There’s an old saw that says “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” It doesn’t actually have to do with removing the pelts from cats, thank God, but more with alternative ways of getting something done that needs to be done. In humankind as in nature, just about every method to get a given thing done has been tried. Some methods fail outright, some work for a while, then others that are more durable and efficient replace them; a few work forever with little change over countless eons, thus the horseshoe crab.

It’s the story of evolution.

Take reproduction in humans and other animals, for that matter. Most religions tout monogamy as the key to stable, successful, and ethical child rearing. And for a long time in most societies based on all forms of Christian religion, it was the standard, and it is still the orthodox way of bearing young, caring for them, and, eventually, weaning them. It works more times than not.

But what about monogamy as a chosen form in other vertebrate animals, say, in birds, or mammals? It turns out that most songbirds are monogamous in the short run, for a single breeding season. Only a few birds are monogamous year after year after year. Long before ornithologists came along and established the fact that mature bald eagles remain with each other year after year, and use the same nest year after year, and produce a litter year after year, they became our national bird.

Locally and around the world, the osprey is monogamous in the same way. A nest on a pole in Napeague was used by the same pair of ospreys for more than 20 years. When one of the pair died in a tragic accident, a new mate was secured during the off-season and taken to that nest the following spring. Most of us applaud the bald eagle and the osprey for their monogamous ways.

Most of us also treasure the eastern bluebird, the official state bird of New York. However, if we studied bluebirds, we would discover that some hanky-panky frequently goes on and a bluebird litter in a bluebird box often contains young from different parents. The same is true of the beautiful cardinal: Any given cardinal nest has a one-in-three chance of containing eggs from two different parents. However, notwithstanding some backdoor antics in avian society, 90 percent of bird species are monogamous for at least a single breeding season.

Ironically, ospreys, bald eagles, and bluebirds were not faring well during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, but it had little to do with their social or reproductive habits and more to do with the various insecticides, such as DDT, that were incorporated into their diets, then into their eggs. Whooping cranes, common puffins, condors, black vultures, Laysan albatrosses, Canada geese, mute swans, and red-tailed hawks are also monogamous throughout a lifetime, or at least for as long as both members of a pair are alive. It is as convenient as it is romantic and idealistic

Some reptiles, such as crocodiles, show extended mother-protect-eggs-protect-hatchlings behavior, but unless science proves differently, most are not monogamous. Monogamy would be a liability for amphibians like salamanders, frogs, and toads that breed in water. Take, for example, if spadefoot toads that only climb out of the ground after torrential rains to breed in temporary ponds had to find their one-and-only mates in the dark of night while it was pouring down, their chances of breeding successfully would be very low indeed.

The same goes for fish, almost all of which breed in an aqueous environment, many times after a long run upstream, tired and exhausted. Yes, some males — sharks, live-bearing minnows, and a few other species — have gonopodia, or intromittant organs, for sperm insertion, to insure that their sperm reach “touchdown.” They are not monogamous per se. Indeed, in some fish species, like pipefish and seahorses, the males raise the young after taking them into their protective pouches.

Humans are mammals, the so-called highest order of animals in the animal kingdom. What do most mammals do? Well, in the hoofed animals and apes, most females in a herd or tribal group are inseminated by a few select males. Such is the way of the much-maligned white-tailed deer. In almost all mammals, after the act of copulation occurs, the female focuses all her energies on having a successful in vivo experience followed by successful birthing and upbringing of the young. In felines, the males are completely superfluous once the act of insemination is completed.

L.G.B.T. may be a new term in human culture, but it has existed in lower animals for millions of years, but quietly so, not advertised. In humans, monogamous relationships provide security, a stable home in which to rear children, and the like. 

However, the world is changing rapidly. There are societies in which women greatly outnumber men, and only a few where there are more men than women. But then again, the act of love can easily be replaced by artificial insemination. Women can have babies and rear them to fruition without having to take care of a mate simultaneously. As I see it, the future of humans is a great crapshoot. New forms of culture will continually be invented, others reinvented, some will persist for generations, others like the “summer of love” will fail outright. It may be that classical music will finally die out and rap music outlive us all. Bah, humbug.

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

Yep. It’s official. The days are getting shorter. 

As the season changes from spring to summer, it’s always been a bit hard for me to fathom that our exposure to natural daylight is already on the downhill. A sunrise of 5:15 a.m. on June 21 in Montauk is 5:18 a.m. a week later. It’s only a three-minute difference, but the daylight does begin to erode rather quickly.

Personally, summer does not really seem to commence in my own mind until the July 4 holiday weekend. And despite the rise in water and air temperatures we’ll experience over the next two months, the fact remains that with each passing day, our time to enjoy various daytime pastimes and activities begins to lessen. Such differences are subtle at first and barely noticeable. But before you know it, by the end of July, we’ve lost nearly 50 minutes of daylight. And by then, we do see and feel the difference. 

For aquatic creatures like fish, does the lessening daylight alter their habits? Actually, the answer is yes, for the most part. Many fish, too, begin to make an adjustment to their activities and feeding patterns as we move deeper into the summer months. 

For those anglers in pursuit of bluefish and, in particular, striped bass, a focus on fishing in the early morning and late evening or night during the lazy, hazy days of summer will usually result in greater action. The high noon, blazingly bright sunshine of mid-August is not exactly prime time for a fish like a striper to be on the prowl for food. They too become more lethargic in the midday sun, seeking deeper and cooler water, and become more nocturnal in their hunt for prey. It’s the same story for various freshwater species in our local ponds. 

So, while shorter days are now upon us, now is not the time to ditch the Ray-Bans and sunscreen. Quite the contrary. But it’s time to look more closely at the clock on the wall and the sun in the sky, and rethink our own schedules to better maximize the time spent pursuing various quarry.  

