A month ago on a record hot Thursday, I attended a “poisonous plants” course conducted by Susan K. Pell, Ph.D., at the New York Botanical Garden. It was my first visit to that institution and one that turned out to be directly related to the vegetation in my Noyac yard.

    I had wondered for more than 20 years why many of the plant species have been consistently untouched by the deer that routinely visit the yards of my neighbors.

    It turns out that about two thirds of my plants are poisonous. Half of these are native to the South Fork, and half are exotic, mostly Eurasian in origin. One wonders if the deer in most cases already know which is which. In at least a few cases they learn. As spring progresses and this and that poisonous plant develop side by side with the non-poisonous ones, the deer will experiment. One day they will take the tops off many native spotted jewel-weed or touch-me-not, Impatiens capsensis, which is lush and succulent and on the face of it looks as if it would provide a good meal to any herbivore that happens by. Thereafter, they will invariably leave them be.

    They never try the vinca, or periwinkle, an exotic ground-hugger that covers half the front yard. Nor will they nibble on the common import lily-of-the-valley, which covers the other half. The latter contain glycosides that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, and more, similar to the glycosides found in the ornamental foxglove, which contains digitalis, a chemical used medicinally in the past to treat irregular heart rhythms or as a diuretic.

    The deer stay away from pokeweed, a foreigner from the tropics, all of the parts of which are poisonous in mature plants, but not to catbirds, robins, and thrushes, which come by in late summer and early fall to reap the purple berries. They also leave the poison ivy alone (I wish they wouldn’t), and pay no attention to the bittersweet or daffodils. You may have noticed where daffodils spring up or are planted on shoulders of local roads, they always seem to bloom without interference from the deer, even though, as on Stephen Hand’s Path, they graze the grasses and forbs growing in between them.

    I have no tomato plants, which deer seem to leave alone where they are planted widely in South Fork farm and garden plots, but I do have other members of the tobacco genus Solanum, just about all of which are toxic if ingested. The deer don’t touch the two poisonous nightshades that inveigle their way between and overtop many of my native wildflowers every year. Several insects prey on the Solanum species, while almost all mammals, except perhaps for Homo sapiens, steer clear of them.

    I don’t think my several varieties of asters and goldenrods are poisonous, but they do not score high on the lists of preferred deer foods. One native plant which the deer totally avoid, to the degree that it has totally taken over my back yard, is white snakeroot, Ageratina altissima, the foliage of which contains tremetol, which makes cow milk and steer meat poisonous once ingested. On the other hand, deer like to browse the fresh spring growth at the tips of the yew branches. Yews contain taxane, which causes a bunch of maladies when ingested, but also contain taxol, a chemical that has been used to treat certain cancers in humans. Are the yew-eating deer defending themselves from developing cancers or are their metabolic systems immune to the poison?

    Queen Anne’s lace, Daucus carota, a foreigner which is common throughout our area, is quite poisonous when eaten, I was surprised to discover. After all, it is the ancestor of the edible carrot. If you’ve driven along the Sunrise Highway between Westhampton and Southampton Village lately, you will see waves and waves of three-foot tall Queen Anne’s lace in full bloom. Deer abound on the shoulders of the Sunrise, but apparently they’ve come to realize that Queen Anne’s lace will give them a tummy ache.

    The orange milkweed, or butterfly weed, common milkweed, and dogbane in and around my yard are also eschewed by the deer. They contain the poisons that make the monarch butterfly, whose larvae feed on them, distasteful to almost all would-be predators.

    Deer don’t eat my mountain laurel, hollies, or lady ferns, all of which contain toxins. I have other native and non-native plants in my yard. But one thing has become quite clear over the 31 years I’ve resided at this address: The plants that are outright noxious and poisonous to deer passers-by are thriving. It’s all I can do to keep them at bay. In the bigger picture, one can imagine a day in the distant future when only poisonous plants and those with thorns thrive and almost all of the edible ones, except on farms and botanical gardens, will have perished. If only we could train deer to eat phragmites. Wouldn’t that be grand?

   Scott Faulkner said aboard his lovingly restored 1939 Elco cabin cruiser at Three Mile Marina the other day that when he first came across the Mary Lloyd it was shrouded by canvas in Jim Bennett’s storage and maintenance yard next to the Springs School.

    “I had always seen the bow sticking out — it looked to me like an interesting package under the tree that you wanted to open but couldn’t.”

