Outdoors

Just as the Norway rat may be the most adept of all the mammals, gulls — in particular, the herring gull — may be the most adept of all the birds.

It was déjà vu all over again and again. The weather, especially the wind, has been relentless of late. It started early on Oct. 8 and finally blew itself out by Sunday. Chicago may be dubbed the Windy City, but the eastern end of Long Island can certainly hold its own when accounting for prolonged periods of gusty weather.

Coming off the new moon, the incoming tide was screaming as we approached the rip. Combined with an east wind, it was running at over four knots, and according to the tide chart slack water was only 45 minutes away.

How many of you know what the megagroups Pangaea, Gondwanaland, and Laurasia represent? Very few I’ll bet. In fact, I have only lately begun to study them.

Monday was mostly sunny and calm. Most of the summer crowd had gone back to the city and parts west. It was also the last day of September and the eighth day of autumn, a perfect opportunity for a leisurely drive around Southampton, Sag Harbor, and East Hampton to see how fall was shaping up.

Back in 1982, the British rock band the Clash — one of my favorite groups of all time — came out with the song “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” A classic rocker of a song with a steady beat, it is punctuated with some hard-hitting, sarcastic lyrics, backed by some great guitar licks. It’s a catchy tune that topped the music charts and can still be heard on the airwaves.

Two of the greatest movements to warmer climes from colder ones that take place each year in both the Old and New Worlds are the great migrations of butterflies and dragonflies.

As seems to happen every year, summer appears to get shorter and shorter. Memorial Day arrives and with a quick blink of the eye, Labor Day appears to roll right in.

Just a month ago nine dogs died from drinking pond water in New York City’s Central Park that was thick with blue-green algae, oops, I mean cyanobacteria, which is not actually algae at all.

Fishing this summer for various species of tuna, including albacore, yellowfin, bigeye, and bluefin, has been the best witnessed in many years, and it looks like it will continue well into the upcoming fall season.

The bowhunting season for deer opens on Oct. 1, and in Suffolk County licensed archers can obtain permits starting on Monday for access to designated areas in select county parks. 

Did you know that according to the Encyclopedia Britannica there are 43 different species of the deer family, Cervidae, worldwide?

Gloria was a powerful Category 3 storm and had just brought a storm surge of 8 to 12 feet to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, with 125-mile-per-hour wind gusts.

It’s September, the favorite month for hurricanes. The shorebirds that went to the tundra to breed are already halfway south. We humans have very high I.Q.s, but we can’t fly. Some butterflies and darning needles are also on their way south. They have lower I.Q.s than birds, yet they can also fly and know where the winter is warm.

It felt like only yesterday that we were all celebrating Memorial Day in joyful unison. The summer season was upon us. Time to relax and take in the lazy, hazy days of sunshine, fishing, barbecues, and beaches. But, while the calendar technically states that it is still summer, the party is over for many people. It went fast, too fast for me.

Many of the not-so-rare but equally beautiful native plants were in flower — the yellow Maryland golden asters, the pinkish-purple Joe-Pye weed, the purplish-blue slender bush clover — while several species of goldenrods were just beginning to bloom.

They go by many names. Blow toads, sea squab, chicken of the sea, blowfish, and puffers are just a few of the common ones. But no matter which name you know them by, they usually bring a smile to just about any face.

Something peculiar is going on in Turkeydom. Turkeys here and there on the South Fork have begun to develop bunches of pustules on their faces and elsewhere, but only on bare patches of skin, not on feathered areas.

Baby bluefish, also known as snappers in these parts, have arrived en masse. The annual invasion of the sporty little fish is evident at every dock, wharf, and bulkhead on the East End.

We have reached a point in the world’s development when species will be lost at a faster rate than evolution can compensate for.

While we are still in the summer season, early Saturday morning in Montauk Harbor felt as if a faint hint of September were in the air. A cold front had passed through a few hours earlier and the breeze was coming from the cooler and drier northwest.

Impairment means the water body is high in nutrients (nitrogen compounds and phosphates, for example), algae-ridden, high in intestinal bacteria such as enterococcus and coliform bacterium, or unsafe to swim in.

Once again, sharks have been making headline news. Whether it’s an aerial photo of one lurking close to a popular beach, a scrape with a bather, or a specimen caught from shore, every incident seems to be amplified on social media and other platforms more than ever before.

On the drive east to Montauk early Friday morning, pale pink hues of the developing sunrise could be seen over the sand dunes alongside the Napeague stretch. Would the fish be on the chew? Only time would tell.

The dead adult humpback whale towed to the Montauk ocean beach last week is just one of several humpbacks that we have been reading about this year in the local newspapers. There have been many sightings offshore and even in Great South Bay and other estuarine water bodies.

It was so hot that nature at night overwhelmed nature during the day. On the evening of July 16, for one example, during Dai Dayton’s full moon walk, the trees and wetlands were alive with the sounds of tree crickets and tree frogs and the air was alive with fireflies.

Last weekend’s heatwave reminded me why I went to college in Buffalo and not to the palm-fringed campus of the University of Florida. It wasn’t just for the education, but also to enjoy the snow, bitterly cold winds, and to play ice hockey as much as I could. Sounds weird, eh?

The calendar reminded me that it was time to get back on the water, grab my rod and reel, and partake of the 19th annual Mercury Grand Slam tournament last weekend out of Montauk.

Hot, Hot, Hot! Cars, Cars, Cars! Nothing to do but grin and bear it, and observe nature.

What was I thinking? 

This column, penned for so many decades by various writers in this long-established newspaper, has been aptly named “On the Water.” It’s a pretty clear and accurate description of its intended content and hopefully the audience appreciates its narrative for better or worse.