In the Right Place: Vernal Pooling

Our vernal pools are overflowing with enchanting reflections. It’s almost disorienting to slosh through a stockade of reflected woods, especially in the areas that are dense with tall spruce and balsam firs that have lost their lower branches.

I haven’t seen or heard any amphibians yet, but it’s been chilly. In the area that you see here, we usually have springtime performances of intense medieval cantatas from our large wood frog tabernacle choir. During the last two years here, for some inexplicable (but no doubt environmentally nefarious) reason, few salamanders have returned. I’m hoping for a resurgence of these silent amphibians in 2024. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 19, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Prone Perspective Department

Cumulus clouds were on the rise here yesterday morning, creating scenes worthy of the best sky watchers. (Thomas Cole, J.M.W. Turner, and N.C. Wyeth come immediately to mind.) Here you see the first billows rising over a local landscape.

The clouds kept billowing as they moved northeast over Blue Hill and Jericho Bays, crossing over the western mountains on Mount Desert Island:

However, by early afternoon they had decided to huddle into a solid gray mass that was no longer cumulus, it was overcast.

As you may know, the name “cumulus” is derived from the Latin for “piled” or “heaped.” They’re the clouds that most attract people who like to lie down on the slope of a hill and imagine celestial shapes. Yesterday, there were turtles, clowns, camels, and castles drifting by. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 18, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Nearing Season’s End

Here you see a scallop “drag” (dredge) on the Town Dock with the Fishing Vessel “Christopher Devin III” in the background. The scallop-dragging season ends in Maine on March 27, but the scallop-diving (SCUBA-type) season continues into April.

It looks like the winter fishing vessels other than CD III have taken an early leave and entered their spring break. During the break, they’ll be removing their drags, masts, and booms and cleaning up for summer lobster fishing.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2024.) See also the image in the first Comment space.

In the Right Place: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

This post is a tribute to the late Judith Fuller, a good neighbor who used to display this enigmatic roadside banner at the head of her driveway on and around St. Patrick’s Day every year. The image was taken during the snowy year that she died.

One of my many small regrets is not having asked Judith (who had a searing sense of humor) what was the message of this banner’s weird illustration? Why a flamingo wearing a Leprechaun hat and dancing on (stomping?) shamrocks? Was it “Everything is (or should be) Irish – in the poetic sense – around this time of year?” (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2019.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Harbingers of Spring

Thursday, I stumbled onto a gaggle of 12 Canada geese in a local pond that was stockaded on three sides by cattails.

My sudden appearance caused the surprised geese – the jumbo jets of the goose line – to execute a mass, explosive takeoff.

Now, Canada geese (Branta canadensis) average somewhere between three and four feet in length, often have wingspans of over 7 feet, and weigh up to 8 pounds. A five-alarm takeoff of a dozen of these monsters in a confined space is a happening – two dozen big, black, fast-churning webbed feet making long, splashing strides across the water to get some uplift, accompanied by clamorous cursing in the form of booming honks.

Canada Geese are the only goose species that breeds, winters, and migrates through Maine. (Other wild geese just migrate through.) These birds were extirpated here in the last century. However, they have become increasing plentiful due to a state revival in the 1960s that “has been a bit too successful,” according to Vickery (“Birds of Maine”).

Climate warming has resulted in increasing numbers of these geese overwintering. These full-time residents produce young that become non-migratory because the immature geese have not been taught to migrate by being part of a high-altitude wedge headed south; migration is not instinctive in them.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Water, Water Everywhere

It rained all night; it’s raining as I write, and it’s expected to rain all day, perhaps with some mixed snow for seasoning. But it’s not very cold. We may set a record for precipitation in March this month and have an early spring in which our sunny days are special. I sense the stirring of salamanders already.

Our ponds are full, as you can tell from the above image of the WoodenBoat waterlily pond. Our bogs also are full and our woods are wet, as you’ll see from the image below:.

