospreys, bald eagles, and great-horned owls are already mating. Soon they will be joined locally by another hundred or so bony animal species. Then will come the insect hordes and the stuff that lives in the seas. It is the time for sowing and reproduction. The white-tailed does that so many of wish were gone will soon be calving, having carried their young-to-be throughout the winter and soon will be nursing and raising them.

Homo sapiens is our scientific name. Supposedly we are “wise.” I would beg to differ. Yes, we speak in several languages and dialects, we read voluminously, we eat, we drink, we play, we reproduce, we make war. Sometimes we are wise, but we are also prejudiced, envious, bullying, besotted, and meanspirited. We are both carnivorous and herbivorous. We kill and graze to satisfy our appetites.

By all of the standards we judge ourselves by we think we are making progress. We write, we read, we drive, play pianos and violins, we are computer literate and more than a few of us can operate a smartphone with but one hand, while we walk along and carry on a conversation. We sell, we buy, we travel, we recreate. We have law degrees, medical degrees, formal positions, and specialized roles to play, and at the same time, are both athletic and attractive. Some would say we are even outstanding. But are we making real progress? That is the question?

The Ten Commandments were written on parchment more than 2,000 years ago. The Hammurabi Code is even older and Confucius gave us wise lessons 2,500 years ago, while Lao-Tzu’s “The Way” is 1,500 years old. Some Homo sapiens, many of them ancient, have lived up to the name, but we are still in a muddle about just how to proceed as we crawl into this, the second millennium.

Scientists tell us that the so-called infrahumans live their lives in a programmed sort of way, instinctually. They would say that the means and methods used in nest building in robins, say, are written into their chromosomes, their DNA. Both the males and females of nesting pairs contribute to that job, and after laying eggs, incubating and hatching, feeding, and nurturing of the hatchlings are also instinctive. Each year across America millions upon millions of robins behave this way. Almost none fight with each other, to a bird they almost all get along.

Each spring alewives come into our streams and freshwater ponds and lakes to mate and spawn. The larvae grow into small swimming fish throughout the summer and leave by way of the same streams in September. It’s been going on for a million years or more. Even though they mass together in giant schools and mass mate when they reach their destinations, they do not harm each other in the process.

Almost all of us, if given the choice, would not like to be a robin or an alewife. No, we would rather be humans, no matter the struggle in being a human. We might be for a Trump or a Clinton, join the National Rifle Association or loathe it, but if given the choice none of us would exchange humanness for the life of a robot of some infrahuman. Most of us would quickly point out that notwithstanding our human ups and downs, statistically we are making progress in the long run. Fewer neonates and their mothers die in childbirth, we’ve conquered smallpox, we are living longer lives, and have much more leisure time than our forebears.

So in the final judgment, it’s all a crapshoot. Yes, we fight, we kill one another, we behave badly, we injure ourselves, we ingest too much sugar. I bet, however, if you asked a scientifically selected sample of us humans if we would want to be some other kind of animal being, almost to a man (and a woman) we would resoundingly answer that we want to be ourselves. Please leave us alone.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

It’s Martin Luther King Day, Noyac Bay is refrozen, and it’s 29 degrees out, mostly gray. I’m inside, warm and cozy. Our individual histories are marked in different ways, storms, wars, frigid winters, hot summers, presidential elections and a variety of local events, births, graduations, weddings, promotions, firings, divorces, and deaths. Our most calamitous times on Long Island are the result of hurricanes and northeasters. Growing up on the North Fork I remember most of the hurricanes of 1938, 1944, 1954, and 1956. I missed the storms thereafter, until I returned in 1974, the year before Belle.

We also had some wildfires of note during my early years. One or two in the central pine barrens were so large they could be seen against the night sky in Mattituck 25 miles away. And I remember harvesting potatoes by hand in the early 1950 Augusts when the temperature was close to 100 degrees.

But when I got to California in 1958 I experienced a whole new set of catastrophes: earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, mudslides, volcanoes, El Niño tides, and, oh yes, wildfires, as large as the whole of Long Island. Life in Oregon in the early 1970s was not much different. There was always that anticipatory fear of the next big one haunting you as you moved through each year. In most years, the next big one never materialized, but when it did, you knew about it quickly; all hell broke out.

