Outdoors

Coyote sightings on the North Fork this autumn and a month ago in Bridgehampton are not surprising to those who study this wide-ranging mammal. Coyotes have never bred in Suffolk County, but with one-off sightings increasing in frequency, the question isn’t if they will breed here but when.

When darkness closed out the Audubon Montauk Christmas Bird Count and the species were tallied, participants agreed that the good weather might have played a role in the total: 134 were found, the highest in a decade.

Low spawning levels have spurred the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to put forth a comprehensive management plan to rebuild the stocks of striped bass.

Out on the water for a last chance to catch some blackfish, The Star’s fishing columnist enjoyed some good camaraderie, and if the fish were to cooperate, so much the better.

The plight of our beloved scallop is a sad one. For five straight years, we have witnessed a summer die-off. Baymen never have it easy.

After breeding on the northern lakes, loons arrive on the East End in the autumn and increase in numbers through the winter as their breeding territories freeze. They can survive our winter water because they’re so well insulated.

With the season for blackfish and sea bass concluding in a few weeks, our columnist headed toward Block Island on a trip organized by Bill Bennett of Sag Harbor. They enjoyed consistent action all morning.

“I honestly don’t think I missed a fish, as they were taking the bait with such abandon,” Joel Fisher said of the waters off Big Gull Island. “All were in the 14-to-17-inch range. It was a great way to end the season.”

The plan was to head out on a 90-minute ride to Block Island for blackfish, sea bass, and codfish. When boats were able to get out in recent days, the action was good, especially for blackfish.

Last November I landed one bushel of scallops on opening day in and around Shelter Island Sound. The next day, however, I struggled to land barely a quarter bushel. East Hampton Town waters will open to scalloping in two weeks.

November is the month when a dedicated group of citizen scientists begin to count birds as part of Project FeederWatch, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology program now in its 37th year. It’s simple. Go to feederwatch.org, pay $18, learn how to report your birds, get some swag that will help you make proper identifications, and you’re on the team.

Blackfishing has been tough of late, “but bass, blues, and false albacore are still running well in Plum Gut,” Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle said, and anglers have experienced blitz-like fishing for striped bass around the Montauk Lighthouse.

“Local spots like the Sag Harbor bridge, Nichols Point, and the black spindle rock pile outside the breakwater have been producing of late,” Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle said from behind the counter of his new establishment in Southampton.

There is something creepy about cormorants. From most distances, they look black, with long thick necks, tails, and wings. In flight, they appear like black crosses. Against a cormorant, fish have no hope; the tip of their orange bill is hook-shaped, a perfect tool to capture over 250 species of fish. Soon those single black crosses will join to form sky-wide, shape-shifting patterns as they migrate away.

Before the water turns to ice here on the East End, the local fishing scene seems to be holding up just fine. Bass, bluefish, tuna, sea bass, porgies, and blackfish are hungry and on the feed.

The closing of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor is most unfortunate. Small mom-and-pop, one-man businesses like Ken Morse’s establishment continue to be squeezed out because of high rents. It’s a troublesome trend that has become too frequent here.

It was a bad year to be a piping plover in East Hampton. In fact, the worst since at least 2008. While 32 pairs of plovers made East Hampton Town beaches their summer homes, only seven of those pairs were successful in fledging 15 young. Plovers in Southampton Town had a more successful summer.

“Yeah, the weather gods have not been cooperating of late,” Ken Morse at Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor said of the slow fishing. “The winds were relentless, but it appears things are finally going to calm down.”

UPDATE: Those wishing to put their rakes to the test for the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest will have to wait a bit longer to dig for the winners in Lake Montauk, Napeague Harbor, Accabonac Harbor, Hog Creek, and Three Mile Harbor, as heavy rains have closed many areas to shellfishing and forced a second rescheduling of the annual event.

Just as Tropical Storm Ophelia ushered out summer, Ken Morse, the man behind Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor, is moving out — to Southampton.

There’s bad news for anglers in NOAA’s analysis of its annual recreational fishing survey.

If you fish in saltwater in New York and are over the age of 16, you must possess a free Department of Environmental Conservation marine registry permit. But now the marine registry may soon cease to exist, as the D.E.C. is considering a fee-based license for fishing in the state’s marine waters.

Jimmy Buffett, who had a house on North Haven, loved the waters of the East End, whether surfing, sailing, or fishing.

The outlook for the bay scallop season, which is set to start in early November, is once again poor. For the fifth summer in a row, there has been a significant die-off of mature bay scallops in local waters.

Just over the lip of the dune bordering the lot at Scott Cameron Beach is one of the most important habitat areas for shorebirds on the entire East End: Mecox Inlet.

A cooler of blue-claws for a new friend in cardiac rehab might mark the first time the tasty shellfish have paid a visit to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital.

The direction you want to go during the August heat is east. “Whether it’s striped bass, bluefish, fluke, porgies, sea bass, or tuna, the fish now prefer to be in cooler, deeper waters,” said Ken Morse of Tight Lines Tackle in Sag Harbor.

I had done some fishing a few days earlier at Jessup’s Neck, and the bluefish were hungry, taking full advantage of my four-ounce diamond jig. I had my fill of fish, so I got on my motorcycle.

With a careful, calculated touch, Robert Greene, a renowned decoy carver who lives in Springs, creates pieces so realistic they could easily be mistaken for taxidermy. “You gotta know the wood, you gotta be a halfway decent carver, you gotta be a decent painter. . . and you gotta be an artist,” he said.

“It’s been a great season thus far,” Harvey Bennett, former owner of the Tackle Shop in Amagansett, said of blue-claw crabs. “They are large and plentiful. More people need to take advantage of it. Blue-claws are the best to eat.”