As if on cue, the early morning and evening bite for striped bass has already kicked into high gear at Montauk, as a large swath of sand eels have moved into the various rips and along the south side. And the fish being caught in recent days have been significantly larger, with a good number over 40 pounds landed on trolled parachutes, large tubes, and diamond jigs.  “Usually by July 1, we see the larger fish show up, so the timing is about right,” said Capt. Richard Etzel of the Breakaway. “Fishing has been very good.” 

The season for the other saltwater bass — black sea bass — opened for recreational anglers on Tuesday. Three fish over 15 inches can now be taken on a daily basis. The creel limit will increase to eight fish on Sept. 1. Commercial pinhookers, who have been allowed to keep up to 50 pounds per day since May 15, report that the start of the season should be red hot. “Lots of big sea bass around,” said Gregory Mechaber of the Capt. Mark. “Plenty of large porgies are also mixed in, up to four pounds too.” 

With the lessening of a persistent groundswell, fluke action also picked up a bit off of Montauk. Various open boats have taken part in the improved action, including the Lazybones, the Montauk Star, the Miss Montauk II, the Viking, and the Ebb Tide II, which saw fish up to 11 pounds weighed in during the recent calming seas. 

“Fluke action has become more consistent,” said Paul Apostolides of Paulie’s Tackle in Montauk. “Action from the shoreline has been a bit picky though, but some blues and small bass are running around, especially on the north side.”

Farther off the beach, the shark action continues to be consistent. The 47th annual Montauk Marine Basin shark tournament took place last weekend and the largest shark captured was a 384-pound mako on the Joy Sea, skippered by veteran Capt. Chuck Mallinson. The Joy Sea also captured the largest shark back in the 2013 tourney with a 377-pound mako.  Some good shark karma going on the deck of that boat for sure. The Sea Dreamer II took second place with a mako of 348 pounds, while the Tail Walker out of Connecticut placed a 243-pound mako on the scales to take third. 

While we are not in the middle of summer doldrums yet, the action the past week hit a bit of a lull according to Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett. “Fluke slowed down, but some nice ones were taken off Napeague Harbor,” said Bennett. “There are some small bass and big blues at Gin Beach in Montauk, and some weakfish have been taken at White Sands, too.”

Separately, Bennett added that his continued recruitment of used baseball gloves and mitts for underprivileged children in the Dominican Republic remains successful. “It’s been a great response so far,” he said. “But if anyone has any catcher’s mitts, that would be particularly welcome, as they are hard to find.” Check the back of your closet or garage and let Harvey know.

Up at Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in Springs, Sebastian Gorgone reports that the striped bass action at Main Beach and Georgica has perked up. “I had one customer on Sunday land several keeper bass on clams,” said Gorgone. “However, those who fished various lures had no action at all.” Slinging clams into the surf is a popular summer method to land stripers during the day, when artificials are regularly spurned. Gorgone added that the fluke action remains decent in the local area.

Farther west, action in the Peconics is mixed, with a smattering of fluke, porgies, weakfish, and large bluefish being the predominant catch. “Action from the ocean beaches has been quiet, but inside the bays, the activity has been pretty good,” said Ken Morse of Tightlines Tackle in Sag Harbor. Kerry Heffernan dead-sticked a seven-pound fluke fishing in local waters. 

Keeper-size striped bass have become harder to find as bay water temperatures have crept up over 70 degrees. However, the warming waters have kept the blue-claw crabs happy, with catches remaining excellent in the Sag Harbor area. Another active nocturnal feeder, blue-crabs are perhaps the finest table fare we have to enjoy on the East End.

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

Try to look beyond the madding crowd. There’s a lot going on in the world of nature, all of it free of charge. North America’s tiniest hummingbird, the calliope from the Pacific Northwest, has come to nectar alongside a ruby-throated male at Joanne Dittmar’s house in Springs on the bay just west of Hog Creek. Sibley defines it as an “accidental.” The ruby-throat is our tiniest bird species; just imagine how hard it would be to see a bird two-thirds its size with the naked eye as it whizzed by. 

The milkweeds, both common and orange, are coming into full bloom. Keep your eyes open for monarch butterflies. We hope they’ll be mating, then depositing their eggs on the milkweeds soon. The eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the milkweeds’ poisonous sap and thereby gain immunity from predation by birds and other animals.

Box turtles have been moving to and fro for egg laying and other domestic duties since the middle of June. Chris Chapin, a local realtor and naturalist, picked three off three different local roads so they wouldn’t be run over. On June 9, I found a large one that didn’t have such a savior freshly squashed into the pavement on Brick Kiln Road in Bridgehampton. Arrgh.

Joanne Dittmar has a big box turtle moving around on her property. She lives on a dead-end street so the turtle has more than a sporting chance to live to 100, which is not unusual for turtles and tortoises that are not run over or otherwise come to an untimely demise.

The ospreys that nest on the Noyac side of Long Beach and a pair that occupies a nest just north of the North Haven bridge are doing well with one exception. An adult osprey was run over and flattened on Short Beach Road on North Haven on Friday. Its nest is liable to fail, as it takes two adults to raise chicks to fledging and keep them alive for a few weeks thereafter. 

Some osprey pairs mate for life and for good reason. However, the two nesting on a platform at the edge of a pond near Hog Creek are a new pair, according to Joanne Dittmar, who watches them every year from her window. The previous female was quite finicky; this year’s is quietly resourceful.

Ospreys are one of the few bird species native throughout the world. Though decimated by the use of DDT and other insecticides once used to battle mosquitoes, they have climbed back and are doing well, particularly during the last few years, as the mobs of bunkers have returned to our waters. On the other hand, some nests are in the path of mosquito-control helicopters, while others are besieged by bald eagles, which are making a comeback on Long Island.

