Sports

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

Though East Hampton lost two to Miller Place, with Colin Ruddy on the mound Bonac blanked the Panthers 1-0 here on April 20, a pitching gem that topped a story on Suffolk’s mound aces in Saturday’s Newsday.

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.”

East Hampton High’s softball team busted out here on Saturday, pummeling Harborfields 27-1 in a league game that was foreshortened by “the mercy rule” after five innings of play.

Lona Rubenstein of Amagansett may be better known in recent years as a world-class poker player, but long before she took up that game, she was a champion in table tennis, competing nationally and internationally.

All three high school varsity baseball teams in this area — East Hampton, Pierson, and Bridgehampton — were doing well going into this week.

Sheaugh Costello can hit her targets with ease, dominating in team tournaments regionally and both team and solo play in New York State and the eastern United States.

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.

The fastest-growing sport in America — pickleball — is also the noisiest, according to a survey conducted by sound engineers hired by the Village of Sagaponack. As a result, the village board will recommend requiring new pickleball courts to be built with larger setback from adjacent properties.

The April 12 win over Half Hollow Hills West was Bonac’s third in a row, the first time apparently since 2016 that a girls track team here has begun a season at 3-0.

Members of the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday voiced a willingness to consider natural grass and dirt at the Little League fields to be constructed at 110 Stephen Hand’s Path in Wainscott.

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.

A historic marker honoring Carl Yastrzemski was unveiled at Bridgehampton High’s new baseball field on April 5 before an appreciative crowd numbering around 100, many of whom stayed to watch the first varsity baseball team the school has fielded since 1979.

East Hampton’s athletic director was to have appealed Monday to Section XI’s athletic council urging it to let the school’s varsity football team stay one more year in Division IV, a lower-enrollment division.

When was the last time an East Hampton baseball team was 6-0?

East Hampton High’s girls lacrosse team won one and then went out and ran the Katy’s Courage 5K, while the boys lacrosse Islanders went 3-3 and Bonac tennis remained undefeated.

Shortly before the school board voted to hire Kathy Masterson as its new athletic director, Joe Vas, East Hampton’s current athletic director, handed her a maroon-and-gray Bonac baseball cap — a symbolic passing of the torch.

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 wrecking ball is swinging, and the $1.4 million renovation and expansion project for the Lars Simenson Skatepark in Montauk is underway. The hope is that it can be finished by mid to late-summer.

The road race season here has seen large numbers of registrants for Saturday’s Katy’s Courage 5K in Sag Harbor and for the May Day Race to benefit the Family Service League at East Hampton Village’s Main Beach.

Fans of East Hampton High’s baseball team were treated to two wins at home this week. Sunday morning’s meeting with Harborfields, the third of the league-opening series, ended dramatically.

East Hampton High School’s boys and girls track teams recorded wins over their Comsewogue peers this week, the boys by a score of 67-44 and the girls by a score of 69-63.

The Breakwater Sailing Center, a.k.a. the Breakwater Yacht Club, in Sag Harbor, will host an open house on Tuesday to introduce a women's sailing initiative and new programs for the summer. "Historically, women are pretty much underrepresented as adult sailors," explained Joan Butler, a sailor, nurse practitioner, certified nurse-midwife, and a Breakwater member.

While East Hampton Little League’s umpire shortage is not as severe as it was a month or two ago, “it’s still a problem,” Dave Rutkowski, the organization’s president, said this week. Right now the league has 12 people to cover 22 games a week.

The East End Blaze, an entry in the Professional Inline Hockey Association’s Northeast Division, is to make its one-and-only appearance at its home Sportime Arena rink in Amagansett Saturday.

Spring began for a few of East Hampton High School’s teams last week, and the results, from baseball to girls lacrosse, were good all around.

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.

Last year, for the first time in more than a decade, an East Hampton High School softball team, a very young squad with only two senior starters, earned a berth in the county playoffs, convincing the coaches, Annemarie Brown and Melanie Anderson, that “we’re starting to get back on track.”