A wet spring is welcome in this era of Climate Change. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 13, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Valuable Migrants

This image appears in my monthly column in the current Ellsworth American. Those are baby American eels called “glass eels” and they’re Maine’s most valuable wildlife, if you judge value by the price-per-pound. Click on the image to enlarge it. To read the column about the extraordinary life, travels, and prices of these fish (yes, eels are fish), click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Swamp Lemons

These are unusual, perhaps rare, all-yellow eastern skunk cabbage spathes. They’ve returned to the same area that they appeared in last year, when I first reported on them.

Usually, our skunk cabbage spathes are covered in seemingly random purple and yellow-green splotches:

It’s mysterious; I wonder if these swamp lemons are another Climate Change phenomenon, some kind of pigment problem. I also wonder if the coloring on the spathes is intended to attract pollinators.

These images were taken yesterday, but the spathes have been up about two weeks and have endured cold, high winds, and torrential rain. Skunk cabbages, which generate their own heat, are the first flowering plants to reappear here each year. The flowers are inside the pixie-hat-shaped spathes, into which our earliest pollinators (often flies) can crawl and be protected from the elements and predators. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 12, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Daylight Storming Time

Here you see usually placid Naskeag Harbor this morning on the first Daylight Savings Time day of the year.

She’s experiencing daylight storming conditions after losing an hour of sleep – whipping rain and wind gusts of over 40 miles per hour from the East-Southeast:

“Christopher-Devon III” was the only fishing vessel to risk staying in the Harbor today; despite some bucking, she looked secure:

We’re under High Wind and Storm Warnings until 5 p.m. today and a Coastal Flood Warning until 2 p.m. We’ve lost electric power and are on generator as I write. It could get worse, especially the wind, but things don’t look serious yet for those who don’t intend to take a swim.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 10, 2024.)

In the Right Place: State of the Woods

Substantial rainstorms and relatively warm temperatures this week have chased virtually all of the snow and ice from the woods without damaging the trails, although they are a bit soggy in places.

Off-trail, many pools of water remain, creating little runoff streams full of happy water that races freely down inclines toward the sea, sometimes creating two- or three-foot miniature oases that appear and disappear in the dappling sun:

It looks like we’ll be having a vibrant spring. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8 and 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Rocks and Wracks

When you look at this image, there probably will be little doubt in your mind why we call that growth “Rockweed.”

It’s other common name, “Knotted Wrack,” also has a partly obvious origin: this organism is “knotted” with little air bladders that float its “blades” up at higher tide to get needed sunlight. I found it interesting to learn that it’s called a “wrack” because “sea wrack” is the old name for “seaweed.” (Even more interesting: historically, “wrack,” once meant something cast up from the sea onto the shore. That word evolved into “wreck” and “ship wrack” became “ship wreck.”)

The scientific name for this seaweed is Ascophyllum nodosum and, not surprisingly, “nodosum” means “full of knots.” There are other, similar seaweed species that are also commonly known as Rockweed simply because of their trait of anchoring themselves on rocks.

Rockweed is not a weed or true plant and it is not limited to rock habitats. It’s one of our brown marine algae. It has no roots; it uses a “holdfast” mechanism to glue itself to hard surfaces, including pier pilings. But, it’s often ripped from its base by rough seas and can be harvested mechanically or by hand for conversion to fertilizer and other usages. 

In Maine, there’s tension between many owners of intertidal shorefronts who refuse to permit commercial harvesting of their Rockweed, especially mechanical cutting by Canadian interests. Basically, the owners’ primary concern is that Rockweed should be allowed to flourish because it provides an environment and food source for over 100 marine species. The harvesters and their supporters primarily argue that the organism is renewable and harvesting it provides needed jobs. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8 and 6, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Angelic

The conditions were magically right for taking portraits of fishing vessels yesterday in Naskeag Harbor. The tide was going out and rain clouds were gathering, drawing most of the color out of the day.

There was virtually no wind and, where the water was still, it seemed like a polished black onyx table. Where the tide and current rolled slowly, the water seemed to turn into hammered silver chasing. The white vessels began to glow almost angelically in the fading light and orange mooring buoys seemed to have been turned on at the flip of a hidden switch.

