James Woods
Active member
October 1962
The Mill Pond
Across the
Street.
Autumn comes slowly to Long Island. The worst of the summer’s heat may have been swept away by early September west winds, and the salt hay and spartina in the salt marsh may turn sere by mid-September-but summer hangs on. And while there are few crisp days, trees don’t start to show colors until about the third week in October—leaves often remain into the tenderloin of November and until Thanksgiving. And we get those indolent September days which are so characteristic of the Northeast shore. Bright, clear and warm days with snapper-blues blues ruffling the surface of the incoming tide in the salt marsh. The kids are back at school and there is a lingering melancholy to the days-the bright days of summer gone.The beaches quiet and the energy of the summer gone.
For the gunner, these are days of anticipation. We work on our decoys, and caulk and paint our duck boats. In the sixties, the season was upon us in October, then in the 70s early November became the opener. So then the days of anticipation went on for a long period, I think to our benefit. When busy with work, the later season gave us more time to prepare, also heightened our appetites and brought more birds down.
Where I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island, I lived in Stony Brook across from a Mill pond, a pond created in the 1600s to provide power for a grist mill. It was about five acres with a half acre island in the middle. The outlet at the gristmill fed into a salt marsh of about 5,000 acres. By mid-September the family groups of local bred black ducks began to gather in a central flock on the island. We usually had a hundred local birds using the island. Coming home each evening from Junior and Senior High School in the 60s in the fall, I would check out my birds-a few mallards but the rest all black duck.
The seasons were always measured by the Mill Pond across the street where I lived. And spring fishing and autumn were the times that made all the tribulations of adolescence and high school tolerable.
By October the local birds were joined by migrants, but they preferred the more remote west side of the pond. No road, no houses, two spring creeks spring entering the pond out of the glacial moraine we all occupied, and a protective steep hillside of large oak trees. There was a path that encircled the pond which actually ran through some private land, but the owners were absent city folk. Circling the pond required not only trespassing but navigating a truly rickety bridge that ran across an inlet leading to a small pond. That shoreline covered an eighth of a mile with a many oak sweepers that fell into the pond. Large white oaks covered the sloping edge of the moraine which formed the west side of the pond. I learned about black ducks affinity for acorns when one brisk Saturday autumn morning, I put out 20 black ducks from the hillside next to the path under two huge white oaks. Truly puzzling, they were at my favorite stop to watch the birds come back into to the pond after I would push them out. I canvassed around to the old gunners, and they asked, “what trees? Blacks love acorns” In the 50 years since then, I have killed many black ducks, and woodies and some mallards with acorns in their crops.
Now, those fallen oak sweepers on the west side of the pond provided great cover for bass in the summer, and in the fall were littered with migrating black ducks from October until the pond froze over in December. From the time I was 13 when I arrived to live on Long Island in 1962, I circled the pond most afternoons after school and every fall weekend until I finished college in 1972.
I should say that I spent summers in Stony Brook from 1949 until I came to live there in 1962. So the pond was not new, my father and I fished there and I caught my first fish there off the Farnum’s property probably in the middle 50s-a bass which my dad and I cooked, not good. But to be there in autumn was new in 1962.
So I learned my waterfowl on the pond—or some of my waterfowl. In those days, as to puddle ducks it was black ducks, and mallards, period. In ten years that I haunted that pond, every day during the fall and winter until the ice, and fishing all spring and summer, outside of black ducks, I saw one pintail on the pond, one green wing teal and rarely when I flushed the blacks ducks in late October from the far side, I would see a small smattering of ducks with white on the shoulder of their wings—what were they? To the books, they were widgeon!! Disappointing not to see one up close, the books showed how intricately colored they were.
So in 2018 where is my pond now? One has to remember in 1962, my town was a small shore village surrounded by truck farms with local people and many summer people of wealth, status and means along the shore. Nearby was the Village of Nissequoque, and Head of the Harbor, many prominent New York families made this bucolic area populated by salt marshes, the Long Island Sound and imposing bluffs of the glacial moraine overlooking all, their summer homes. They melded in with the founding families which were the English King’s patent grantees. In particular the Smiths of Smithtown, the Lloyds, the Strongs and other early families on both the North Shore and South. I tell you this all only because, they were were the first line of defense to protecting these areas for the waterfowler. They held onto their lands into the 21st century, and while fiercely protective of their properties, the salt marshes for the most part were part of the public domain and access was available to a kid like me and so many others. Their properties encircled and protected these areas up until the later part of the 20 century.
Sadly, in the last twenty years, the properties of the founding families and homes of the first four hundred surrounding my salt marsh have been subdivided and where there were Stanford White homes tastefully fitting into the landscape are grotesque modern homes starkly out of sync with the landscape, with residents who know little of a salt marsh, gunning or the traditions which were generated on these North Shore marshes-the decoy makers, boat builders, clammers and fisherman. On the bluff that I would walk to from the pond (trespassing of course), which overlooks the entire harbor, is now a home owned by one of the richest men in the world—an imposing glass house which looks like a poorly constructed glass sky scraper. If I were to rig the end of Bayliss Meadow, which I did routinely, I would be rattling four shot off his windows. His house is a scourge on the landscape, and insult to our traditions and I guess to end these remarks, you just can’t go home again.