    Bennett had not long before sold him a 28-foot double-ended 1944 Navy lifeboat, originally meant to be rowed, to which a little deck house and an inboard diesel engine had been added. “It was a very sweet little boat,” said the well-traveled former commercial diver, magazine photographer, and parascending instructor (he’s been a pilot since he was 19). “It was named Patience, which was apt, for it could only do seven knots.”

    The veiled Elco (standing for the Electric Launch Company of Bayonne, N.J.) — originally named Blue Skies, but which Faulkner renamed after his mother — had been left at the Bennett yard by an estate to settle an outstanding storage bill, he said, a transaction rather common in the boat world.

    “I remember the day in 1992 I was told I could look at it — the carrot had been dangled — squirming up through the canvas draped over the stern and peering in. It was,” he said, brightening, “like discovering a long-lost love, something preordained! I was instantly brought back to 1939, to the days when they made things beautifully. I thought, ‘This baby’s got class!’ Of course I didn’t have the money, and so I went to the bank and got a cash advance on my credit card and bought it.”

    An affection for boats had always been with him, he said in reply to a question. “I had 40 models in my room . . . square riggers, schooners . . . I loved the beauty of sailboats, it’s just that I never found myself owning one, it was always motorboats.”

    And now, with the restored Mary Lloyd, he’s got the best of both worlds — much more comfort than a 30-foot sailboat would afford and the lines, white oak framing, cedar planking, and mahogany trim of the Great Gatsby era.

    Moreover, “people pay how many millions for this view,” he said as a visitor and he sat in the shade of the Mary Lloyd’s ample salon deck at Three Mile Marina the other morning, looking out across Three Mile Harbor as a turtle popped up its head and a swan glided by. “A few of us are lucky enough to have it for a song. . . . These waterways and tranquil bays around here are some of the most beautiful in the world.”

    “And there’s so much landfall . . . Connecticut, Rhode Island, the North Fork, Block Island, Fishers Island. . . . We’ve gone from Manhattan to Nantucket and to all points in between, but this wasn’t meant for blue water sailing. It’s a lake, bay, and river boat.”

    Luckily, his English-born wife, Sara, likes living on a boat too. They met in 1997 at a party on an updated Narrows boat of the kind that plied England’s canals in the 1800s. He was at the time based in London and traveling the world as a magazine photographer. “It wasn’t until two years later, however, that we began going out. I was always enchanted, but never quite able to land the fish.”

    “We were married right here in Coecles Harbor,” she said one recent bright weekend afternoon during which the Faulkners, with their children, 9-year-old Mali and 6-year-old Frank, took a few others out to celebrate Ed Gifford’s 51st birthday.

    “We weren’t anchored,” said her husband, who is licensed to marry people himself nowadays. “I turned the key off. Justice Hannabury, who has since died, said it would only take a couple of minutes. We had six or seven aboard — everyone else was at the Ram’s Head dock nearby. We had a party afterward at the Chequit.”

    This is the first year that the Faulkners have offered charters, figuring that the Mary Lloyd might as well pay for itself. He has a Coast Guard-certified “six-pack” captain’s license that permits up to a half-dozen guests. Half-day, full-day, sunset (“the most beautiful to be seen on the East End”), or wedding cruises are being offered. “Catering for any occasion, formal or informal, can be arranged,” their Web site, marylloydcharters.com, says.

   The big striped bass are here. Star Island Yacht Club has reported that three bass over 50 pounds were weighed in during the past week.

    Scott Leonard, who runs the tackle section of the Yacht Club’s store, caught a 60.4-pounder on June 26. On Friday, Mike Ajello, fishing aboard the Susan A, reeled up a bass weighing 56.3 pounds, and on Sunday Anthony Vaccaro caught a 50.7-pound bass.

    Scott Leonard said all the big bass were caught drifting live bunker deep in the rip currents off Montauk Point. The live bunker were brought to the bottom via a “banana drail,” a banana-shape lead weight with hook attached.

    “They’re eating everything,” Leonard said of the bass, but concentrating on bunker. “There was a shot of them on the north side all last week, and in front of the Lighthouse,” Leonard said of the bunker schools. “The bass have been staying on the bunker coming down from the west.”