Whippoorwills may be doing a bit better in prime whippoorwill habitat. Two weeks ago, I heard three different males sounding off along Daniel’s Hole Road west of Route 114. I wonder if last year’s helicopter curfew encouraged them to try again, as there were only one or two at most off and on near the airport for several years prior to 2017. On the other hand, I didn’t hear any evening songs of hermit thrushes, which used to frequent that area of the South Fork’s pine barrens year in, year out.

Several “Nature Notes” ago I said there was no appreciable gypsy moth damage around. Apparently, I spoke too soon. Victoria Bustamante gave me an account of gypsy moth infestations on both sides of Route 114 north of Stephen Hand’s Path and running all the way to Daniel’s Hole Road. I checked on Friday; she was right. 

Next year could be the big one for gypsy moths; the first such in these parts since at least 2002. Victoria also reported that serious gypsy moth infestations dotted the trees on both sides of the Long Island Expressway, but that some trees that had been stripped bare were leafing out again following the Friday downpours of two weeks ago.

This year could be a very big chigger year, despite what Cornell Cooperative Extension says about chiggers not existing on Long Island. Terry Sullivan ran into a slew of them on a property near his house. They were the red adults, which feed on vegetation, rather than humans, but the larvae that stem from them are voracious as far as we homo sapiens are concerned. 

If you’re out hiking, you might have a hard time coming up with a black-legged (deer) tick or two, but don’t get too cocky, lone star ticks, the females of which have a white spot on their back, are all over and very hungry.

I’m predicting a big hurricane just as I did in April of 2012, the year that Superstorm Sandy hit at the end of October. 

Whether President Trump and his cohorts believe in global warming or not, water levels are rising. A part of the Antarctic ice shelf as big as Delaware is about to break off, and the glaciers of Glacier National Park are disappearing at a rapid rate. Remember, as sea level rises, so does the freshwater aquifer that lies atop it. Freshwater is less dense than saltwater. A case in point: On Friday while moving from Industrial Road to Second House Road in Montauk, I went past Brushy Island in Fort Pond, which only 30 years ago was populated with trees and brush. In the early 1920s when Norman Taylor defined the flora of Montauk, the island was home to Montauk’s only basswood. All I could see the other day was a single tree stump sticking up. Brushy Island is no longer!

One last wonderful bit of news: The Town of Brookhaven also has an airport, Calabro Airport. In the June 26 Newsday there was a big public notice that there is a plan to install solar panels on the ground throughout much of its open areas. The East Hampton Airport has even more open ground than Calabro. How about it, sustainability committee?

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

Sunday night was cloudy and cool with a slight breeze. I set out for a second night on the trail of the once common but now rare whippoorwill. Last Thursday the Noyac and Bridgehampton hills were under my microscope. Sunday night it would be Northwest Woods in East Hampton and Napeague. I didn’t hear a single whippoorwill the first night. I was hoping that it would be a different story the second time out. 

On a late May evening 15 years ago the white pines, pitch pines, and oaks that make up the lightly developed woodlands of Northwest would have been reverberating with the call of the whippoorwill, but Sunday night was eerily quiet. If not for the occasional gray tree frog calling or the warning notes of a robin, there would have been no sounds other than those produced by motor vehicles and an occasional barking dog.

The first major stop was along the town trustee trail paralleling Northwest Creek. Only a few years ago, you could be sure of hearing at least one whippoorwill song among the oaks and hickories along that trail. On Sunday evening, save for a mockingbird singing at the edge of the marsh, it was silent.

A large raccoon scooted across Swamp Road. When I stopped at the Grace Estate pull-off on Northwest Road and turned off my lights, a fox peered out from behind an oak tree bole. It looked to be gray, but when it exposed its entire body while sneaking by my vehicle, it looked more red than gray and it didn’t slink like a gray fox; it walked the walk of a red fox. The Grace Estate and the woodlands on the southeast side of Northwest Road make up more than 500 acres of unfettered open space. You would think it would be home to at least one happy whippoorwill, but not on this night. 

In the past, the Peach Farm on the other side of the same road had been a place where bluebirds sang during the day, hermit thrushes at dusk, and whippoorwills cruised low out in the open, hawking moths and other night-flying insects. But on this night the Peach Farm was merely another residential area, absolutely quiet.

After a brief run down Alewife Brook Road with stops at the stream running under the road into Ely Brook Pond and along Terry’s Trail, accompanied by a ghostly silence, I decided to head directly for a spot where I knew there would be a whippoorwill or two, Napeague. I had received telephone reports of whippoorwills calling there a few nights earlier. So I sped out to Napeague Harbor Road, crossed the railroad tracks, and stopped to listen. A gray tree frog sang its raspy warble over and over again from the wetlands to the west. I went all the way to the end, parked by the side of the Walking Dunes, and listened. Not a sound. Maybe Napeague would disappoint, I thought.

I doubled back to Napeague Meadow Road. Halfway down the road with a marsh on the east and low piney woods on the west, I stopped and listened. Nada. Then on to Cranberry Hole Road and east toward Napeague Harbor’s west outlet. Just past Crassen Boulevard I stopped and listened. Behold, one whippoorwill song coming in loud and clear with a clockwork cadence. Hurray! I continued along to the edge of the harbor. Hark, a second whippoorwill repeating his song with the same cadence.

My spirits were soaring. I was in one of my favorite East Hampton haunts and listening to the first whippoorwill songs to grace my ears this season. I continued west down the main town trustee road with the little houses on each side, stopping between the old Merrill trailer camp on the west and the pitch pines to the east. Whammo, another whippoorwill singing over and over from the depths of those pitch pines.

