Outdoors

Nature has many survival tricks up its sleeve when it comes to the possibility of being eaten. `We all know how the monarch butterfly is able to escape predation and fly 100 miles or more in a day during its annual migration without suffering a single molestation.

Summer is not over yet. In fact, the next few weeks may be among the best of the year for getting out on the water in small paddle craft like canoes, kayaks, and stand-up paddleboards. But storms and high winds can quickly turn a fun excursion into a dangerous situation, separating paddlers from their craft.

When boating or sailing, there are times as the season moves along that doing the same thing over and over becomes downright boring. The same is true for the pursuit of fish. I simply get burned out when chasing the same species day after day.

The recent to-do about Cartwright Island raises some interesting questions. We are sometimes prone to think of the present as the past, East Hampton today has always been, Southampton has always been, Lake Montauk has always been the way it is, etc., etc., etc. But in fact things, including our local landmasses and their surrounding waters, are fluxing every minute, during the day when we can see the change and at night when most of us are sleeping. So it is with the contours of the South Fork’s north and south coastlines.

Hands down, dawn is my favorite part of the day. No matter the season, I love to get up early and take it all in.

On Saturday the rains came, but it didn’t spoil the first ever release of bobwhites in the hamlet of Montauk by the Third House Nature Center group. Juvenile bobwhite after bobwhite fluttered off into the green tapestry of Montauk County Park atop the hills east of Lake Montauk. Such release of this quail species, native to most of the United States, but not common anywhere, could be the beginning of the comeback of it not only in Montauk, but in the rest of East Hampton Town as well. Two more release days are planned by fall in this five-year program.

Sharks are hot. As in the past few summers, shark sightings seem to be capturing a lot of headlines and attention of late. Ever since Steven Spielberg put the toothy fish on the silver screen several decades ago, the mystique and fascination continues to grow.

Last week’s unusually turbulent summer weather, which included extended wind gusts to over 30 miles per hour on several days mixed in with a few tropical downpours, certainly stirred up our local waters. Rip current warnings were posted up and down the coast for most of the week and weekend. It was best to stay out of the drink most days.

This column is about a failed plan to construct a failed recharge basin. It is another Humpty Dumpty story about engineers, town councils, town attorneys, contractors, and the like designing and trying to build a recharge basin to trap runoff water from a farm field in East Hampton on a site along Route 114 in 2010.

For those who have followed my adventures in trapping lobsters over the past few months, I must freely admit that I have an even greater fondness (and appetite) for a rather close cousin of that popular staple of the summertime clam bake.

On Monday afternoon I went down to the ocean beach and walked between Bridgehampton and Sagaponack. There was the usual bunch of beachgoers enjoying the sun, but what I was there for was to examine the wrack line left by recent high tides and storms, such as the tropical cyclone Chris that brushed our shore last weekend.

After one of the hottest, muggiest Fourths of July on record, we wondered what nature would serve up next. There was no relief the day after.

Terry Sullivan called last week from Sag Harbor to tell me that the prickly pear cactus was in bloom along Long Beach Road’s south side. He also mentioned that PSEG has been putting up new utility poles. I’m a stone’s throw away, so I motored over and took a look. Indeed, at least 10 new poles had been erected, each with strange-colored horizontal members on top to which the electrical transmission wires were fastened.

Back in March, I set out my lobster traps for the first time in about nine years. With various work commitments behind me, I finally had enough free time to exhume my gear from its extended deep sleep on dry land.

Last week, other than taking my boat out at 4:30 a.m. on Saturday to for a quick check on my lobster traps (yes, I did capture enough for a dinner or two), I did not pick up a fishing rod. The reason was pretty simple, as I was hanging around the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.

A few weeks ago, I penned a story about two different types of boaters. The premise was that you either preferred to cruise under power or chose the quietness that a sailboat provides. With a few exceptions, it’s pretty black and white on this matter.