    Chris Miller of the West Lake Marina said the marina’s scales had been receiving the same weighty fish. On Sunday, Larry Chancey was fishing aboard his brother’s Chancey Charter boat and landed a 57.15-pound bass. And again on Sunday, Rick Gulia, aboard the Perfect Catch charter boat, came back with a 58-pounder. Both fish were caught live-lining eels.

    Peter Correale, who hunts bass with a spear gun, shot a 48-pound bass on Sunday, Miller reported. And, the aim of Kevin Cordella, another spear fisherman, was true enough to bag a 48-pounder. Miller mentioned in passing that the marina now features a touch tank for kids to get acquainted with sea creatures. Sharks not included.

    The shark tag tournament held from the Montauk Marine Basin last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the marina’s 42nd, ended with the largest shark caught on the Instigator boat, a 255-pound thresher. The first-place mako weighed 249 pounds and was angled aboard the Canyon Lady. The biggest blue shark weighed 252 pounds. The boat was the Fish N Chips.

    The marine basin encourages the tagging of sharks not considered big enough to be contenders. Tagged sharks become part of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s shark research program.

    The Marine Basin has also pioneered the use of circle hooks, a type that lodge in a fish’s jaw rather than farther down the alimentary canal. Released fish tend to survive after being caught with circle hooks.

    Unfortunately for the Montauk SurfMasters spring shootout tournament that ended on Saturday, the big bass did not come within casting distance. Mike Coppola’s winning bass weighed in at 28.8 pounds. Rich Reilly took second with a 26-pound striper, and Mary Ellen Kane was on the board with a 12.8-pound bass for the third-place spot.

    Ken Morse at the Tight Lines shop in Sag Harbor reports good fluke activity in Sag Harbor as well as a surprising number of weakfish. The downside, he said, was that the state is allowing only one keeper tiderunner per day measuring 16 inches or longer. 

    With warmer water temperatures, striped bass have moved east out of the Peconics with the bunker schools, just as Scott Leonard had reported in Montauk. Big bass are also being found around Plum Gut and the Race. Morse confirmed the experience of anglers farther to the east — that being pulling up porgies “bigger than I’ve ever seen in the Peconics, fish between 16 and 19 inches.”

    Morse recommended getting to the waters around Gardiner’s Island early before weekend boat traffic puts the porgies down. He said there was a good chance you would find big bass and huge bluefish chowing down on bunker there. Tight Lines carries live eels, worms, and live green crabs later in the year for blackfish.

   I’ve never heard anyone utter anything nasty about butterflies. About moths, yes, but not butterflies. In just about every other animal group, particularly within the many insect families, there are hordes of species — bedbugs, mosquitoes, yellow jackets, termites, carpenter ants, deer flies, weevils, locusts, what have you — that have been called every curse word in the book. But butterflies have been spared. Why?

    For one thing, they are all nectar eaters. They don’t bite us or other creatures. They don’t infest our houses, don’t get in our hair, don’t splatter against our windshields, and don’t spread human diseases.

    Or is it because they’re just too damn beautiful, too damn colorful, such graceful fliers? The fact that they are proficient pollinators may be a much more subtle reason for our love of them. Take the painted lady, for one. A human painted lady is generally held in low esteem, not so for the one that flits over our gardens flying from flower to flower. I can’t find a single pejoratively named butterfly in the guidebooks. Even the caterpillar that pupates into the painted lady butterfly is exquisitely patterned in yellow bands, between which bright red and white spots mingle and meander from head to tail.

    In fact, early on many caterpillars were given different scientific names than the butterflies they became because their colorations were so striking. Only when the lepidopterist followed a given caterpillar through metamorphosis into adulthood did problems with differing nomenclatures clear up. Butterfly larvae, even though they may be found eating some of our most precious plants, do not have the bad reputations that many moth larvae have earned. One need merely mention gypsy moths or inchworms in some quarters to produce scowls on those within earshot.

    Even grade school kids know the names of many butterflies, but very few moths. They can tell a tiger swallowtail from a monarch, a sulphur from a cabbage white. Butterflies have a way of attracting one’s attention, and once you’ve seen an exotic looking one the image sticks in the mind.

    I live in a little, quite commonplace house in Noyac with a very small yard. Yet, this summer I have had a regal fritillary, a quite rare butterfly and an extremely aesthetically pleasing one, dropping in every other day. Is it because I have some violets, the host species for their caterpillars? I only see one at a time so chances are slim that there’s a reproductive pair lurking in the shadows.

