Outdoors

In the 1940s almost every family on the North Fork had at least one dog and one cat. Many families kept a larger menagerie — pigs, chickens, goats, cows, and sometimes a horse or two. Horses were an extravagance; you couldn’t eat them nor did they give milk or lay eggs, and they were no longer needed to pull plows and other farm implements, having been replaced in the 1920s and 1930s by tractors.

America is making progress at bringing back lost species of flowers and plants, while simultaneously better protecting animal species that were most vulnerable. The gray wolf and grizzly bear, two species that were approaching extinction in the latter quarter of the 20th century, are now becoming so common in some areas that several states allow hunters to shoot them.

I led a nature walk at Shadmoor State Park for a nice couple from Amagansett who won the walk in the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society auction held on July 30. Their son and a girlfriend, as well as another woman friend and her son, also accompanied us. I took my large white towel along and swept the vegetation on the sides of the trails as we marched on in the chance that I might find a tick or two. Shadmoor is well known for its large deer tick and Lone Star tick populations.

All animals of a species have culture. If we accept the notion that plants communicate with one another underground via mycorrhizal connections, plants also have culture. In evolution, not only does a species adapt to changing climes and competition by evolving adaptations — as a fish evolving lungs to become an amphibian — but a species also changes its behavior to keep up with quicker changes in its environment.

Long Island is the biggest island by far in the Long Island archipelago. This archipelago may not be a true archipelago like the Galapagos in the South Pacific off Ecuador or the Channel Islands off Southern California in the middle Pacific or the San Juan Islands off Washington in the northern Pacific. The status of Long Island as an island has long been in doubt, separated as it is from the rest of New York by the East River. The United States Supreme Court — lawyers, mind you, not coastal geologists or geographers — ruled 9 to 0 that Long Island is not an island but part of New York State’s mainland.

Bluefish are born mean. A snapper, or juvenile bluefish, will attack just about any lure thrown its way. This silver assassin’s impulsive behavior and voracious appetite make it the perfect target for kids, first-time anglers, and those who just want to have some summer angling fun without committing whole hog to the sport. Even a grizzled surfcaster can enjoy fishing for snappers with an ultralight rod and reel.

Some human domiciles are 1,000 years old or more. Several on Long Island date back to the late 1600s. Most houses, however, have lost their sense of permanence. Fifty years ago, one would never raze a house to build another one unless it was severely storm damaged or ravaged by fire. Nowadays, houses built in the last quarter of the 20th century are falling to new, larger ones right and left. Houses have lost their sense of permanence just as we who live in them have lost our sense of immortality.

Montauk, in my eyes, is one of the richest places for natural history in the United States. It has grasslands, forests, savannas, freshwater wetlands, tidal wetlands, ponds both permanent and temporary, hills, kettleholes, glacial erratics, cranberry bogs, dunes, ocean beaches, sound beaches, all matter of marine and freshwater fishes, blue-spotted salamanders, and the only ocean coastal bluffs north of the Caribbean Islands. That venerable Long Islander Teddy Roosevelt traveled the world, and he also visited Montauk. He must have loved it. Walt Whitman loved it. I love it.

Of course I did this on purpose, I told my wife, showing her the large silver hook dangling from my left ring finger. You think an experienced fisherman like me could accidentally hook himself, I continued, unsuccessfully hiding a smile. She rolled her eyes, called East Hampton Urgent Care in Amagansett, and off we went to free the shiny devil from my person.

The dog days of summer are supposed to wait until mid-August, but decided to come in July this year. Ouch! Having said that, the way the climate has been heating up in this decade, come August, the days could get even doggier.

There is a very pretty grove of green-leafed trees with bright red-brown flowers and developing fruit on the west end of Long Beach in Noyac, less than 75 feet from the lapping waters of Noyac Bay. On Monday I examined them and found them to be trees of heaven, Ailanthus altissima. I see scores of trees of this species every time I ride along one of the South Fork’s more populated highways. In places Noyac Road is overrun with them, but most of the flowers are much more green than red.

Five traditional boats, tools, and maritime equipment will be for sale on Saturday when the East End Classic Boat Society holds its annual fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hartjen-Richardson Community Boat Shop at 301 Bluff Road, Amagansett, behind the East Hampton Town Maritime Museum.