Eastern Long Island owes much of its natural history to the eastern deciduous forest, an ecological life zone that stretches from the grasslands of the Midwest to the Atlantic Coast, from northern Florida into southeastern Canada. Of course, there are huge differences from one part of this forest zone to the next, and from the southern part to the most northern part.

There are two Stony Hill Roads on the South Fork, one in Amagansett in East Hampton Town, the other in Noyac, in Southampton Town. How did they get their names? By chance? No! They got their names because of the presence of boulders left by the receding glacier more than 15,000 years ago.

In only 20 days, the daily photoperiod will start to wane. Perhaps that’s why almost all of nature is focused on reproducing. Osprey eggs are hatching. Crows are roaming the treetops looking for unguarded nestlings. On Saturday shortly after noon a screech owl up the block started singing his wavering whistle in full daylight. The first tropical storm hit the Florida panhandle on Memorial Day. Observers were quick to blame “global warming.” Hmmm. I wonder.

Nature itself, left alone without human interference, is what you might call wondrously beautiful in all respects. Even natural death has its positive side. Nothing goes to waste; everything is recycled. Then, humans came along and began to spoil it. Try as we may to recycle, not everything — many plastics, for example — is recyclable. Let’s face it, we’ve made one humongous mess of things and we have very little time before the lights go out to make it right again.

The sad saga surrounding the black sea bass season continues to frustrate anglers. At an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council meeting last week in Stony Brook, the group voted to adopt last year’s inequitable black sea bass quota for this upcoming season, which cuts New York’s black sea bass allocation compared to neighboring states, even though the black sea bass stock has rebounded and is currently 240 percent above target biomass.

Last week’s surge of hot weather was much needed in so many ways. A number of popular pursuits like gardening, planting of crops, and fishing were all affected by the extended and painfully cold spring weather. Other than a trip or two to the lobster grounds, I never even considered wetting a line to go fishing. It was just too windy, cold, and damp most days. But the burst of heat changed all of that in a hurry.

Early Saturday morning, after sitting silently at my dock for almost three weeks due to the incessant cold and windy weather, my boat was finally freed from the dock lines for the first time this season.

It was pleasant last Thursday afternoon as I drove from Noyac to Southampton. I had just left Edge of Woods Road for David White’s Lane when I came upon about 50 gulls landing in a just-plowed strip on the west side of the road.

As our planet continues to heat up and sea level rises commensurately due to melting glacial water, we think about ways to survive, comfortably if possible, and one of these ways is to switch from gasoline and coal to forms of energy production that don’t require the burning of carbon-derived materials. We are making progress, but we have a long, long way to go.

No doubt about it, various governmental marine fishery departments and scientists have had a challenging time collecting accurate data on the status of various stocks of fish that reside along the East Coast of the United States. For sure, it will likely never be an exact science.

It’s that time of year when all of the birds start arriving and setting up homesteads here on eastern Long Island. More and more southern birds have been overwintering so it has become hard to say which ones are year-round residents and which ones are part-timers.

Just about everyone has a rough idea of what “food chains” and “food pyramids” are. The ones at the very bottom are the microbes, single-celled diatoms and the like; the ones at the top are the “top” carnivores. In one respect, the human is a top carnivore. In another, a top herbivore. In all respects — strict vegetarians omitted — an omnivore.

I just read in today’s New York Times that Nashville has a case of the demolition blues. I may have the same sickness. I also read a reminiscence by Beth Howard, a writer who rented the little farmhouse in Eldon, Iowa, made famous by Grant Wood’s 1930 painting “American Gothic.” Two American themes going in the opposite direction.

In last week’s column, I wrote about the beginning of the local eastern bluebird season. Then I received Joe Giunta’s annual recap of the East Hampton Town area’s bluebird box yield for 2017. Joe and his volunteers have been checking out and maintaining the boxes at nine different East Hampton Town sites and two boxes on North Haven in Southampton Town for nearly 20 years.