    Butterflies can be few and far between. You almost never see bunches of hem. The most common ones on the South Fork, except when migrating monarchs are passing through, are the cabbage whites. They are one of the few invasive butterflies, as they are interlopers from Eurasia and, like their vernacular name, produce larvae that feed on members of the brassicas or mustard family. During this millennium they have become more and more common along the edges of many local roads, perhaps because the equally invasive Eurasian garlic mustards have carpeted many of those roads’ shoulders in the same space of time.

    There are “butterfly years,” certain years when this or that butterfly species is commonly seen. In late May and early June there were an awful lot of red admiral butterflies around. Many pairs were mating across Barcelona, for example. Their larvae feed on nettles, false nettles, and hops, the last two of which are found here and there on the South Fork. Chris Roberts tells about the time some 25 years ago when he was sailing on Gardiner’s Bay and red admirals were flying across in droves. That must have been a red admiral butterfly year.

    The first butterflies to emerge each spring are the ones that overwinter in leaf humus, the mourning cloaks. They come out as early as mid-March in some years. They are large and obvious and the only butterflies seen when they first appear. Their wings are dark with yellow trailing edges and blue spots between the dark and the yellow.

    Tropical butterflies are even larger and more colorful, but ours don’t have to play second fiddle to them. Why is one group of the lepidopteran family so gaudy and bright, while the other group, the moths, are comparatively drab? It’s probably because butterflies are most active during daylight hours, when colors and bizarre patterns can be seen from a great distance, while moths are mostly nocturnal.

    But bright and gaudy colorations can be protective as well. Think about the many species of coral reef fishes and their dazzling colors and patterns. Some reason that it is precisely these colorations that protect them from the likes of groupers, snappers, and barracudas. They are so obvious that they fake out the would-be predators, dashing away before the bigger fish can draw their guns from their holsters.

    We know that the bright colorations of some butterflies protect them from predator birds. Monarch larvae feed on milkweeds, the sap of which can be toxic. They store the poisons up and they are incorporated in the adults during metamorphosis. The bird or toad that bites into the monarch gets a toxic hit, as it were, enough to remind either not to do it again should a similar opportunity arise in the future.

    The wobbly flight that butterflies are famous for also gets them out of many predatory situations. It’s hard to home in on something flying through the air bobbing up and down, turning quickly this way or that. Whether it’s due to its color or wobbly flight, the butterfly outsmarts the predator more times than not.

    Butterflies are generally much scarcer than birds and moths. But it only takes one or two to light up one’s day. As summer winds down and fall approaches, how many of us turn our attention to the migratory flight of the monarchs? It’s been a good year for milkweed; maybe it will be good for monarchs as well. Can you imagine? Crossing Long Island Sound and flying all the way from Canada to the middle of Mexico, then rendezvousing en masse on a special mountain there? Nature is full of such near-miraculous goings-on. Butterflies play leading roles in many of them.

    In the meantime, visit the Long Island Aquarium in Riverhead, and you’ll be treated to a spectacular display of both variegated tropical fish and equally variegated butterflies flitting about above them. It’s a must!

    The sloop Leilani ventured east from Montauk Harbor early in the afternoon on Sunday, arriving in the cove off Oyster Pond at dead high tide. White clouds of screaming terns hovered and dived over schools of fish.

    It’s not practical, of course, but fishing under sail is at once a peaceful (a relative term) and an exciting way to go, especially trolling quietly through schools of feeding fish. Light-tackle and fly-fishing boaters often make the mistake of charging up to a school. Engine noise and the racket caused by anxious anglers screaming and fumbling for their gear usually drive the fish down.

    By contrast, a sailboat can ghost up to a school, the equivalent of wearing soft leather moccasins while stalking deer. It’s the hookups that can be a challenge. With a big fish on, in any wind over five knots the boat must be rounded up into the wind. Best to have an experienced mate. Paul Forsberg Sr. has been known to troll for tuna far offshore on the ketch-rigged Viking Freedom. He calls the experience “the sound of silence.”

    Word is, the Freedom will remain down south this summer, but Forsberg, admiral of Montauk’s Viking Fleet of party boats and the Block Island Ferry, will be leaving Florida on Aug. 1 to bring the Fleet’s new Viking Fivestar, a luxury head boat, to Montauk.

