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August 04, 1994 - North Fork Nature Never Sleeps6A • The Suffolk Times • August 4, 1994 North Fork Nature Never Sleeps By Paul Stoutenburgh I'm sitting at my favorite writing place on the deck overlooking the bay. A crow is arguing with its fellow pirate down the beach while our regular her - rinegull stalks the water's edge for lady crabs. That gull is an expert at catching these small, speckled crabs. The dis- carded empty shells along the beach vouch for the gull's efficiency. Often we see the gull swim along and then stop to dive with its head deep in the water. There must be a special tech- Focus on. Mature nique to catch these for it's not easily done the first time. Time and time again it will plunge its head in only to come up empty. Then with the position just right, so that it won't be bitten, it'll have the squirming tidbit in its bill. It's just a few short paddles to shore and a few feet up the beach for the feast. The crab will be dropped on its back and as the gull looks it over and positions itself, it then starts striking away. In a few moments the thrashing claws and wiggling feet are stilled and the feast begins. Hard blows eventually empty the shell and the first course of the meal is over. How did I get sidetracked? I wanted to relate a mini - adventure about our night paddle in our ultralight Mad River canoe. Actually, we began thinking of how to take advantage of the first cool night just after supper but you know it is so easy to just do nothing that often these treasured times slip by. And so, not to let this one get away, we put the canoe in the bay and paddled east to where the creek was emptying itself with the ebbing tide. it was still an hour before darkness, which let us see much of what was going on. We hugged the west shore where the lush marsh grass came right to the wa- ter's edge. No browning of growth here due to our dry weather. Here the thatch grass had adapted to its salt environ- Photo by Paul Stoutenburgh GREEN HERON —We see these solitary herons around our docks and creeksides. It is the only heron that stil nests occasionally here on the North Fork. ment and thrives in tropical growth. Mussels under this edge were the ribbed mussels that were now out of the water. Here they'll stay through whatever weather comes along. The hot, baking sun of summer or the frigid cold of win- ter is tolerated for that short time out of the water and then it will be submerged in the lifegiving incoming tide. Then feeding will be resumed. To help tolerate their radical environment rock weed, sea lettuce and other algae drape along the edge giving them some partial protection. Ancient Fiddler Holes Ancient fiddler -crab holes peppered the bog and occasionally in the water's edge we'd see a small green crab sitting at the entrance of one of the holes it had 0 —tg— ■ __R_ "..2. 82 Years Ago August 3, 1912 Taft Gets Republican Presidential Bid: We believe that Mr. Taft will grow stronger every day from now until the election. Suffolk County Republicans are not going to foresake a reliable party with sane, progressive, principles, for a reckless person like Theodore Roosevelt. Circus Delights Community: Sparks' Shows arrived in town early last Saturday morning and in a remarkably short time the circus grounds presented a busy scene. Tents went up quietly like magic and the work inter- ested a good many spectators. At noon a street parade took place and at two a performance was given. 50 Years Ago August 4, 1944 Showers End Summer Drought: The rain on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning broke the long continued drought on Eastern Long Island. It was the first real rain storm since late in April and ended one the longest droughts in many years. Although the month of July was wonderful for vacationers and the proprietors of sum- mer hotels, it was a great hardship and financial loss to farmers. Greenport Soldier Honored: According to infor- chosen for a home. As we quietly pad- dled along and evening closed around us, we startled a green heron that was just about to enjoy its latest catch of a squirming killifish. It flew away, annoyed by our interruption, with its meal still wiggling in its bill. The littic, black mud snails were everywhere. Their job is to vacuum any surface in their watery domain and in so doing help keep the balance of creeks in good order. Now and then we'd see a hermit crab, with its borrowed shell, scurrying across the bottom. Like people, when their house gets too small for comfort, they look for a larger home. He'll try the new, larger shell on for size and if it fits, he's off and on the go again in his mation received from the Eighth Air Force Station in Eng- land, 2nd Lieutenant Warren T. Kalbacker of Greenport, co- pilot on an Eighth Air Force B -17 flying fortress, has been presented the second Oak Leaf Cluster to the Air Medal for "Meritorious Achievement" while participating in heavy bombing assault on vital Nazi bombing targets in Germany and the occupied countries of Europe. 25 Years Ago August 6, 1969 Youths Work to Establish Park: The park on Third Street is being developed into an enlarged recreation- al facility by a group of 10 youths between 16 and 21 under the supervision of the Village of Greenport. The park pro- posal was loosely constructed so that the young workers can take part in planning and creating the park. Their employment on this program will serve as training in cer- tain areas and will provide them with an understanding of what is involved in the creation of a recreational facility. Greenport Rotary Honors Publisher: F. Langton Corwin, for 46 years the publisher of the Suffolk Times, was honored yesterday, Thursday, August 7, with the first "Man of the Year" award ever presented by the Greenport Rotary Club at a luncheon meeting of the Club at Mitchell's Restaurant. never - ending search for _food scraps found along the bottom. Occasionally we'd see an old, empty horseshoe -crab shell thht had captured some air in its cavities, floated up and became stranded amongst the marsh grasses. I could tell it was a male because of the two grasping claws it uses when mating. I wondered how many times in the early spring it had come to our shores, attached to a female to fertilize her eggs before she buried them along the water's edge. It's the only time of year that we see these ancient relatives of 200 million years ago before they return to the sea bottom where they'll spend another year searching the dark and muddy depths for worms, small crustaceans, eggs and other mysterious bits of food for their survival. Barbara's sharp eyes saw one or two spat oysters. These are the very small, young oysters that years ago were found along the banks of our creeks, later to grow into long, juicy oysters that we'd collect and eat. Our old driveway seemed almost a food deep with oyster shells that my dad had gathered out of the creeks over the years. Today, they are almost a thing of the past ... at least here in our creeks in Cutchogue. At one time there were oyster beds (where spat oysters were raised) marked by cedar poles throughout our bay. I remember the canvas marker flags fluttering in the wind as we used to sail around them. Could it have been those very oysters that spawned the oysters in our creeks years ago? Gone is that great industry that added so much to the East End's economy. Shedder, Crabs We saw the remains of only three blue -claw shedder crabs that told us larger ones had emerged from the old shells. Crabs wear their skeletons on the outside of their bodies. We, of course, have our skeletons on the inside. When the grab grows too large, it must move out of its hard shell and so it slips out the back as a soft - shelled crab to harden into a bright, new blue claw. Sorry to say, we saw no live crabs at all. Along the way we stopped to see my sister and her husband, who live on the creek. In front of their place it was sandy, and some light - colored fiddler crabs roamed before us. Everywhere was evidence of their small holes in the sand with the newly extracted balls of sand in front of them. They were off gleaning bits of detritus that fits into their food chain of survival. After our visit it was quiet and pitch black. The now receding moon wouldn't be up for another two or three hours so we had the wonder of paddling home in the quiet darkness. Every once in a while one of our paddles would hit a phosphorescent egg -sized globule of clear jelly that burst with its green - colored light in the dark. They brought back memories of when we were kids and went skinny- dipping on hot summer nights. Hundreds of minute phos- phorescent jellies slithered off our wet bodies as we stood up out of the water. What joyous days and nights and what a wonderful place to be brought up. Perhaps we should all be inspired as those who have been baptized in the waters and go down to our bay at night to become reacquainted with the mysterious wonders of the darkness.