By then it was 11 and I was headed home. Three whippoorwills, several gray tree frogs, one roadkill raccoon and gray squirrel each, plus the previously mentioned two very alive mammals, as well as two deer. Not a bad night after all, I thought. Especially not bad when compared to the three hours I had spent the Thursday evening before cruising up and down morainal roads in Southampton — formerly desolate but now lined with lighted driveways from one end to the other — without hearing a single whippoorwill.

Another highlight of that night was the blooming white beach plums lining both sides of Napeague Harbor Road. I never thought that beach plums could be more beautiful in pale evening light than in the daytime, but they truly were that Sunday night, and they were so abundant. Does it portend a bumper berry year come fall, after so many poor ones? I hope so.

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

I went out looking for signs of gypsy moth infestations on Sunday, exploring the oak-hickory and oak-pine forests along the major Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, Wainscott, and Northwest Woods roads. 

Their favorite species, the white oaks, were well represented — still in flower and expanding their fresh, still-drooping pale green or reddish leaves. The good news is that I did not find any sign of gypsy moth caterpillars along the way, not even at a small spot on Route 114 between East Hampton and Sag Harbor where they were rampant by this time of year in 2015. 

It’s still a bit early, so I’ll make the rounds again in another week or so.

I stopped by Daniel’s Hole on the northwest side of the road of the same name. There was only a bit of water, but several plants were blooming along the side of the road. I was also looking to see if the dreaded southern pine borer beetle was working on the pitch pines there. Thank God, I couldn’t find any of these little destroyers.

While I was there a chopper flew over, blasting the area below with an incessant horrible sound. I don’t live near the East Hampton Airport, but I got an earful of what those who do endure during several hours of each day. I myself, a product of the quiet ambience of Mattituck on the North Fork, would never be able to stand it.

I could also hear the banging of the guns at the Maidstone Gun Club north of the airport, and thought to myself, “Well, if you are going to have two very noisy areas in an otherwise quiet hamlet, you might as well locate them next to each other.”

When I passed the airport, three helicopters were on the ground with their rotors a-twirl, another was landing, and one had just taken off. A small transport plane with about eight windows on each side was just taking off and a two-engine jet was sitting at the beginning of the runway. 

I made my way west along Industrial Road, anxious to see the state of the large cleared area that the Town of East Hampton leased to Landscape Details. When I last saw it months ago, it was clear, without any buildings or other improvements. Today, it was covered with buildings and roads and open areas. I could see an exhaust fan turning near the top of one building. There were several enormous pieces of a trunk that looked like it came from a beech tree; their cut ends were at least five feet across.

I left that site and turned north onto Town Line Road, and a new adventure was underway. I was looking for a spot where the wild blue lupine bloomed and was overjoyed when I found it there at the very end of the airfield. It was larger than ever and very verdant, despite being surrounded by garbage and debris of every description, as if it were undergoing one of those rebirth phenomena. I thought back to the 1980s and 1990s when wild lupine coated the shoulders of Daniel’s Hole, Two Holes of Water, Old Northwest, and Hand’s Creek Roads and the wooded section of Stephen Hand’s Path. No other town on Long Island could boast such a wonderful display of blue blossoms, and following on the heels of another blue wildflower, the bird’s foot violet, on some roadsides.

Suddenly it dawned on me: Highway maintenance did away with most of those wildflowers, but there is almost no highway maintenance on Town Line Road, half of which is owned by Southampton Town, half by East Hampton. Thus, the abundance of numerous throwaways on the roadsides. And what a view looking east through the airport fence of the town’s largest prairie — more than 100 acres of almost all native grasses and herbs, some endangered and threatened, a beautiful sea of different hues, including the blues of lupines, with not a single tree. No wonder the bluebirds and tree swallows thrive here.

As I left the prairie and progressed farther north along the up-and-down mostly unpaved road, I encountered large puddle after large puddle filling the washer-board depressions, and feasted my eyes on the lush greenery on either side, but also on the leavings of a society in the throes of degeneration. I thought of Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and one if its verses to be quite apropros:

“Well, Mack the Finger said to Louie the King

‘I got forty red-white-and-blue shoestrings

And a thousand telephones that don’t ring

Do you know where I can get rid of these things?’

And Louie the King said, ‘Let me think for a minute, son’

Then he said, ‘Yes, I think it can be easily done

Just take everything down to Highway 61’ ” 

Along with the weeds and lush native trees, shrubs, herbs, ferns, grasses, and wild blue lupines, just about everything there is is strewn along Town Line Road, our own Highway 61. It’s a potpourri of the good, the bad, and the ugly. 

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

My power was out in Noyac for four hours on Monday, and it got me to thinking about how much electricity we use these days. When I was growing up on the North Fork in the middle of the last century you could still see the stars bright and shining in all their glory, no matter that most were thousands, if not millions, of light-years away. 

On the South Fork it would seem that the stars get dimmer and dimmer with each passing year. Of course we know that the light emitted from each star is the same each night; it’s just that ambient light interferes with the dark adaptation ability of our eyes. And the surroundings are more lit up than ever. Such near-field interference, especially great in the summer months, causes us to perceive the stars and planets as dimmer.

In Mattituck in the mid-20th century the village was generally dark from 8:30 p.m. on, save for a few streetlights and the lights from passing cars. We have entered the age of massive artificial lighting. We light our thoroughfares, our business districts, our stores, and houses more than ever these days. Electric bills reflect this huge increase.

We equate night light and night music with having a good time, leading a richly stimulating life. We eschew the dark. Some of us would enjoy living in a world where there were 24 hours of light every day of the year, as in the polar summers. Birds and other wildlife, on the other hand, do not seem to mind the dark. Songbirds, with few exceptions, spend the night sleeping with one eye open. Many mammals and amphibians are active at night. They use their noses together with their dark-adapted eyes to ply their trades.