    The upscale charter boat is licensed to carry 44 passengers (for an occasional sunset cruise), but when fishing, it will carry only 12, the number of comfortable berths on board. The Fivestar is designed for three to four-day fishing trips offshore. The 65-foot-long vessel, with a 20-foot beam, has an 8,000-pound fish hold for tuna and deepwater tilefish fishing. 

    “When you’re out in the canyon, you want a decent boat under you,” Forsberg said from his base in Florida on Monday.

    Freddy Shay, a mate with the Viking Fleet, was buying groceries at the Montauk I.G.A. the other day and at the checkout counter reported excellent fluking of late.

    Viking runs two half-day trips per day from 8 a.m. until noon and 1 to 5 p.m.  There is also a Hungry Man trip that sets out Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays after striped bass, black sea bass, porgies, just about anything with fins.

    On Sunday, the crew of the Leilani realized the schools the terns were pestering held bunker, a species too bony and oily for table fare, and not likely to respond to a Kastmaster lure. They are likely to attract striped bass, as they have been doing during the week.

    For this reason, the sloop began trolling a small bucktail heavy enough to sweep below the bunker where feeding bass tend to lurk. Unfortunately, no one informed the bass of the ideal sail-trolling setup.

    Boaters continue to find the bass, with live bunker bait, chunked bunker, and live eels doing the trick. West Lake Marina reported that Ed Shaw on the October Fest has been consistently catching and releasing big bass — 49 pounds is a big bass — using live eels at night. Early last week John Steadman on the Main Squeeze brought back a 50.75-pound bass he attracted with chunks of oily bunker.

    The marina is home to the boat Perfect Catch. Captain Rick Gullia found one at the Great Eastern spot on July 2 using live eels. The bass weighed 58 pounds.

    West Lake is also home to Bryan Fromm’s Flying Dutchman. Fromm likes the offshore canyons. During a July 2 trip he caught three bigeye tuna up to 175 pounds, as well as a yellowfin weighing between 40 and 50 pounds. Earlier, the Dutchman found another bigeye that weighed in at 150 pounds.

    Meanwhile, surfcasting has not been good. Is it the warm water or bunker schools that have kept striped bass beyond casting? Perhaps a combination of the two, or a mystery something. In any case experienced casters have about given up, according to Fred Kalkstein, an organizer of the Montauk SurfMasters tournaments.

    Harvey Bennett of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett reported stripers being caught along the ocean beach in Amagansett, but in the teen sizes. Bennett reports keeper fluke are being caught off Napeague on the bay side, “12-inch porgies just about anywhere and deer in all yards eating everything.” 

   In many respects, sound and hearing in nature are just as important as sight. In those species that are more nocturnal than diurnal, sounds and the ability to hear, and differentiate, them is crucial to their survival. Whether an animal species is active in the day or at night, there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that it perceives sound waves or senses vibrations, another form of sound.

    There is still much to be explained about the origin of a special configuration of sounds — music — in humans. There are ancient instruments fashioned from bones, reeds, or other matter that date back to the very dawn of Homo sapiens. Drumming may be the oldest form of human music. Some primates drum — the gorilla beating his chest is a good example — but none of the contemporary primates other than humans sing, though several howl. Howling may have given rise to the first song.

    Bird song is older than human song and in many respects is as tuneful and melodic as human song. The nightingale of Eurasia is a fabled singer. Here in the Northeast we have some fabulous bird songs, as well. Take the hermit thrush, for one. Its song, an organ-like spiral of ascending notes, is considered to be among the most lovely of all native bird utterings. Only 20 years ago, one could still hear them just before dusk singing in East Hampton’s Northwest, especially in the Grace Estate.

    There is a catbird in my yard that literally sings for its supper. It whines and moans its atonal string of rarely repeated notes, reminding me to put the blueberries out on the patio table each day. I do, and he stops singing and starts absconding with them one by one until, in a matter of minutes, they are gone.

    All birds make different sounds. They use their larynx and their pneumatic system of air tubes. Woodpeckers do the same, but they also telegraph their messages — “this is my territory, keep out” — by rapidly drumming on a resonant surface such as a hollow tree or the metal flue pipe from a furnace.

    Almost all mammals utter sounds, but, save for humans, the sounds they make are short in duration and not at all musical. Canines howl, felines growl, meow, or purr, ungulates moo, and so on. The songs of whales are musical, at least to some ears.

