Outdoors

High mercury levels in East Coast marshes could wipe out some bird species, according to researchers.

Just about every school kid in the East knows about gypsy moths. If you asked them what one looks like, though, they’d be hard pressed to describe it.

My son-in-law stood over the stove Monday evening stirring diced vegetables that would go into bass cakes along with a medley of spices, an egg as binder, and crackers crumbled by hand. The 40-pound striped bass providing the substance of the cakes was speared on Saturday by the same man stirring the veggies.

George Knoblach turns 90 today. Like many a Montauk resident, George “discovered” this place during his family’s summer camping trips to Hither Hills State Park — only much earlier than most.

Well here we are well into summer and the birds have successfully fledged many of their young. Will they go for a second brood? Piping plovers are one of those species that tries and tries again if it fails the first time around.

The inch or so of rain we had on Saturday and Sunday morning really greened up the open spaces. It was readily apparent on driving around the outback areas of Southampton and East Hampton on Monday. The vegetation had been getting thirsty. Its thirst was thusly quenched.

This season’s no-kill shark fishing tournament is named the Carl Darenberg Memorial Shark’s Eye Tournament after the late owner of the Montauk Marine Basin who broke with precedent by maintaining the Marine Basin’s exciting tradition of shark tournaments while sparing the lives of sharks.

Monday night was delicious. It was quiet and as late as 9 objects big and small could still be discerned with the naked eye without the addition of artificial lighting. It was a perfect night to go out and scour the woods and fields for whippoorwills, without leaving the driving seat of my vehicle. So that’s what I did.

I had lunch at the Inlet Seafood restaurant in Montauk on Monday afternoon. There were five of us, one of whom pulled out his smartphone as we waited with delicious anticipation for sushi, mussels, and broiled mahi sandwiches.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Jason Walter handed the helm to incoming Senior Chief Petty Officer Eric Best. He then retired after 21 years of service to his country, and, by all accounts, extraordinary service to the Montauk and East Hampton communities during his last assignment.

It rained and winded Monday, not a good day for taking pictures of plants and flowers. But it was okay. We needed the rain and I hope it won’t be the end of it during the coming summer. It was okay because I had finished doing my annual end-of-spring gypsy moth and groundcover monitoring for 2015.

It’s the peak of the breeding season for almost every bird, mammal, reptile, amphibian, and fish, not to mention shellfish and crustaceans. It’s also the middle of the landscaping and gardening season, when lots are being cleared, new houses constructed, lawns planted with exotic shrubs, trees, and forms.

This time of year the very thought of the full moon illuminates the imaginations of fishermen of all stripes, whether they lower clam bait, live eels, or cast lures of many disguises in hopes of hooking Morone saxitilis, striped bass.

The East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad in a flier wants it known that this week, beginning on Sunday, is National Beach Safety Week, and, in keeping with the theme, has provided the following desiderata:

The die-off in Flanders of tens of thousands of bunker (menhaden) that peaked on Friday has been blamed on extremely low levels of oxygen in the Peconic Estuary due to an excess of nitrogen, which in turn brought on the “mahogany tide,” a dense brown algal bloom.

Long Island had two big fish kills in its inshore waters last week — one in Manhasset Bay, another in the western part of the Peconic Estuary. These two kills involved a single species that is famous for its periodic mass die-offs up and down the Atlantic Coast — the menhaden, Brevoortia tyrannus.

On Sunday, Mary Lee’s dorsal fin broke the surface a few miles off the eastern shore of Virginia at 10:29 a.m., prompting a ping to sail aloft, bounce off a satellite, and report to the OCEARCH organization, whose website transmits the information in very close to real time.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, if you believe in evolution the answer is easy.

Approximately 3,600 acres of Shinnecock Bay were reopened on Friday after being closed for two weeks after saxitoxin was found. Warnings were issued the same day for potentially harmful blue-green algae in two Southampton ponds.

We just had a glorious weekend in which all the hardwoods, save for the white oaks, which always are the last to foliate, were festooned with fresh green leaves. Thus it was a perfect setting for the arrival of the New World warblers, which every year near the middle of May stop on Long Island to feed and rest after a long flight from their southern winter climes.

I’m writing this heading back to saltwater from Buffalo and my first-ever visit to Niagara Falls. We crossed into Canada to view the three sections of Gahnawehta, as the Indians called them, to go aboard the vessel Hornblower — the equivalent of the Maid of the Mist from the United States side — to view the cascades from below.

It’s getting warm. We need some rain. The small rainwater ponds are drying up, the peepers are barely peeping, but the shads are blooming nicely and the dogwoods are out at the same time.

In May, the sea draws a gauzy shroud over the southerly half of Montauk just as a blanket of white blossoms eases winter’s final chill. It’s as though the light, ghostly fog whispers a wakeup to the shadblow, “You can come out now.”

The weekend was a blaze of glory. The sun shone, the bay waters were mostly calm, the shads and sweet cherries began to bloom to the west, and the shads along Napeague and in Montauk were on the verge of busting out.

I’ve been researching how waves are formed in order to create, and by July present, a narrated video explanation for visitors to the new Oceans Institute of the Montauk Lighthouse Museum. We hope to open the doors by the Fourth of July.

Let’s face it, if skates, with their bat wings and rat tails, flew in the sky instead of along the bottom of the sea, we’d run inside like cave people fleeing pterodactyls and wait for them to pass.

The current building boom has laid down a lot of big trees before they had a chance to leaf out, but it apparently hasn’t deterred the birds from returning from the south.

I walked east along the rocky beach from Ditch Plain into the Montauk moorlands on Friday. The day before I’d learned a new word, “brumous.” It describes a heavy mist, a good word for Friday, for this place and time of year.

Consider the following as an open letter to Larry Penny, The Star’s longtime nature columnist, my good friend, and an indispensable member of the East End community.

Larry, I’m writing this to encourage you to read “H Is for Hawk,” a memoir by Helen Macdonald. Just came out. It’s a beautifully written meditation on one person’s relationship to the wild, and what “wild” means in our time.

Environmental awareness is big here, as big as it is on eastern Long Island. Water, or the lack of it, is the major topic of the moment.