I spent most of my California years in Santa Barbara, right next to Montecito. In 1954 a giant fire up the hill in the Los Padres National Forest chased a lot of folks out of their homes. One family of three ended up moving in with our family, housed on the campus of the University of California Santa Barbara. Rains and mudslides followed in its wake.

A large part of the soils of California’s coast range are mixtures of sand grains and clay, in a word, adobe. One can make very strong bricks and walls out of adobe, all you need is to soak the soil in water, put it in a mold, and let it dry in the sun for a few days. However, if you let rain fall on it while it is drying, watch out, it turns into a slimy mud that will ooze toward its down side. Imagine an entire mountainside oozing towards the down side, i.e., toward the Pacific Ocean, and you get the picture. It moves slow at first, than faster and faster until it becomes a torrent of mud taking bolders and trees with it. If there happens to be a house in its path, forget it, it’s a goner.

As you may remember, in 1971 the space age industries, which had been flourishing the way the Silicon Valley industries flourish today, started to lose momentum. There was a panic. I was hired by one such firm in Santa Barbara to come up with other ways to make money. The engineer that I was assigned to work with was foreign, but he and his bosses thought that if he put their space age technology to work to strengthen the coastal range soils, and make them mudslide-free, the company could be saved.

Simultaneously, seawaters up and down the Pacific Coast were becoming befouled by the effluents from treatment plants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other coastal cities to the degree that inshore waters glowed at night from the phosphorescence produced by different phytoplankton species, which fed on these enriched effluents. Signs posted along the entire coast, from Mexico to Oregon, warned against gathering and eating California mussels — very much like our own blue mussels — because of the poisons they might have accumulated. Fish living near these outfalls began developing tumors.

Why not kill two birds with one stone, my boss thought. If we could send that effluent up into the chaparral-covered hillsides, instead of out into the ocean, we might be able to stabilize those hillsides while keeping the effluent out of the ocean. So we set about experimenting with the sludge accumulated at the Santa Barbara sewage treatment plant, which separated out the effluent before it entered the ocean.

My job was to take the sludge and try to grow chaparral-loving species in it. While the project turned out to be unsuccessful in the long run, it was educational. I put the sludge in wooden trays fitted with drain holes and watered it. From the seeds already contained in it, tomatoes and other non-native plants began to sprout up, a promising result. “Well,” we thought, “you can grow stuff in this sludge without adding fertilizer. Let’s keep trying.” What happened next, however, was quite discouraging.

I began waking up halfway through the night with intense anal itching. After a few nights of this, my wife, Julie, who had trained to be a nurse earlier in her life, examined me. And what did she find? Tiny white worms, each no bigger than a grain of rice. We looked them up in our medical books: pinworms! I had a case of enterobiasis for the first time. Unbeknownst to me, the pinworm eggs were in the sewer sludge, and when it dried and was mixed around with a trowel, the microscopic eggs became airborne and I inhaled some. 

It turns out that enterobiasis is one of the most common parasitic afflictions in the United States. The scientific project was temporarily put on hold. The nightly pinworm encounters lasted for a month or so. Then, ahh, relief at last. The project was halted for good.

But, just think, after the largest forest fire ever to befall California, and the rains that followed, if it had been successful, we might have prevented the destructive mudslides that came down the Santa Barbara slopes at breakneck speeds, such as the one that ran rampant last week through Montecito, causing great havoc and accounting for at least 20 deaths. On the other hand, we may have given thousands of coastal inhabitants enterobiasis, in which case, I would never have been allowed to show my face in California again.

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

’Twas the night before Christmas, quiet and calm, 

the creatures that live here were cozy and warm,

The fall had been freakish, the leaves didn’t fall,

until after Thanksgiving, when they dropped one and all.

By mid-December some shrubs had turned yellow, 

forsythia was blooming, what, global warming?

The traffic of summer had slowed to a crawl,

The Bonackers were happy, one and all,

They had their land back, all to their liking.

They were out gathering firewood, a few even hiking!

The clams in the mud and the oysters above.

The waters were calming, full of God’s love

The gulls, gliding and circling, brushed off the cold.

They love the winter, both the young and the old.

Seals lolled on the rocks close to the shore.

Loons swim under water for the minnows galore.

Seals, grebes, and loons have the seas for their own.

They cavort and frolick, as one or alone.

The white-tailed deer are fat and jolly.

In Montauk they slip through the beech and the holly.

In Wainscott, Northwest it’s the pines and the oaks.

They kept to themselves, out of sight of the folks.