    Some reptiles, such as turtles and snakes, hiss, while some, like the geckos, chatter, but most are silent. The crocodile bellows, baby crocs squeal, rattlesnakes make sounds with their rattles. Most reptiles are active during the day, but amphibians — frogs, toads, salamanders, and the like — are more likely to be active at dusk and at night than during the day. Salamanders are largely quiet, but the frogs and their allies are quite vociferous, especially when it’s dark.

    Some frog songs, such as the soft monotonic tremolos of the gray tree frog, are quite pleasing to the human ear. On the other hand, one would hardly say that the very low “jug-o-rums” of the night-calling bullfrog or the banjo twangs of the green frog are melodious. Toads buzz and wheeze, frogs have a variety of calls, but the amphibious call that stirs my cockles is the one uttered only after a prolonged rainstorm. Years can go by without hearing it.

    Such is the song that Barbara Adams played for me over the phone using her cellphone’s recorder and playback function: the nasal cawings of a thousand ravens or crows, eerie and provocative. Ravens and crows don’t call at night. Spadefoot toads do, but only after very heavy rains.

    Yes, she had recorded the calls of the eastern spadefoot toad, one of the rarest of our native amphibians and the one with the loudest call, the one that stays underground for years, and only comes out to breed in temporary pondings created by soaking rains, such as the three to five-inch one that accompanied Tropical Storm Andrea as it swept through on Friday of last week. Accompanied by the high chirpings of spring peepers, spadefoots were calling throughout the weekend from the dunes along Bluff Road in Amagansett and on Napeague, near where the editor of this newspaper resides.

    After mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, comes the most primitive vertebrate group of all, the fishes. Many fish make sounds and a few even “sing,” that is change notes during their delivery. One of them, the oyster toadfish, utters the famous “boat-whistle” song, which is so loud that it can be heard above the water’s surface by those with acute hearing. It’s mostly a night singer like the amphibians and it used to be quite common in local estuarine waters. It’s a favorite gourmet item on some Asian restaurant menus and thus has become quite scarce locally in the new millennium.

    A close cousin, the “midshipman” male of California coastal waters, utters a monotonic drone that can last for an hour or more without a pause. The male uses his song to attract a female to his lair in the rocks, and when she comes, he is so pleased to see her that he lights up, turning on all of his photophores in a spectacular display of light and sound leading to courtship, ovulation, and fertilization. The houseboat community in San Francisco Bay at Sausalito is kept awake at night by the low-pitched droning. At the same time, the fish’s arrival is celebrated each spring with a special day, thus its new common name, the “California singing fish,” has replaced the former one.

    One more night song is of note these days, that of the 17-year cicada adult. Staten Islanders are already lying awake at night listening, or trying not to listen. We will be spared, if that’s your desire, but in another month keep your ears open for the all-night chorus provided by the snowy tree cricket. Owing to the recent heavy rains and the lushness of the foliage, it should be deafening.

   The sloop Leilani ventured west out of Montauk Harbor on Sunday to the waters off Eastern Plains Point on Gardiner’s Island in search of the dinner plate-size porgies said to lurk in the area.

    A two-hook porgy rig, clam baits, bucket, fillet knife, cutting board — all the ingredients for a successful venture were on board. Leilani tacked into a weak west wind and a stronger outgoing tide — slow going.

    After an hour of motor sailing, her anchor was dropped at a spot just south of the point in about 40 feet of water, very slow-moving water. In fact, the boat had arrived just in time for slack tide. For fish, slack tide is like a submarine siesta.

    The predator-prey equation has resulted over millions of years in painting the underside of midwater species in light colors to allow them to melt into the lighted background of the surface to be less visible to predators swimming below. For the same reason, sharks, for instance, have darker dorsal sides that fade into the bottom murk, the better to hide from predators swimming above looking down.

    The hunting strategy of many species involves hanging in a protected spot and waiting for a tidal current to bring the food to them. It’s a classic bushwhack approach. Pick a place, a depression or an outcropping of rock or coral, and let the tide bring your dinner in the form of smaller fish, especially those that ride the tide, not strong enough to swim against it.

    A fish figures, why bother feeding if I have to swim after my food? I’ll just relax until the tide turns. An angler who knows this will do the same. Unfortunately, the sky on Sunday afternoon began to take on a bruised appearance. Time to hoist the anchor and skedaddle on a broad reach in the breeze that had stiffened to 17 knots just as the tide turned.