One doesn’t need a boat to fish the East End. There are many productive saltwater and freshwater spots from Montauk to East Hampton where anyone with the right gear, a little local knowledge, and persistence can catch fish for fun or for the table.

We are well into summer. It’s been warm, almost hot. The worst is yet to come. We’ve had just enough rain to make the oaks, hickories, maples, sassafras, and the rest of our native trees as lush as lush can be. I’ve been giving them all a 10 as I drive past and through them, which is unprecedented, but I may becoming dotty or too sentimental.

Mary Lee is a 16-foot, 3,456-pound great white shark. She’s about the size of a Honda Accord, or an Audi A5, for those who favor European rides. Mary Lee was captured, satellite tagged, and released on Sept. 17, 2012, in the waters surrounding Cape Cod by OCEARCH, a marine research organization that focuses on keystone marine species including great whites.

Local Sports Schedule

No two springs or summers are the same. June may continue the string of warmest months since records have been kept. It was also dryer than usual. Do high temperatures and droughts go hand in hand? There used to be a local guru I could call for answer that question, but Long Island’s most longstanding and celebrated weatherman, a farmer and resident of Bridgehampton, Richard Hendrickson, is no longer with us, having passed away earlier in the year.

Wet a hook in the bay and you might find a porgy or other commonly caught fish at the end of your line. But lurking below are visitors from afar, waiting to turn your ordinary day of fishing into a fish story of a lifetime.

Perhaps during no other time in the history of modern man have so many people from so many countries and territories been on the move to seek new lands in which to live. This is the age of emigration and immigration, born of choice, vocational opportunity, the need to survive, mostly the latter. But it’s not just humans that are on the move. With global warming becoming more and more of a reality, plants and animals of all kinds are extending the ranges, moving from one place to another.

I’m not a world traveler, but I’ve been around. If I had to name my 10 favorite places of the thousands I’ve spent time in, Montauk would be very close to the top of the list.

This time of year large striped bass take temporary residence in the rip that forms between Bostwick Point at the northern tip of Gardiner’s Island and Gardiner’s Point Island, where the crumbling remains of Fort Tyler, known locally as the Ruins, stands today.

Shucks, only 12 more days before the days begin getting shorter and the nights longer. You might say that’s the zenith of activity for each new year. After that things start going downhill.

Open a fisherman’s tackle box and you’ll see lures of every imaginable color. But what color catches the most fish?

How much wood could a groundhog chuck if a groundhog could chuck wood? It’s not quite as much of a tongue twister when you substitute another name for the species.

After achieving a historic low in the 1960s, owing to wide use of DDT and other pesticides, the Long Island osprey populations have bounced back and are still rising. But the increasing number of cormorants and seals in our waters since the 1990s is nettling their comeback, and now there is a third competitor on the scene to contend with — one most of us are happy for: our national bird.

Spring is moving right along in good stead. A car ride through the local roads gives one an up-to-date reading of its progress. Today, for example, during a back-and-forth, up-and-down trip through the back roads of Northwest Woods, the signs of advancing spring were readily apparent.

Following the end of World War II there was a big building boom across the country as our servicemen came back from the European and Pacific theaters to resume the American way of life that they missed during four years of nonstop fighting against the Germans and Japanese.

Some people say that we on the South Fork are going to hell in a handbasket. We look across the Peconics and see mostly green fields of grapes, vegetables, and other produce. Here most of the farmland is up for grabs, but thankfully that wonderful organization, the Peconic Land Trust, is out there grabbing. It is not only keeping viable farmland in production, it is revitalizing farm plots that have long stood dormant and recruiting young farmers, mostly the sons and daughters of old farmers, to make the land fertile once more. In a way, it’s the same way with fishermen.

By all accounts, winter has finally descended upon us. But as of the date for this column, there are only 39 days until crocuses begin blooming. It’s one of the oddest winters I can remember, one with very few winter birds, only a handful of waterfowl, and, as of yet, no ice skating. One wonders if such a winter will be good for all of those coastal ponds of our area that are in trouble, or will it worsen them?

I started this environmental and natural history column in 1981, and except for about four years in the latter part of the 1980s it has been going ever since. I hope to keep it going on into the 2020s. We will see. Nature and the environment are in a lot of trouble and need all of the help they can get. Who wants to live on Mars?