Botany And Birding

The East Hampton Trails Preservation Society has winter botany on the agenda for Saturday at 3 p.m. Mike Bottini will lead a hike and identify the trees, shrubs, and grasses of the Stony Hill forest on the northwest side of Amagansett. The event is co-sponsored by the Group for the South Fork. Hikers are asked to meet on Red Dirt Road, about 200 yards east of the intersection with Accabonac Road.

On Sunday, the Group plans to bring hikers to a variety of locations on the East End to view sea birds, including scoters, common eiders, gannets, purple sandpipers, cormorants, and tundra swans. Steve Biasetti will lead the pack. Those interested have been asked to contact the Group at its Bridgehampton offices for time and place.

On Wednesday beginning at 10 a.m., the Trails Society's Richard Lupoletti is scheduled to lead a hike through the stately beech trees and American holly of the Point Woods forest of Montauk State Park. He suggests that hikers dress warmly and meet at the road to Camp Hero off Montauk Highway, one mile east of Deep Hollow Ranch.

Randy Tate, the Nature Conservancy's new director of Stewardship Operations, is scheduled to lead a hike along the beach between Shinnecock Bay and the ocean in search of sea birds on Saturday beginning at 9 a.m. Hikers have been asked to contact the East Hampton office of the conservancy for registration and directions.

Sea birds will also be the focus of a cruise on Saturday from Greenport, sponsored by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Service. John Turner, a naturalist and educator, will guide birders aboard the 100-foot Sunbeam Express on a four-hour sail in Gardiner's Bay and Block Island Sound. The Express will sail at 10 a.m. and return at 2 p.m.

Eider, scoters, bufflehead, mergansers, gannets, and alcids are in the area, as well as the occasional harbor seal. The cost is $30 for adults and $15 for children 12 and under. Advance registration and payment are required by calling the Extension Service's marine center in Southold.