    David Blinken, a fly-fishing guide, was working a big school of bluefish off Gardiner’s Island on Monday. By cellphone he said his party was catching blues in the one-to-five-pound range with surface flies, poppers, with floating line on six-weight rods. “For the kind of sight fishing I do, I like when the tide is lowest, just before the ebb ends and just after the flow begins. Last week it was spectacular on either side of slack tide. My preference is for low water, better for concentrating fish and bait.”

    Chris Miller at the West Lake Marina in Montauk said the slowest tides of the month were about over. “The bite should start to increase. Fish are opportunists. Tide makes the bait congregate. Striped bass are very impressive. They can catch a porgy, and porgies are fast,” he said, but prefer not to expend the energy when the water is not moving.

    “They do feed at night when the tide is weak,” Miller said. But this could be because they have a stealth advantage in the dark, he suggested.

    The exceptional fluke fishing at the spot off Montauk known as Frisbees slowed in recent days, probably the result of a bluefish invasion scaring the prey away, Miller reported. West Lake has also been seeing boats returning from Block and Atlantis Canyons with bigeye and yellowfin tuna. Mahimahi have been taking trolled lures and should be coming closer to the beach in the warmer-than-usual ocean water.

   There are a lot of things I would like to see for the first time before I give up the ghost. I have a list of them — five pages long — that I keep adding to. On occasion Saint Serendipity takes me to one not on my list.

    Such was the case last Friday when I ended up with four botanists at the Shinnecock Indian Reservation south of Hill Street in Southampton. We were to work with a trio of Shinnecock women interested in the reservation’s flora. Two of us, Vicki Bustamante and I, who didn’t know quite where we were all going to meet, ended up at the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum sequestered between seven or eight smoke shops at the edge of the highway.

    Quite a stroke of good luck. I’ve been to a lot of museums, including some Amerindian ones in my 78 years, not all of which were situated in the United States. If I wrote them all down it would take several pages, so I won’t. We have several right here on the South Fork. However, the one that Vicki and I happened to bump into by chance was one of the top five in my eyes, an exquisite collection of Indian artifacts, taxidermied animals, wampum shells, dioramic paintings, costumes, and other items that, to be truthful, boggled my mind. Here it was, right under my nose since 2001, and I didn’t know it existed.

    We were in luck that day, as Elizabeth Haile, one of the museum’s board members, and member with me of the board of the Peconic Sustainability Institute, happened to be on hand to show us around. The museum’s curator and originator, David Martine, was not in, but Elizabeth did a fine job. Doesn’t it cost more than $10 to attend a movie at a local movie house where you might spend a little more than an hour watching car chases and gunfights? It costs a measly $5, one Abe as it were, to spend hours and hours here finding out what our bona fide natives and their culture was, is, and will be like.

    The building is log cabin-like and built in the tradition of early American buildings and ships, timbers put together with dowels. It was first constructed by Native Americans on a reservation in upstate New York, Oneonta, it seems, from local white pine, shaved of bark and fitted together with pegs. Then, it was deconstructed by knocking out the pegs, packaged, shipped to its present site, then resurrected with the same care to detail, structural engineering, and aesthetics.

    Eleven years later it is a precursor to a model Shinnecock village, complete with wickiups, palisade fences, tribal council and meeting house, gardens and lots more, which are to begin construction soon behind the museum. Ironically, perhaps, the Shinnecock village will rise at the same time that the Stony Brook Southampton site nearby — which as Southampton College was an integral part of the Long Island University system for more than 40 years — is mostly sinking.

    Later, the four visiting botanists were led on a tour by three Shinnecock women through part of the reservation near where it borders Shinnecock Bay. I had visited the reservation for the first time at least 20 years earlier with Sara Davison, Bill Miller, and the Nature Conservancy to erect an osprey nest pole. I was happy to learn that ospreys have done quite well there since then.

    During the small motorcade to the tour spot, I thought I was back in the little berg across the Peconics where I grew up, Mattituck (meaning Long Creek in Algonkian). It was situated between two smaller bergs, Aquebogue and Cutchogue (also Algonkian). Lots of trees and fields, almost no litter, modest, well-kept houses, rural, rural, rural, and more rural. And no sign of the hustle and bustle that so stridently marks the non-Indian Hamptons culture beyond the borders of the reservation, one that begins at the east end of the Shinnecock Canal bridge and ends at the Montauk Lighthouse. Nowhere else on Long Island, I thought to myself, could be as pastoral and peaceful.

