April is the month tasked with the important job of bringing showers needed for May’s flowers. This year, April was annoyingly exuberant. She brought more rain than was needed and more fog and cold than was wanted. The days in which she gave us serious sun, true blue skies, and racing puffy clouds provided startling contrasts.
Pumpkin Island in the Rain, Little Deer Isle
Blue Hill Bay and Acadia National Park Viewed from Brooklin
Brooklin Bog in the Rain
Brooklin Woods
Brooklin Pond in the Rain
Brooklin Spring-Fed Stream
On the waterfront, things are quiet here in April. The scallop-dragging season is over and the lobster-trapping season has yet to begin. For most of the month, there was only one, small fishing vessel in Naskeag Harbor. Yet, the vessels of the WoodenBoat School seemed eager to be let-out of storage and their mooring gear provided an impressionistic outdoor spring sculpture.
April also is a month that brings its own flowers, the first spring blooms. Some were pollen-laden lifelines for early-arriving bees and other insects.
Daffodil
Star Magnolia
Forsythia
Red Maple
Pussy Willow
Lichens, shelf mushrooms, and bog plants flourished in April’s wet weather.
Tree Lungwort Lichen
British Soldier Lichen
Red-Belted Polypore Mushroom
Skunk Cabbage Leaves Starting to Emerge
The wildlife highlight of the month was the return of Ozzie and Harriet, a pair of ospreys that have a nearby summer residence that I’ve been studying and photographing for four years.
The resident white-tailed deer start to shed their winter coats in April and the resident painted turtles arise from the muck at the bottom of ponds and hope for a little sun to get their cold-blooded bodies working.
As a personal aside, April is our anniversary month and always is brightened by an arrangement from Fairwinds Florist in Blue Hill. This year, the opening tulips were spectacular.
Finally, it rained on the night of the full moon, wouldn’t you know. However, I fortunately caught the moon the night before, when the human eye couldn’t tell that it was not completely full. It was named the Pink Full Moon by Native Americans because it arrived when pink flowers arrived, such as the red maple tree flowers above.
(All images in this post were taken in April of 2022 in Brooklin, Maine, except the indicated image taken in nearby Little Deer Isle, Maine, during the month.)