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August 05, 1999 - Unusual summer sight: the sea horseGA • The Suffolk Times • August 5, 1999 Unusual summer sight: the sea horse Last week I received a call from a woman in Orient who was excited about an unusual fish she came across while clamming. It was a sea horse, one of those oddities that show up in our local waters during the warm months of summer. Most of us are familiar with the characteristic shape of the sea horse. We see its famil- iar shape used in Focus crests, posters, ON jewelry and about anywhere NATURE one wants to by Paul depict marine Stoutenburgh life. It's not only unusual in its shape but in its habits. Unlike other fish, this fish swims in an upright posi- tion and if that's not enough, it revers- es nature when raising its family. The female plants her eggs in a pouch of the male, where they are fertilized and held until hatched. In the meantime the female is off enjoying life, leaving the male to raise the young. The baby sea horses stay in the male's pouch until they are strong enough to take care of themselves; then they're off to explore a new and dangerous world. Few will survive, but those that do feed on the minute organisms of their watery world, their tails wrapped around some bit of eel grass or other hold -fast as they sway with the currents, hopefully undetected by the many predators that lurk in their underwater world. As time passes and the factors for reproduction are in place, they will perform an elaborate mating ritual and the cycle will start anew. Sea horses are members of the pipefish family and like the pipefish have given up speed and the stream- lining of fish for their heavy, scaly armor and effective camouflage. This combina- tion coupled with their ability to attach themselves by their tails to seaweed in an upright position lets them blend in perfectly with their surroundings. Pipefish are much more common in our local bays and creeks than sea horses. They are about six inches long with the thickness of a common drink- ing straw. If you pull a small hand seine in almost any creek, sooner or later you will pick up this close relative of the sea horse. It has the same general characteristics of the sea horse in that the male carries the female's eggs and watches over them until maturity. The pipefish does an even better job of camouflaging while swimming upright among the eel grass than the sea horse. If you look real close at the head of the pipefish, you see the horse -head re- semblance to the sea horse. It was a lucky find for my caller to catch a sea horse in her clam rake. It's seldom that I sit and write a com- plete article: Usually something comes along and I stop, only to take up the task of finishing at a later time. At one of these sessions we were surprised to see a Carolina wren fly up and cling to the screen outside our window. In her mouth was a bundle of dried leaves. Down she dropped into the flower box, apparently intent on building a nest. Just the day before, when Barbara was watering the flower boxes she had unknowingly pulled dried leaves from the flower box to tidy it up. What she didn't know was that she was disrupting Mrs. Wren's homemaking project. Then we saw no activity and our curiosity got the best of us so Barbara tried to peek into the large clump of leaves with a flashlight to see what was going on. When she was about six inches away out popped Carolina wren, just missing Barbara's face as she stepped back. And what a scolding that little wren gave her! How she went in and out of that flower box unnoticed was beyond us. Evidently she would wait until no one was around and then sneak back to her abode by creeping along under the flowers in the box. Of all the birds around our place at this time of the year the male Carolina wren is the noisiest and most persistent caller. So if you have a particularly noisy bird in your area that has a sharp, almost "teacher, teacher, teacher" call you too might just have a Carolina wren nest- ing nearby. It's during this time of the year that the mouth of the creek and camp overnight. Part of our supplies was always a dozen or so potatoes for " mickies." In those days it was always easy to get a few dozen little clams out on the sand bar and those, along with the potatoes, would be cooked in the fire along with one or two cans of beans. The potatoes took the longest time to cook so they were put in first. Suffolk Times photo by Paul Stoutenburgh Youthful hands hold a male pipefish with eggs. i rr "No 90-W T aft Amok r.'r D w way l..G 1 r7 1111„VV11171 1..Vr+vr1 75 years ago Aug. 1, 1924 Movie stars in East Hampton: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the famous moving - picture stars, are visiting at the home of Frank Wilbory on the dunes at East Hampton. They are the guests of Mr. Wilbory's daughter and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Fish. Potato digger scores high: The new two -horse Hoover potato digger, built to the special order of Henry Tuthill, has proved a success in actual field work on the farm of Anton Stelzer of Peconic, where an official test and demonstration was made in Mr. Stelzer's field of cobbles last week. Mr. Tuthill has sold nearly a carload of these diggers in the few days since they arrived and were put on the market, and he says that his newspaper advertising campaign brought in most of the inquiries. 50 years ago Aug. 5, 1949 Dutch elm disease threatens trees: Dutch elm disease, current scourge of the tree world, has a foothold in Greenport and threatens many stately 150- year -old elms that line the village streets and dapple the residential lawns with shade. A survey shows that at least 34 old elms along Greenport's streets are in a very weakened condition which relatives visit and everyone gets to- gether. We had just such a get- together this past week in the form of a clam- bake. People came from as far as Illinois and Florida to spend a few days with the Stoutenburgh gang. What a time they had. The kids were busy swimming and boating and then they slept over in tents in the back yard. The rest of us visited, remembering old times and just enjoying each other. The height of the activities revolved around an annual clambake. First, I guess I've got to introduce you to a basic clambake, when I was a kid and we'd go down to the point at makes them susceptible to the disease.... At least three elms in Greenport are known to have the disease. Along the Sunrise Trail: The first pack of Long Island cucumbers under the widely known "Island Green" brand of Long Island Cauliflower Distributors Inc. hit the market this week when the company began operation of its new $25,000 waxing plant on Mill Road, Riverhead. President Abe Denholtz and his sales manager, Nick Pendulik, who are aiming for a quantity market for their new quality prod- uct, have a sheaf of advance orders to bolster their opti- mistic predictions that the dressed -up cukes will go over big. 25 years ago Aug. 1, 1974 Town Board action: At Tuesday's meeting of the Southold Town Board, during the reading of communica- tions, Supervisor Martocchia began one by saying, "I'm going to get in trouble on this one." The letter, he said, was from the principal of Fishers Island School. It asked: "Is Fishers Island a part of Southold Town ?" Fishers Island School had not received any of the $12,000 the town split up among four other school districts to help pay for summer recreation programs. "To be truthful, we forgot them," confessed the supervisor. The slip already had been corrected, he reported. Three hundred dollars was sent over by special delivery. By the time the clams were set upon the hot coals to steam, the cans of beans would start bubbling and we kids were *ready for "the best meal of the year." The "mickies" came out of the fire like charcoal briquettes, black and burned, but were the best - tasting pota- toes we could imagine. Then there were the clams that often had bits of shell in them but were none the less delicious. The beans always worked out fine, except as I remember it, the ones on the bottom often came out burned but that only added to their fla- vor. All this, along with candy bars and a few apples that were later baked at the edge of the fire, made a meal fit for a king — at least we thought so. Today clambakes are a giant step from those early days. Bob Dickerson, my son -in -law, comes from a long line of clambake specialists. They have graduated from the old pit, rocks and seaweed to a more modern version. They have derived a contraption that looks like a still in that it has a fire and steam generator that pipes the steam into a large holding and cooking area. Naturally Bob was the chef of the day. All the ingredients — like mussels and clams, white and sweet potatoes, chick- en, corn, hot dogs and other goodies — were placed in the cooker and in two hours out came the best - tasting, best - cooked clambake you can imagine. To top off the feast Bob had put the family's special old recipe of steamed brown bread into three large contain- ers: two were antique covered contain- ers and the other a large coffee can. They came out in beautiful dark brown loaves that when dipped in melted but- ter literally made you drool. Of course, there was watermelon and the endless contests of which kid could spit the seeds the farthest.