Lo and behold, a coywolf slunk past, 

new to the Island, this one won’t be last.

Foxes and woodchucks, they come and they go.

The voles and the chipmunks stay under the snow.

The peepers and newts are nestled more deep;

they went down early for their long winter’s sleep. 

Raccoons and opossums steal through the night. 

The owls above them howl in delight.

The robins and bluebirds, a few stay around.

They flitter and twitter and hop o’er the ground.

Chickadees and titmice move feeder to feeder,

like Halloween children, they call on the seeder.

Only two of our birds sing through the winter: 

Mockingbirds ad-lib, Carolina wrens twitter.   

Not an insect is stirring, they’re all hibernating,

as in a very hot summer when they’re aestivating.

’Tis the season to walk through the lands hinter,

tick-free strolls in the quiet of winter.

 It’s the time when we humans can quash attitude,

a time when we can enjoy solitude.

Take off for Florida? That’s always a choice.

I’ll stay through the cold and forever rejoice! 

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

While the calendar may not officially state it, winter is here. By any measure, Saturday’s slushy snowfall, our first of the season, was a rather benign event. Yet, the wet, heavy snow, which was enforced by a rather strong northeast wind, made it feel much colder than the 33-degree temperature. It was a raw, nasty, bone-chilling day. For most, it was a day better spent indoors.

But for some folks, the lousy weather was no excuse not to get in a few hours of fishing. While a few skiffs plied the shallow waters near Northwest Harbor in the continuing pursuit of bay scallops and large flocks of gannets could be seen in the distance on Gardiner’s Bay dive-bombing for herring, a surprising number of intrepid, heavily-dressed anglers decided to take a final stab to catch some late-season striped bass. There was no holiday shopping on the agenda here. Just fishing.

Whether it was at Shagwong beach in Montauk, or along the oceanfront in Amagansett, fishing rods along with a variety of artificial lures were cast into the gray, leaden skies for a last chance to tangle with a migrating, southbound striper. And while there were no reports of any keepers landed (striped bass must be at least 28 inches to be retained), the action was surprisingly good for those who made their way to the snowy shoreline. 

“The weather was terrible, but there were a lot of people trying their luck on Saturday,” said Harvey Bennett, proprietor of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. In conjunction with the Amagansett Sportfishing Association, Bennett held a free, one-day fishing contest for the largest fish landed. The impromptu contest brought anglers from as far away as Manhattan out for the dreary day, weather be damned.

“I was really surprised by the response I had on such short notice of this event,” he said. “And while there were no keeper bass taken, there were a good number of small fish landed and released. It really was a fun day. We’ll do it again next year.” 

Rick Spero of East Hampton landed the largest striped bass, a 20-incher taken on a plug at Shagwong, and took home the grand prize of a custom-made Salty’s fishing plug. Close behind were a pair of 17-inch fish landed at Georgica Beach by Joe and Tina Fosella of East Hampton. The dynamic duo landed seven fish in total, all taken on a teaser fished above a small diamond jig. Impervious to the cold, the married couple were rewarded with a highly-prized Tackle Shop hat for their effort. 

The large number of small bass taken over the past few weeks is an encouraging sign. The short striped bass of today will reach keeper size in about two to three years. That said, Bennett did remark that a slug of larger bass up to 36 inches was landed only a few days earlier from Wainscott to Southampton. “I heard that the fishing was really good, but it seemed to be a one-shot deal,” he said. Note that the season for striped bass closes tomorrow.

Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor also confirmed that small striped bass can be had in the ocean wash. “A good number of small ones are around,” he said. “That said, it was not the best fall season for surfcasters. But the small ones are a good sign for the future.” 

Back in Montauk, those focused on sea bass and cod have been rewarded with excellent action. “On Friday, we went bottom fishing near Southeast Light off of Block Island on a wreck in 90 feet of water,” said Capt. Gregory Mechaber of the charter boat Capt. Mark. “It was tough wind against tide conditions. But we caught many blackfish to six pounds, with two fish that tipped the scales at 10 pounds each. We caught seven species, including a green bonito, cod, sea bass, scup, pollock, and blackfish. Fun day on the water.” 

Those who love to tangle with blackfish should take notice that the season closes today. It will not reopen again until next October. 

