Outdoors

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has issued a timely set of tips for people who plan to explore the great outdoors this summer.

For years I’ve noticed numerous symmetrical holes measuring about an inch in diameter in the sand near where I dock my boat in Sag Harbor Cove. Who created and resides in such dwellings?

When beaches are closed because of nesting plovers, people get pretty riled up. The birds, which are endangered in the country and New York State, may seem to be prolific here, but in fact nest on only a handful of beaches on the East End. They're also site-specific, returning year after year to breed in the same spots.

Dense, foggy conditions over the weekend caused some anxiety for boaters and fishermen alike. The fishing was good in many locales, however, as the waters continue to warm up.

The northeasterly blow starting Friday was unfortunate, as the action on porgies, fluke, striped bass, weakfish, and even squid was on the upswing in many locations.

The eastern towhee breeds in Montauk, and if you go to Oyster Pond this weekend you can hear them calling and singing everywhere.

Chris Paparo, the manager of Stony Brook Southampton's Marine Science Center, is also birder, and on Tuesday at 5 he'll share some of his avian expertise at a virtual Accabonac Protection Committee forum titled "Birding From Your Beach Chair." 

A few weeks ago, Sebastian Gorgone, the gregarious and always welcoming proprietor of Mrs. Sam’s Bait and Tackle in East Hampton, explained to me that the local fishing season will get in high gear only once the daffodils begin to wilt. I had not heard of this local proverb before, and I wondered, was it true?

Who better to understand the power of collaborations between brands than two women with backgrounds in the fashion industry, which seems to rely on the constant merging of brands? With 100 Design Style, Nikki Butler and Brigitte Branconnier created an interior design company that seems to strike the perfect balance between layout, light, color, tactile materials, and a connection to nature.

Rain gardens offer an opportunity to work with nature to restore balance, using the contours of the land to capture water that flows to lower elevations. The plants’ roots absorb rainwater and nitrogen runoff, while the soil filters particulates before they end up in our waterways. And rain gardens are also a way to ameliorate the dramatic loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the past 50 years.

To make your backyard bird-friendly, you'll need to think like a bird when making landscaping decisions.

Like helicopters and jets, leaf blowers have long been the bane of many a South Fork resident’s existence, each one a portable spewer of pollutants and source of ear-splitting noise. But in towns and villages alike, enough residents got angry and organized, and governments listened. Today, the use of leaf blowers is restricted across the South Fork.

Perhaps making up for two years of lost time, the spring and summer of 2022 will be filled with marvelous workshops, lectures, and benefits here on the South Fork.

Scott Bluedorn, an artist and activist living in Sag Harbor, is also an aficionado of vermiculture — a contained composting system in which earthworms break down food scraps to quickly create a mineral-rich soil amendment.

In the Northeastern United States, at least, these blossoms — whether red, pink, peach, yellow, white, or some combination of all — are at peak perfection starting in late May through June. As you stroll about, drive around town, or even take the train, here are some South Fork spots where you can find this favorite flower.

Budbreak — when wine grapes’ winter buds open and begin to release their woolly leaves — has unfurled across the East End, perhaps inspiring people to dream of growing wine grapes of their own.

Where some see weeds, others, like Jill Musnicki of Sag Harbor, see "a hotbed of glorious biodiversity," to borrrow a phrase from The Guardian. Her front yard has been carefully cultivated into a pollinator garden with native plants undesirable to some but "a miracle" to bees, butterflies, birds, and all kinds of beneficial insects.

As I perused the selection of seafood on display at Schiavoni’s in Sag Harbor the other day, an elderly gentleman peering into the saltwater holding tank with about a dozen lobsters in it said to me, “I’d love to buy one, but not at this price.”

I had a bit of trepidation as I started the 370-horsepower diesel engine. After writing numerous checks this winter that amounted to nearly $30,000 for a multitude of repairs to my 20-year-old craft, would it hold up?

While the song is the sparkling characteristic of the hermit thrush, I also appreciate its muted appearance. We can’t all be cardinals.

My 30-foot Novia Scotia-built boat has been in the water for nearly three weeks, but, sadly, I’ve yet to untie its dock lines.

Eleven days ago, on April 3, the northern gannets invaded Sag Harbor. A friend sent a video of several hundred crowding the waters surrounding Long Wharf. Above them, the sky teemed with more. In 20 years of birding around Sag Harbor, I had never seen more than a handful from the wharf.

The eastern phoebe is just starting to show up on the East End after a winter down South, bringing with it the promise of coming warmth and humidity — and bird song.

In the last two weeks, ospreys have started to return to the East End from their wintering grounds in Central and South America. They’re a sign of spring, and a constant visual reminder that our actions directly affect birds.

The American woodcock knows a thing or two about a good display. No bird on the East End of Long Island comes close to rivaling its spring show.

While the great blue heron, the largest heron in North America, is not our only winter heron (black-crowned night herons roost locally all winter), it’s the only one you’re likely to see.

Pigeons are extremely sensitive to low frequency sounds; they can see into the ultraviolet range of light, and they are able to detect minute changes in air pressure. They don’t keep the tidiest of homes, allowing feces, and even dead nestlings, to remain in the nest, and since they reuse their nests, they get bigger and nastier as time goes on.

This weekend is the 25th anniversary of the Great Backyard Bird Count. To participate, you spend a minimum of 15 minutes counting birds, and afterward report what you see to the number-cracking scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The yellow-rumped warbler, also known, colloquially, much to my 10-year-old’s delight, as a “butter-butt,” is our only regular winter warbler and our region’s most abundant.

Hunting with guns in East Hampton Town is a tradition that dates back to the middle 1600s. Back then, it was a means of survival. Now, it’s a sport, and a popular one, but also a tool for wildlife management.