Stores in shopping centers that used to close at 5 or 6 p.m. now often close at 9, even later farther west. The Bridgehampton Commons serves as a good local example. We modern humans, who mostly work all day, now use the nights to have fun, play, see the sights, and hear the sounds of the pulsating 21st century. Before 1939 there were no night games in Major League Baseball. Now it seems that there are more games under the lights than there are day games. Even college teams host a goodly share of their games under the lights. 

When I was a boy, all of our summer baseball games were played during the day. These days almost every local village has a lighted ball field, tennis court, or soccer field where games can take place in the dark.

We love artificial light to the degree that we leave outside lights and some of our room lights on throughout the evening and early morning hours. The bigger the residence the more lights required, both inside and out. When I took a night drive through what used to be the quietest and darkest parts of Bridgehampton, Water Mill, and Noyac last week listening for the songs of whippoorwills, I could have navigated most of the backroads without my headlights on because there was so much ambient light. To be sure, that ambient light was not a gift of nature; it cost a dear price, just ask PSEG, our sole electric supplier.

The cost of electricity is mighty. How is it that the population of Suffolk County is decreasing, yet the need for electricity is continually increasing? Look around; it’s easy to see why. What if all street lighting were with LED lights? We would probably see a big dent in the kilowatt hours used across the county. What if all those driveway and other outside lights were solar? Another big dent in the electricity bills would be realized.

Add the air-conditioners, electric hot water heaters, TVs, electric ranges, and all those other appliances that run on electricity and your kilowatt-hour needs are doubled, if not tripled. 

We are spoiled to death, folks. We have become just as light-needy and phototactic as those moths that fly around at night under the streetlamps.

Astrophysicists tell us that our sun is good for another million or more years. Even Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb more than a century ago, said we should look to the sun for future energy needs. We are doing just that, but much too slowly from my point of view. All those box stores, warehouses, schools, and other institutions with lots of roof area should be solarized as soon as possible. 

I met a man in Hampton Bays on Saturday who has 26 solar panels on his roof. He paid nothing out of pocket for electricity during April and May and expects June, July, and August to provide all the electricity he needs for free. 

Before we go out into the ocean and disturb our marine mammal, sea turtle, fish, and invertebrate nurseries and feeding grounds any more than we are doing right now, I say we should exploit our sun to the fullest. And what about passive heating from the ground? When it’s below zero in the dead of winter outside in the open air, the temperature of the aquifer under our feet is about 50 degrees or more Fahrenheit. 

Quite a few houses on the South Fork are already tapping into the seemingly endless supply of subsurface heat using geothermal systems, and the Bridgehampton School is about to become one of the first big institutional users of it. Go, Bees!

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

The South Fork of Long Island has hundreds of beaches, woodland trails, sidewalks, and other stretches for walking and communing with nature. 

On Friday, I accompanied Jean Held, a Sag Harbor naturalist and historian, and Victoria Bustamante, a Montauk botanist and naturalist, on one of the most interesting walks I have taken in my 81 years. No, it wasn’t through Montauk’s Hither Woods or Shadmoor Park. It wasn’t across Barcelona and East Hampton’s Northwest or along the Long Pond Greenbelt south of Sag Harbor or in North Sea’s Scallop Pond-Sebonac Creek Wilderness. It was in an area not noted for nature walks and rural scenery at all: the Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor. 

The large cemetery is filled with trees, trails, low vegetation, and, of course, tombstones. I wouldn’t have thought of it for a nature walk had Jean Held not talked it up based on an earlier visit when spring was just beginning to get into high gear.

When one thinks of a cemetery, one pictures a well-kept green dotted with engraved stone monuments in neat rows with grasses in between and perhaps a few trees here and there. The monuments are many and varied, detailing a history 200 years old. They themselves were worth the walk. But the spaces in between the stones were not merely the same old grass commonly found in local lawns. There were more than 50 species of herbs and miniature shrubs, half native, half not. 

Cemetery trees create an arboretum, with most of the eastern Long Island species represented, many very tall and some very old. One sawed-off stump of an oak almost three feet across had about 190 concentric rings from the outside in. It was nearly two centuries old. There were stately white oaks, chestnut oaks, black oaks, scarlet oaks, hickories, beeches, maples, white pines, pitch pines, firs, red cedars, spruce, and many others. However, we were not there for these historical trees with their magnificent canopies as much as for the rich tapestry of herbage below.

On Jean’s prior trip she had found many pussytoes, a species in the sunflower family in which the male plants are small and inconspicuous while the females are conspicuous and fuzzy, resembling the toes of cats. They  flower early and are the favorite plant for the painted lady butterfly. Some were still flowering on Friday, and, sure enough, a painted lady was visiting them.

What was most interesting is that different species would dominate different areas. Almost each grave marker was host to an ecotype or micro-ecotype. Several species were in flower, a few just like the frostweed or yellow rockrose in the genus Helianthemum. Vicki found another that could be the bushy frostweed, which is very rare to the state. It had yet to flower and she planned to compare it to the ones she has been watching in Montauk.

Among the non-natives were yellow tick clover, rabbit-foot clover, two plantains, several mints, and, of course, dandelions. There were also three different species of sedums, “stonecrops” that are more characteristic of drier landscapes of the kind found in America’s Southwest.

Two quite rare plants were found in goodly numbers. One was the common cedar, Juniperus communis, a low-growing spiny shrub, only a handful of which I have seen elsewhere on the South Fork. In Asia this species becomes a tree, in the United States it is mostly found in the low shrub form. The other rare species is one with very small, almost fleshy, opposite leaves along a stem that almost hugs the ground. It had yet to flower.