And if sea bass are on your menu, you better take advantage of any good weather window over the next two weeks. Despite their overpopulation, the season will formally come to an end on Dec. 31. By that time, it’s quite likely that the snow shovel in your garage, next to those fishing rods, may have already been used a few times. 

Happy holidays.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

I like cold weather. I always have. But the wicked change in temperatures this past weekend was truly jarring for me. Just a few days prior to the freezing conditions, which were enhanced by the bitter northwesterly wind, I was walking around in shorts and a light T-shirt. I was reluctant to say goodbye to our warm weather. 

But my blood naturally runs cold. As someone of 100-percent Russian ancestry who attended college in overly frigid Buffalo and who has laced up skates eagerly to play ice hockey most of my life, even I was caught off guard by the biting winds as I felt the full wrath of the harsh, newfound icy conditions. Perhaps my blood is beginning to thin as I advance in my years. But I still enjoy the chill at times.

The drastic drop in temperatures also spurred my urge to ensure that I make every day count. As the days continue to get shorter for another month and the temperatures drop, I have an inherent need and want to get on the water as much as possible before my boat gets yanked up on dry land later in December.

While I have had great success since the bay scallop season opened on Nov. 6 in state waters (note that the season opened on Monday in town waters), I felt it was time to rustle up a few friends to get in some late-season fishing for blackfish when the winds finally abated on Sunday. The scallops can wait. Carpe diem. Time to seize the day, as the Roman poet Horace noted in “The Odes” nearly 2,000 years ago.

Sunday morning dawned with temperatures hovering around 32 degrees, but that did not dissuade my two guests from showing up dockside with fishing rods in hand just before the sun was to rise at 6:33. Both were as eager as I was as I plotted a northeasterly course for the nearly 90-minute ride to Fishers Island, a sparsely populated, narrow, and craggy island a few miles south of the far eastern end of Connecticut. Cold be damned, we needed to fish.

With half a bushel of green crabs at the ready for bait, along with some highly-prized hermit crabs I had dredged up from my scallop adventures earlier that week, we finally reached our destination just off the single-strip airport at the western end of the island. 

Anchoring up in about 50 feet of water on the outgoing tide, the bow of my boat pointed directly across Long Island Sound toward New London, Conn., and the clearly visible, giant blue General Dynamics Electric Boat hangar where nuclear submarines are constructed for the Navy. Looking out for subs would have to wait; it was time to fish. 

After dropping my freshly cut crab down into the dark water, it was only about five seconds before a blackfish inhaled my bait. The fight was on and a minute or so later, a feisty and determined nine-pound blackfish lay upon the stern cockpit deck. It was a great start for me. My two previous trips for blackfish resulted in precisely zero keeper fish (anglers are allowed four fish per day over 16 inches). It felt good knowing that a nice dinner would await me later that evening. Hard to beat fresh blackfish, even when scallops are aplenty.

For the next three hours, the bite was furious and intense. It was action that I doubt I’ll ever witness again. It was that good. In that time frame, the three of us landed well over 100 blackfish. Needless to say, none of us complained about the cold air at any point. 

While many were short of the legal-size limit, we ended up throwing back many keepers that would have to be left to be caught another day. And while other boats near us repeatedly reanchored to find some prime bottom and fish, we never moved and were fortunate to be on a spot that allowed us one-stop nonstop action. It was perhaps the finest day of fishing for blackfish each of us had ever experienced. 

By 11 a.m., it was time for us to call it a day. While the sun broke out, the tide had slacked, and by that time it took only four ounces of lead to hold bottom. The fish were still biting as eagerly as when we first dropped anchor, but it was a long ride home to Sag Harbor in the rare, calm, late fall sea. It was time to raise the anchor, depart, and store the vivid memories of what was a very special morning. We had experienced an aquatic excursion that each of us will never forget. We were truly very fortunate. And we all knew and appreciated every moment of it. 

As for other species, the action along the ocean beaches perked up with some occasional shots of striped bass and bluefish. The activity has been rather widespread from Southampton to spots to the east of Amagansett.

“There has been some good action on the beaches of late,” exclaimed Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “Bass and blues are around and some keeper bass are in the mix. The season is not over yet. And the waters are still warm.”

An avid hunter, Bennett also reminded me that the season to pursue wild turkey commences on Saturday and expires on Dec. 1. For folks who have so far only purchased a Butterball turkey with a pop-up timer, a fresh turkey is a true treat. 