    We managed to identify a lot of wild plants — herbs, grasses, vines, trees, and shrubs — in an area less than an acre in size. Some were quite rare, like the dwarf chestnut oak, Quercus prinoides, and a few of them I had yet to observe on the remainder of the South Fork. Oh, yes, the Shinnecocks have not been spared the inroads made by phragmites, mile-a-minute weed, mugwort, and other invasives, but, except for the phragmites, they didn’t seem as common here as outside the reservation.

    All in all, our hosts were very cordial, curious, and fun to work with and be around. They were teaching us as much about nature’s gifts as we believed we were teaching them. Surely, the place was replete with such. Driving out of the reservation the last 100 feet, we passed some newly flowering orange butterfly weed in full bloom, a lovely farewell to a wonderful day.

    Two days later I was extolling the wonders of the reservation and magnificence of the museum to Lois Markle of Hither Hills in Montauk. “You mean you’ve never gone to the museum before?” she asked. “I go there whenever I can!” I felt a bit embarrassed and subsequently moved it to the top of my list.

   The Coast Guard Auxiliary Flotilla 18-02 is offering a boating safety course at the American Legion Hall on Bay Street in Sag Harbor on two Saturdays — Aug. 4 and Aug. 11.

   Both classes are required in order to earn a New York boating certificate. The cost is $50. Interested boaters can register and ask questions by e-mailing cgaux­[email protected] or calling Tish at 516-818-0347.

    While the summer cornucopia of fish continues to spill forth with an abundance found nowhere else on the coast, anglers have been heard to moan about how hard it’s been to find small porgies to use for bass bait. “They’re all the size of hubcaps,” one angler complained.

    It’s true. Porgies, otherwise known as scup, seem to be getting larger and larger, as though their genetic material has been contaminated Godzilla-like by atomic radiation.

    Tom Jordan at the Gone Fishing Marina was asked why the scup are so big. Simple, he said. “It’s a burgeoning population. They’ve been on the rebound for the past 10 years. More fish means more survive to grow bigger.” The old supply-and-demand downside for commercial porgy fishermen is, of course, the price. Fewer fish, higher price. More fish, lower price.

    Depending on whom you talk to and when, fluke fishing is either great or slow, bass fishing is so-so or fantastic. Jordan echoed reports of big striped bass being caught in the rip currents around Montauk Point. Gone Fishing Marina weighed in one 50-pound bass during the week, one over 50, and a number of bass in the 40-pound range. The big bass are falling to live porgies and live eels.

    As for fluke, Kathy Vegessi, the Lazy Bones party boat’s first shoreside mate, said on Monday that the struggle for our favorite flat fish last week turned into a Monday morning trip that landed 14 keepers over 19.5 inches long. Vegessi also reported “tons of sea bass.” Fifteen of the delicious eating fish (over 13 inches long) can be caught and kept each day.

    This summer the Flying Point Surf School is offering the only fishing camp in the Hamptons. Shane Dyckman is the founder of the camp, which seeks to solve what’s been called the “nature deficit” suffered by growing numbers of kids by getting them off the sofa and onto a boat.

    The camp offers instruction in basic spin-casting and fly-fishing equipment, fish ecology, and responsible, conservation-minded angling. More information can be obtained by going to flyingpointsurfschool.com, or by contacting D. Ava Locks at [email protected].  

    The classes will probably not include a tutorial on chumming, but there will be plenty of that on Friday, Aug. 3, and Aug. 4 during the 20th annual mako/thresher shark tournament held from the Star Island Yacht Club. The captains meeting is scheduled for next Thursday night starting at 7:30. Boats can be entered up until the night of the captains meeting. The entry fee is $600 per boat.

    On Friday, Capt. Paul Forsberg, owner of Montauk’s Viking Fleet of party boats, addressed the Congressional Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affiairs in Washington, D.C.

    Captain Forsberg asked Congress to amend the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act to allow recreational fishing for striped bass in the area between Montauk and Block Island known as the Block Island Sound transit zone.

    Charts showing the location of the zone are available at most Montauk marinas. Not everyone is in favor of opening the zone to bass fishing as only larger party boats have the size to hang out there, especially at night. Nor does the proposed amendment address whether market fishermen would get the right to fish in the zone. It is now off limits to both sport and commercial fishermen.