There were the obnoxious plants, of course, the Asiatic bittersweet, garlic mustard, and one mugwort just starting out. One wonders if the garlic mustard and mugwort will wage a war to take over most of the territory the way they do along so many of our roadsides. We may also have found one small mile-a-minute weed, the most obnoxious of all imports, methinks.

Vicki has the most incredible ears and Jean’s aren’t half-bad either. When a bird such as the chipping sparrow would sing, she’d call it out, but its trill was above my hearing range. She also heard cedar waxwings flying over. Locally, they have the highest notes of all. Jean identified one trill that we all heard: It was a gray tree frog, a species that is doing monumentally well these days on the South Fork and one that I heard at more than 50 percent of my stops when I was out searching for whippoorwills two weeks ago at night.

While we were there an argument broke out between the fish crows, the new kids on the block with the more nasal caws, and the common crows. Looking up, there went an osprey like a bullet flying north at an altitude approaching 300 yards. A fish crow, looking half its size, made a beeline right behind it. Another osprey, this one with a fish in its talons, followed behind that.

We were all alone with all those dead souls. Jean would look up from the plants once in a while to point out a historical Sag Harbor name or two, most belonging to whalers. There was the very nice and well-kept grave of George Balanchine, the great choreographer and artistic director of the New York City Ballet, and another of a well-known ballerina close by. 

At one point a very large and obviously old female box turtle looked up at us as we stopped to check out a plant. She was too old and too proud and too longstanding an inhabitant to close her eyes and pull her head inside her shell. She merely gave us the once- over and went on with her business. Had she just deposited her eggs or was she about to?

The keeper of the cemetery deserves high praise. Without him or her, how else would there be such a trove of flora and fauna, and except for the crows, all in a quiet harmony. 

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

The summer birds are back in full force. Most are day birds, but some are nocturnal — the owls and the nightjars such as the nighthawk and whippoorwill. 

Friday evening Stephanie Krusa, who lives in Montauk, visited one of her favorite spots for night birds, not to see them, but to hear them load and clear while listening through her open car window. It was near the end of Navy Road, which runs to Fort Pond Bay. No sooner had she arrived and turned off the ignition and the lights than the chorus started. A whippoorwill here, a whippoorwill there. From just about every corner came the eerie chant of the whippoorwill. They may have become scarce elsewhere on the South Fork, but thank God, they are still holding their own in Montauk.

Nocturnal birds are mostly brown and dull-colored when compared to day birds. The males are selected on the basis of the calls and other signs, not by color. Males and females are rarely sexually dimorphic, and instead look like each other. On the other hand, almost all day birds, especially the songbirds, are sexually dimorphic. The males are showily colorful, the females drab and almost nondescript. In fact, it has been shown that for a few species, for example goldfinches, the brighter yellow the males, the more favorable they are in the eyes of the females.

The most colorful bird in my yard is the male cardinal. It would be hard to find a more spectacular red bird in the Americas. The red comes from pigments, most of which are gleaned in the male’s diet. The redder the fruit, the redder the male cardinal. However, the brilliance of the redness is also genetic. Feed females red fruit day after day and they still remain pale in comparison to the average male.

Some of a bird’s color is attributable to what they eat. Pink flamingos eat shrimp that tend to have pinkish carotenoid pigments. If you feed a flamingo with a commercial mix that lacks those pigments, it will eventually become a very pale pink, even white. If you grind up male cardinal or pink flamingo feathers in blender, the resulting powder will still be reddish.

However, if you grind up the feathers of an indigo bunting, a sparrow-size species in which the males are almost solid blue as the name suggests, you get a brown powder. Why? The blue color is a matter of the scattering and re-radiation of impinging light. It is not from blue pigments, but is said to be structural rather than chemical. The male indigo bunting’s brilliant hue has little to do with its diet. The male goldfinch’s bright yellow plumage is both chemical and structural. If you feed him on yellow birdseed rich inriboflavins, he will become yellower. 

The bizarre and wonderful colors of male birds begs the question: Why are mammals so dull in aspect? The human is one of the few mammals that is somewhat colorful: His or her hair may be yellow, brown, black, or even orange, with many variations of each color. Native Americans and other groups enhanced their outer appearances with applied pigments and various attachments. Modern men and women wear colorful clothes, while the women often apply lipsticks, rouges, and other colorful coatings. They are the closest thing to birds in the mammalian group. What if humans were as uncolorful as most other mammals? The New York Times would not have a Style section twice a week; there would be no Glamour or Elle magazines.

Fish are considered to be the first vertebrates to evolve, beginning 450 million years ago when the first sharks and rays appeared. They are cartilaginous. Bony fishes followed. Sharks and rays are not colorful, suggesting that the first bony fish were likewise not colorful. But modern fish species are just as colorful as modern birds. And in the large majority of cases, the females are just as colorful as the males. Fish forms gave rise to the amphibians and early reptiles, the dinosaurs and therapsids, which in turn gave rise to the mammals, and then birds.

The early dinosaur line that produced Archeopteryx is thought to have given rise to the first birds, which were toothed and had claws on their wings. They glided before they developed active flight. There is a bird in the wet areas of central and coastal South America called the hoatzin that may be a throwback to those first birds. When born, the young have two claws on each wing that they can use in climbing from limb to limb.

When all of the earth’s land mass was gathered in one continent, Pangea, the first amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals occupied most of it. However, as the continents drifted apart, the mammals that evolved, say in Eurasia, did not have an easy time getting to other continents, while the fishes could swim to them and the birds could fly to them. Today, fishes are the most ubiquitous vertebrates, followed by birds. Fish are cold-blooded, or ectothermic, so the temperature of the water is not a big problem for them, while birds are warm-blooded, or homiothermic. They can avoid frigid conditions by flying away from them, thus the seeds of migration.