Quite different from roast turkey, if you have a hankering for fried calamari, you may want to drop a squid jig in Three Mile Harbor. “The squid fishing has been fantastic,” said Sebastian Gorgone, the owner of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton. “The commercial dock and other areas are loaded with squid. I’ve been selling many squid jigs of late.” Gorgone added that the action for stripers has improved the past few days from the ocean beaches. If you are not a lover of turkey meat, striped bass makes a very suitable option for the Thanksgiving table.

Ken Morse, the proprietor of Tight Lines Tackle Shop in Sag Harbor, and a true surf rat, agreed about the action along the ocean. “Bass and blues are in the wash,” he said. “Not many keeper stripers, but there are a few around.”

Back at Montauk, cod and sea bass catches remain solid when conditions allow. “Lots of large and jumbo sea bass are around,” said Capt. Michael Potts of the Bluefin IV. “Fishing for blackfish has also been on the upswing.”

Sunday afternoon was the last trip of the season for the Lazybones, the open boat that pursues striped bass and bluefish. “We got two keeper stripers on the last outing,” said Kathy Vegessi, the dockside support arm of the popular half-day boat. “It was a great season of fishing over all. And Sunday was a nice way to end the season.” Amen to that.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

On Friday and Saturday I went out to examine the fall foliage. It doesn’t seem as brilliant this year as last year, but it might be that I went out too early. On Friday, I covered about 100 miles of East Hampton Town roads, from Town Line Road in Wainscott to the west to Montauk Point to the east. The leaf colors were not as brilliant as last year’s, and Montauk’s Hither Woods were already drab.

The prettiest fall foliage was along the north half of Northwest Woods, east of Three Mile Harbor, and in Springs and Amagansett, where the hardwoods dominate. Old Stone Highway between Neck Path and Town Lane scored the highest, perhaps because of the influence of the late-turning beech trees. On Saturday I returned to Springs for a ceremony in honor of Fred Nagel’s passing. Springs leaves were more colorful than on the previous day, especially along both sides of Springs-Fireplace Road.

All in all, none of the color matched last year’s in intensity, but perhaps I was too early and this year’s fall colors are too late. In Montauk the most colorful things on trees were not leaves, but berries, in particular, those of the winterberry holly, which are unusually abundant and very, very red.

It may be that my eyes were prejudiced by the sad sight of so many dead pine boles lying on each side of the road where my Friday trek started at the western end of Swamp Road. The southern pine beetle had ravaged the trees there. When I got past Bull Path, however, there was little sign of the damage yet to come, and the leaves, especially those of the red maples, were almost dazzling.

Earlier in the week I had observed the state of the fall foliage in eastern Southampton Town. The leaves on the hardwood trees along Deerfield and Brick Kiln Roads were the most colorful and I gave them a 9 out of 10. It may be that those leaves turned a bit earlier than the ones in East Hampton, which would be in accordance with that old rule, the farther west you go on Long Island the earlier the leafing out in the spring and the earlier the color changes come fall.

A disappointing observation resulting from my windshield survey was the number of roadkill gray squirrels. When acorns are scarce, as they seem to be this year, gray squirrels take more time foraging for food, often going farther afield to find their nourishment. That entails numerous road crossings.

On the other hand, along the roads in both towns I saw bunches of turkeys, some in all-male groups with their feathered beards hanging in front of their chests, some all female, without those beards and with smaller wattles hanging from their beaks. I observed not a single roadkill turkey, even though turkeys like to feed on road edges and take their time crossing from one side to another. I also observed a lot of deer. Several of the individual deer were standing on the shoulder of the road observing the passing cars, as if they knew that standing still was safer than bolting across the road. I believe many deer do have that same knowledge as we humans do.

This year’s fall is not like last year’s. It is damper and windier. Maybe that is why, along most of the roads I reconnoitered, the hardwood trees still had the majority of their leaves, indeed, some oaks and beeches were still almost 100 percent green.

I couldn’t help thinking that what I might be seeing year after year for four- fifths of a century, nonstop, is incremental delay of leaf coloration and falling with each passing year. Whether this is just a hunch or another sign of the actual warming of the globe from one year to the next is hard to say.

It’s Thanksgiving and soon it will be Santa Claus time. Like you, I greatly enjoy these holidays. I’m not a grinch. However, I also take great comfort in the thought that in only 28 days from Thanksgiving, the days will stop getting shorter and begin to get longer. Hurray for the winter solstice.



Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].

While Bob Dylan famously sang “the answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,” I’m pretty certain the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature had not visualized the wicked winds we have recently witnessed in the past week or so when he penned those famous lyrics 50 years ago. And if there is an answer in the gusty winds around these parts, it is that there has been very little fishing activity, with wind putting a significant crimp in the plans of many looking to get in some late season action on the water. 

And it’s been frustrating. A scheduled charter trip for sea bass and cod that I had on the docket out of Montauk last Thursday was blown out, and it’s even been hard to find some lee of the land to do some scalloping. The higher-than-normal tides have also dissuaded those in the pursuit of hard and soft clams. Mother Nature has turned her wind machine on high blast. 

My last venture for scallops lasted only a few scant hours on a briefly dead-calm Saturday morning, before the winds suddenly re-emerged to blow at gale force by lunchtime. Thankfully the scallops are still around in decent numbers and a nice catch was culled and promptly shared with a number of friends in Montauk later that day. 

“Fishing reports, especially by boaters, have been hard to come by,” said Ken Morse, the owner of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, sitting behind his display counter on Sunday morning as the winds outside howled to over 50 miles per hour from the west. “I’m not sure why I even showed up this morning.” Morse did say that the action along the beaches has been good when the winds allow, but that catches predominantly consist of small striped bass well below the 28-inch-minimum size limit. “But I did hear a report or two of bass up to 25 pounds that were landed to the east of Bridgehampton on Saturday, so there are a few big fish around.” Morse has shifted his store hours into winter mode and is now closed on Tuesday and Wednesday. He is also offering a 15-percent holiday season discount on rods and reels.

“Lots of stripers are being caught, but the vast majority are under the size limit,” Harvey Bennett, the proprietor of the Tackle Shop on Montauk Highway in Amagansett, said on Saturday while accepting a pint of freshly shucked scallops from said scribe (Bennett wrapped them in bacon later that night and proclaimed that they were excellent). “The season is not over yet. Hopefully the winds will die down a bit and we can see some more action.”

And while the World Series ended a few weeks ago, Bennett reminded me that he is finalizing his trip to the Dominican Republic for later in January, when he plans to deliver various donated baseball items, including mitts, gloves, uniforms, bats, and balls, that he received over the past few months for the benefit of underprivileged youth in the Caribbean country. “It’s still not too late to stop by and donate,” he added. “I can always take more with me when I go down there.”  

When the rare weather window allows, boats out of Montauk have found a decent number of sea bass, porgy, and codfish in the areas south and east of Block Island. But when the winds are coming in from the east, the pesky spiny dogfish have put on their feedbag and have proven to be a hindrance at times. For aficionados of blackfish, anglers have been limited by the geography on where to fish. Fishers Island and spots up toward Rhode Island continue to produce, but the waters near Southwest Ledge at Block Island and the Cartwright grounds, located about six miles to the south of Montauk, should shortly begin to produce as the waters continue to chill and the fish seek deeper water.  

Back to bay scallops, while the season has been a nice surprise for many so far, with solid catches, the signs for next year do not bode all that well. With a few exceptions, many areas are nearly void of young scallops that were to have spawned back in June. While there appears to have been a second spawn in September with scallops currently no bigger than a dime, you may want to ensure you take advantage of the plentiful catches and low retail prices that have been witnessed for the past three weeks. Prices will most certainly be higher next November when the season opens. And that’s an answer that even Bob Dylan would agree with.

We welcome your fishing tips, observations, and photographs at [email protected]. You can find the “On the Water” column on Twitter at @ehstarfishing.

When J.P. Giraud, the American naturalist, published his book “The Birds of Long Island” in 1844, one would be hard pressed to find a single heath hen left on Long Island. Game birds such as the heath hen, Labrador duck, and passenger pigeon disappeared early, along with the wild turkey. The first three became extinct.

The heath hen is a species of prairie chicken that preferred grasslands. It was found in Montauk and elsewhere in Suffolk County, but where it throve until hunted out of existence here was on the Hempstead Plains, 60,000 acres of bona fide prairie land in the center of Nassau County.

In fact, the Hempstead Plains was the largest prairie in New York State well into the late 1800s. Except for 19 remaining acres on the campus of Nassau Community College in east Garden City, the other 59,500-plus acres have been turned into residential and commercial areas along with some airfields, one of which launched the Spirit of St. Louis when it made its historic first flight across the Atlantic Ocean piloted by Charles Lindbergh.