.
The Mill Pond
Across the
Street.
Autumn comes slowly to Long Island. The worst of the summer’s heat may have been swept away by early September west winds, and the salt hay and spartina in the salt marsh may turn sere by mid-September-but summer hangs on. And while there are few crisp days, trees don’t start to show colors until about the third week in October—leaves often remain into the tenderloin of November and until Thanksgiving. And we get those indolent September days which are so characteristic of the Northeast shore. Bright, clear and warm days with snapper-blues blues ruffling the surface of the incoming tide in the salt marsh. The kids are back at school and there is a lingering melancholy to the days-the bright days of summer gone.The beaches quiet and the energy of the summer gone.
For the gunner, these are days of anticipation. We work on our decoys, and caulk and paint our duck boats. In the sixties, the season was upon us in October, then in the 70s early November became the opener. So then the days of anticipation went on for a long period, I think to our benefit. When busy with work, the later season gave us more time to prepare, also heightened our appetites and brought more birds down.
Where I grew up on the North Shore of Long Island, I lived in Stony Brook across from a Mill pond, a pond created in the 1600s to provide power for a grist mill. It was about five acres with a half acre island in the middle. The outlet at the gristmill fed into a salt marsh of about 5,000 acres. By mid-September the family groups of local bred black ducks began to gather in a central flock on the island. We usually had a hundred local birds using the island. Coming home each evening from Junior and Senior High School in the 60s in the fall, I would check out my birds-a few mallards but the rest all black duck.
The seasons were always measured by the Mill Pond across the street where I lived. And spring fishing and autumn were the times that made all the tribulations of adolescence and high school tolerable.
By October the local birds were joined by migrants, but they preferred the more remote west side of the pond. No road, no houses, two spring creeks spring entering the pond out of the glacial moraine we all occupied, and a protective steep hillside of large oak trees. There was a path that encircled the pond which actually ran through some private land, but the owners were absent city folk. Circling the pond required not only trespassing but navigating a truly rickety bridge that ran across an inlet leading to a small pond. That shoreline covered an eighth of a mile with a many oak sweepers that fell into the pond. Large white oaks covered the sloping edge of the moraine which formed the west side of the pond. I learned about black ducks affinity for acorns when one brisk Saturday autumn morning, I put out 20 black ducks from the hillside next to the path under two huge white oaks. Truly puzzling, they were at my favorite stop to watch the birds come back into to the pond after I would push them out. I canvassed around to the old gunners, and they asked, “what trees? Blacks love acorns” In the 50 years since then, I have killed many black ducks, and woodies and some mallards with acorns in their crops.
Now, those fallen oak sweepers on the west side of the pond provided great cover for bass in the summer, and in the fall were littered with migrating black ducks from October until the pond froze over in December. From the time I was 13 when I arrived to live on Long Island in 1962, I circled the pond most afternoons after school and every fall weekend until I finished college in 1972.
I should say that I spent summers in Stony Brook from 1949 until I came to live there in 1962. So the pond was not new, my father and I fished there and I caught my first fish there off the Farnum’s property probably in the middle 50s-a bass which my dad and I cooked, not good. But to be there in autumn was new in 1962.
So I learned my waterfowl on the pond—or some of my waterfowl. In those days, as to puddle ducks it was black ducks, and mallards, period. In ten years that I haunted that pond, every day during the fall and winter until the ice, and fishing all spring and summer, outside of black ducks, I saw one pintail on the pond, one green wing teal and rarely when I flushed the blacks ducks in late October from the far side, I would see a small smattering of ducks with white on the shoulder of their wings—what were they? To the books, they were widgeon!! Disappointing not to see one up close, the books showed how intricately colored they were.
So in 2018 where is my pond now? One has to remember in 1962, my town was a small shore village surrounded by truck farms with local people and many summer people of wealth, status and means along the shore. Nearby was the Village of Nissequoque, and Head of the Harbor, many prominent New York families made this bucolic area populated by salt marshes, the Long Island Sound and imposing bluffs of the glacial moraine overlooking all, their summer homes. They melded in with the founding families which were the English King’s patent grantees. In particular the Smiths of Smithtown, the Lloyds, the Strongs and other early families on both the North Shore and South. I tell you this all only because, they were were the first line of defense to protecting these areas for the waterfowler. They held onto their lands into the 21st century, and while fiercely protective of their properties, the salt marshes for the most part were part of the public domain and access was available to a kid like me and so many others. Their properties encircled and protected these areas up until the later part of the 20 century.
Sadly, in the last twenty years, the properties of the founding families and homes of the first four hundred surrounding my salt marsh have been subdivided and where there were Stanford White homes tastefully fitting into the landscape are grotesque modern homes starkly out of sync with the landscape, with residents who know little of a salt marsh, gunning or the traditions which were generated on these North Shore marshes-the decoy makers, boat builders, clammers and fisherman. On the bluff that I would walk to from the pond (trespassing of course), which overlooks the entire harbor, is now a home owned by one of the richest men in the world—an imposing glass house which looks like a poorly constructed glass sky scraper. If I were to rig the end of Bayliss Meadow, which I did routinely, I would be rattling four shot off his windows. His house is a scourge on the landscape, and insult to our traditions and I guess to end these remarks, you just can’t go home again.
.