The more species of birds, the more chance for species to interbreed, unless characters developed that set them apart. The first character to keep one species from breeding with another was size, the second and third were colorful males and the sounds they made. Because they resembled each other in size, New World warblers evolved intricate color patterns and distinct songs to keep them from interbreeding.

Female birds pick their mates in various ways, but apparently, in most cases, by their songs and plumage.

It is easy to see why males are so colorful and sing different songs. But what about fish, when males and females are colorful and look alike? Coral reef fishes are the most colorful of all. With few exceptions, Caribbean species are more colorful than their Pacific counterparts. It is argued that this is because the waters of the Pacific at similar latitudes are more opaque. It is also argued that reef fishes are particularly colorful because of their colorful habitat. As the reefs around the world continue to degrade, will colors of the fish and invertebrates inhabiting them become duller? It remains to be seen.

Apparently other cues, like phero­mones, are used in breeding, and in many cases females are fertilized by more than one male in a mix of broadcasted spermatozoa. It has also been argued that fish are colorful because of their diets, but experimental feeding in which certain species got very colorful diets did not make them more colorful, as it does for flamingos. 

Primitive humans left diagrams and pictures of familiar beasts on the walls of their caves, while modern humans build large museums to house their artists’ works, which are multiform and three-dimensional as well as two-dimensional, some combining both graph­ics and sounds. Is the aesthetic sense that motivates both artists and museum visitors the sense that also makes us appreciate the colors of tropical fish and the colors and songs of birds? I would think so. Then I also must ask, are colors in fishes and butterflies, as well as colors and songs in birds, the beginning of the aesthetic sense that has become so highly developed now in modern men and women?

I wonder if the white-tailed deer that hears the mating song of the male bluebird defining its nearby territory or sees a male red-breasted grosbeak flit by is as impressed as we would be?

Ramit Tandon, a Columbia University graduate who left Wall Street for the pro tour recently, swept through the S.Y.S. Open squash tournament this past week, defeating a fellow Indian, Kush Kumar, a member of Trinity College’s national-championship team, 11-3, 11-2, 11-3 in Sunday’s final.

It was the first pro tournament for Tandon, who trains in New York City with Ramy Ashour, a three-time world champion. 

Kumar, a Trinity sophomore who has had to mix squash in with exams lately, said afterward that he was “nervous,” and had gone for winners too early, though Tandon, who moved effortlessly from the back wall to the front and from side to side, didn’t give his fellow countryman any room to breathe, mixing spanked rail shots with angled boasts just above the telltale, and repeatedly lifting what appeared to be ungettable dinks at the front wall into high crosscourt lobs that died in the back corners.

In all, Tandon, who is from Kolkata and captained and played number-one for Columbia, from which he graduated two years ago, dispatched six opponents at the Southampton Recreation Center’s Elmaleh-Stanton courts last week.

Smart Squash, for whom S.Y.S.’s resident pro, Mohamed Nabil, works, put up a $5,000 purse for the event. It was the first time Nabil had been a tournament director, and the first pro tourney for Tandon, who received $902. Kumar, who is ranked 162nd in the world at the moment, and who will try to move up into the top 100 in Australian summer tourneys, received $617.

 “I beat him in India’s selection trials in 2014, but he’s better now,” the 20-year-old Kumar said of the 24-year-old Tandon. 

  Indeed, Tandon, with his superb racket control and effortless movement, looked as if no one would be able to beat him Sunday.

 When it was observed afterward that he had made maybe one mistake the entire match, Tandon said, “Maybe a couple.”

  For his part, the 25-year-old, Egyptian-born Nabil, who is trying to spread the word here about what he rightly calls an “exhilarating sport,” was very pleased with the way the tournament, which included beginner and advanced amateur draws as well, had gone. “I hope we can have an even bigger and better one in the near future,” he said.

  Nabil, who is ranked 300th in the world at the moment, did himself proud as a player too, upsetting the top seed, Shahjahan Khan, in five games in the round of 16 — a match that took 85 minutes to play. Khan is the world’s 115th-ranked player. Nabil went on to lose in the quarterfinals to Tim Brownell, Harvard’s number-two, who is the U.S. Open champion — a match that took 93 minutes to play. As a result of his quarterfinal finish, he would earn 35 Professional Squash Association points, Nabil said in answer to a question.

The advanced amateur tournament was won by Cameron Burton, an 18-year-old Sag Harborite, who defeated Vinny Moore three games to one in the final. Mickey Begel-Clausen of Southampton won three straight from Sonny Kilfoyle in the beginners’ championship match.

One of the spectators, Jack Louchheim, a Pierson High School freshman who plays number-one on East Hampton High’s team, said, when asked what he thought of the indoor, four-walled game, “Squash is more instinctive — tennis is mentally harder. And squash is over sooner.”

Despite launching my boat for the season back on March 13, an overly aggressive early date, this spring’s copiously rainy and windy weather left very few opportunities to wet a line and finally put some fresh fish on the table. 

For two solid months, the boat sat idle. Last year’s supply of frozen fillets of blackfish, cod, and sea bass are long gone, save for a few vacuum-sealed packs of frozen bay scallops caught during one of my last trips in December from Northwest Harbor. Not a bad option for supper, mind you, but it was time to take advantage of the weather window and finally make that first trip of the season. It was time.