The names of communities such as Floral Park, Hicksville, and East Meadow suggest the flowering and grassland appearance of the plains before they were filled with people, residences, buildings, institutions, and highways. Levittown, constructed after World War II, was one of the last communities to be built on this expanse of treeless flatland. 

In the early part of the new millennium a group of plains-savers got together to conserve those last 19 acres, and notwithstanding the pollution and high-density uses all around them, they have performed spectacularly well. While heath hens are lacking, these 19 acres have several state and federally rare species, including the endangered sandplain gerardia, rediscovered in Montauk in 1982; bushy frostweed, also found in Montauk; silvery aster, bird’s-foot violet, and several typical prairie grasses — tall bluestem, indiangrass, and little bluestem. But it also has rare-to-Long Island birds including the upland sandpiper, grasshopper sparrow, and marsh hawk.

The Friends of the Hempstead Plains started from scratch, but with a piece of land to work with. They removed the invasive vegetation, returned the grown-up tangle to a semblance of historical prairie land, and went on from there.

Coincidental with the restoration of these 19 acres, a group called Greentree Foundation established on the 408-acre Whitney Estate, including the manor house, in Manhasset has been involved in restoration of grasslands in a big way. It held a forum for grassland managers on Oct. 18 in a large conference room in the estate’s main house. At that forum several individuals spoke of their work bringing back healthy grasslands on Long Island.

The longest, and perhaps most impressive, presentation was by Greentree, itself. It included video clips of the kind of work needed to bring back a part of the plains to its original state. It involved carefully burning brushland and weedy growth against the wind, not with it, thus keeping the spread of fire very slow and easily controllable. Many grasses such as purpletop and tall bluestem grew back forcefully and were shortly joined by various prairie flowering plants such as orange milkweed.

Prior to the forum, at which a delicious lunch was served by our Greentree hosts, we were led on walks on paths through two of these new grasslands. One of the highlights of these walks was the flushing of bobwhite quails, a species native to Long Island, which were recently released into the grasslands. One of the guides said that a human could practically walk up to the original bobwhites and pick them up, but all of their offspring were skittish and very wild right off the bat.

This forum made me think of our own grasslands on the South Fork, most of which are rapidly growing up into heathlands or being developed residentially. Shinnecock Hills, west of the old Southampton College campus, comes to mind. When I taught at that school in the 1970s and led field trips through the grasslands, there were lots of unusual prairie-type plants growing there, including Nantucket shad, as well as some unusual birds breeding there, including the large warbler species, the yellow-breasted chat.

Since that time that bit of grassland has been through the development era of the 1980s, followed by two more in the new millennium. There’s not much left to save. The grassland at Conscience Point, which used to be grazed by dairy cows to keep it low and turfy, is also growing up, but, at least it’s not occupied by houses or stores. It is now owned and cared for by the current owner of Robins Island.

Finally, there are the Montauk grasslands, which now are many times larger than the Hempstead Plains remnant in the absence of fire, first introduced by the Montaukett Indians and later continued by the ranch managers. Fire management was reintroduced in the 1990s for a time, but not since. Without fire, which is the number-one benefactor of grasslands, the Montauk ones will undoubtedly grow up into heathy vegetation infiltrated with a large number of invasive species already in Montauk, including mugwort and mile-a-minute weed. 

Hither Woods, the largest intact contiguous woodland in East Hampton Town, was once almost entirely grassland. In the absence of fire management it became treed, except for one small spot called Ram Level. In the absence of management that tiny bit of prairie will soon be gone, too. Then the new name for Hither Woods, Koppelman Woods, as printed in large letters on the sign on the north side of Montauk Highway and plainly visible to passing motorists, will no longer need an asterisk.

On the way back from the grasslands conference, Victoria Bustamante and I talked about Long Island’s fate. At least the best part of the pine barrens is in good hands, but what about the coming Long Island Rail Road third rail to Hicksville and its fearsome Ronkonkoma Hub tag-along, recently shown as an artist’s rendition in Newsday. Hmmm, in the future the largest freshwater lake on Long Island may sit beside the largest commercial development in Suffolk County. Yes, another case of the left brain 180 degrees out of sync with the right brain. What would Robert Moses say if he were still with us?

Larry Penny can be reached via email at [email protected].