At dawn on Friday morning, there was the unmistakable and distinct smell of lilacs and early summer in the air that swirled over Sag Harbor Cove. Perfect. But, a flashback to my first fishing trip last year ran through my mind as a broken hydraulic steering hose aborted my long-anticipated outing no more than 40 feet from the dock. Definitely not the start anyone wants or expects for their maiden trip of the season. But thanks to dead-calm air and a quick tow back to my slip from an early-arriving mechanic at the marina, I was fortunate not to collide with any of those newly launched and freshly waxed boats whose owners are clearly in a much higher tax bracket than I. It could have been worse. Much worse. 

Engine started, warm, and everything in working order, a nice 30-minute cruise to the early season fluke grounds in Southold Bay on the western side of Shelter Island was in order. Better known as the Greenlawns, the fluke hot spot’s name is clearly defined by the lush and expansive green lawns spanning several acres shared by two majestic old Victorian houses. A lawn-cutter’s dream. 

Riding through the wake of the Shelter Island South Ferry boat Mashomack — fully loaded with cars and pickup trucks on their way for work over on the North Haven side — was a pleasant reminder for me to appreciate and savor my serene surroundings. Certainly a much better start to the day than my inaugural trip last season. 

Upon arrival, there were already about a half-dozen pleasure crafts on the grounds. Most were fluking, but the Viking Star, via a long, three-hour ride from Montauk, was getting ready to set anchor on a lump of rocks closer to shore to fish for porgies, which had been running up to found pounds in the area when the season opened on May 1. Before long, various party and charter boats from Orient, Greenport, and even Shinnecock showed up on the scene. It got rather crowded very quickly. 

With a nice outgoing tide, the drifting conditions were good, but the fluke had not set their alarms. Several drifts produced nothing but a few sea robins over the first two hours. The action was similar on the other boats. To make matters worse, the westerly wind increased dramatically in short order. Gusts to over 20 miles per hour picked up the speed of the drift and conditions quickly became a bit uncomfortable. 

Deciding to make one last drift, we quickly caught two short fluke on hooks baited with fresh squid strips. An encouraging sign. My colleague on board, Ray Sperling, a mechanic for the Hampton Jitney for nearly three decades, announced that he had another fish on. Not taking any line and with no visible bounce in the rod, this was something different. And then up came a very large, old chowder clam. But this was no ordinary clam that was snagged on the outside of its shell. Nope. This clam actually ingested the fluke hook and steadfastly refused to open up. The clam had clammed up.

But what was that other piece of aged monofilament sticking out from its shell? It clearly did not match the fresh, clear leader material attached to the fluke hook. Despite an earnest attempt to extract the hook from the overly stubborn clam, it was all for naught. Surgery would have to be performed. Finding an old clam knife inside the cabin, we eventually pried open the aged mollusk. Lo and behold, another surprise. A rusted porgy hook and rig was also lodged deep inside our hungry quahog. The clam was a repeat offender. 

Muttering several times that we had “never seen that before,” we regained our focus on fishing and shortly culled our first keeper fluke of the season, a nice 21-inch fish, before returning to port. There would be a fresh fish dinner after all, plus some freshly chopped clam to be added to Sunday’s linguine and clam sauce supper.    

In other areas, action has perked up on many fronts as angler participation strengthens. Striped bass activity in the bays continues to improve as water temperatures hover in the 62-to-64-degree range, warmer than usual for this time of the year by several degrees.

The local creeks and coves have a good supply of small striped bass. Larger bass, up to 35 pounds, have been caught at night in the South Ferry area. Once the sun is up, gator-size bluefish can be found aplenty, some of them pushing upward of 15 pounds. If you prefer them smaller, cocktail blues can be taken on plugs and swimmers from the shoreline at Long Beach in the early morning or evening.

“There has also been some good action on weakfish up to nine pounds at Robins Island,” added Ken Morse, purveyor of bait and tackle at the Tight Lines shop in Sag Harbor. “Fluke fishing has been okay, but not great. And porgy fishing has been a bit inconsistent compared to other seasons so far.” Morse also reported that it was a very quiet week on the ocean beaches, save for some blues and a few bass for casters at Shinnecock Inlet. 

Big porgies have invaded Cherry Harbor. Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett was anxious to report that platter-size porgies have checked into their traditional spring residence off the windmill. “Fishing has been fantastic the past few days with some of them pushing four pounds. Porgy rigs have been flying out of the shop.” Fresh clams and sandworms have been the ticket for instant success.  

Bennett noted that large bluefish up to 15 pounds have been roaming near the Gerard Drive shoreline in Springs, while on the opposite side, small bass can be picked inside Accabonac Harbor. He added that kingfish made a surprising early season arrival in Three Mile Harbor and that more blowfish are showing up in catches too. Bennett was also highly enthused about the freshwater angling taking place in Montauk’s Fort Pond — walleye up to six pounds and smallmouth bass fishing has been top-notch on a variety of baits and lures, including swimmers and earthworms. 

On the ocean beaches, he reported, action has been very consistent, with striped bass in the 24-to-28-inch range from Main Beach in East Hampton out to White Sands. Action was also productive in Montauk from Gurney’s out east to Ditch Plain. Many shorts, but a few keepers have been noted. 

Kathy Vegessi, wife of Capt. Michael Vegessi and the Lazy Bones’ shoreside support, described the recent fluke action on the north and south side as steady, with three fish over eight pounds taken over the first week of the season. “It’s been a pretty decent start so far with enough fish bending the rods,” she said. Vegessi said that more throwbacks are being seen, as the state raised the minimum size from 18 to 19 inches for 2017. Some bluefish have also been taken, plus a few black sea bass, which must be safely returned, as the season does not open until June 27. 

As if on cue, striped bass action showed a sharp upswing in Montauk, as well, with the warming waters. Capt. Michael Potts of the charter boat Blue Fin IV reported good action on Sunday for a variety of mixed-size fish up to 20 pounds on trolled parachutes in the local rips off the Point. Bluefish were also in the mix.