Above you see FV “Dear Abbie:” and, below, you’ll see FV “Tarrfish.”

They soon will be stripped of their masts and booms and allowed to rest a while before the lobster season. The Atlantic sea scallop “dragging” (dredging) season ends this month and the scallop diving season ends in April. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 8, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Rural Politics Department

Yesterday was Super Tuesday, the day of presidential primaries in 15 states and American Samoa. As the late House Speaker Tip O’Neil liked to say, “all politics is local.”  In our little town of less than 1000 full-time residents, election voting is held in the Town Office conference room, which you see here:  

We have four cardboard “voting booths” for filling out paper ballots while comfortably sitting down. There is no more hand-counting of those ballots. There’s a sealed and computerized ballot box to do that. It’s that dark gray container with a computer screen on its top, behind the good-looking voter in the image (who just happens to be my wife, Barbara).

You slip the end of your filled-out ballot into the gray ballot box and it grabs and swallows the submission with a slurp. It checks the ballot for errors, counts and tabulates it with the other votes, and stores it securely inside, just in case it might be needed for a recount. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 5, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Shell Shucked

The Atlantic Sea Scallop “dragging” (dredging) season ends this month and our all-season fishing vessels will then get a rest until they go out for lobster trapping in June or July. Here you see a shucked sea scallop shell.

That hard housing is more about camouflage than color. It looks somewhat like the living and operations area of TV’s famed Starship Enterprise, but it is a shape that helps the mollusk “swim.”

Sea Scallops swim by slowly opening their shells and rapidly closing them. They look a bit like a skipping stone, but underwater, not above. They have up to 200 miniscule eyes along the edge of a “mantle” just within the shell rim to see where they’re going.

These bottom-resting animals can live up to 20 years. Their shells usually are not much longer or wider than six inches, but there is a report of one that was about 9 inches long. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: A Beckoning

We had a hint of spring yesterday. The temperature reached the comfortable mid-forties (F), the rain eased off to a botherless sprinkle, and the skunk cabbage shoots were so excited that they did their famous dolphin trick. The bog beckoned.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 3, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Recklessness

Here you see the waters of Patten Stream yesterday afternoon as the skies darkened with rain clouds.

I find that, the older I get, the more I become drawn to freshwater streams such as Patten, no matter what the weather – the cold, clear water running fast and recklessly through wooded, rock-strewn courses. How I wish I could run fast and recklessly through the woods once more. (Image taken in Surry, Maine, on March 2, 2024.)

In the Right Place: The Blues

Here you see one of the small, apparently unnamed, islands in Blue Hill Bay’s clear waters yesterday. When the tide gets just a little lower, that nubbin of land is accessible by foot and a good place for children to play in the real, three-dimensional world.

Blue Hill, for which the Bay and Town are named, broods in the left background of this image; it’s virtually mountain-sized and gets a blue cast to it at times. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on March 1, 2023.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

February Postcards From Down East Maine

Fickle February couldn’t make up her mind whether she would bring us more winter or the beginnings of spring. So, she brought us a little of each, and added her own special touches. She also gave us an extra day of herself this leap year to remember her by.

There were sunny February days that froze the on-and-off snow cover into ice and unseasonably warm sunny days that melted the snow away and softened the ice in ponds.

There were surprisingly high and low February tides and some of her winds were worthy of the March lion.

February followed the examples of December and January and was stingy with snow, but generous with sea ice, fog, and rain.

As for flora, most of the vegetation remained in winter deadness, but we still had winterberry fruit on the branches throughout February and the skunk cabbage (which produces its own heat) was burning its way through the snow and ice.

In the fauna department, our resident white-tailed deer flourished during February and our annual winter convention of common eiders, Maine’s largest native duck, prepared to leave us in March.

On the waterfront, it was Atlantic sea scallop season all of February with the winter fleet bearing masts and booms to dredge (“drag”) for the tasty mollusks. Meanwhile, the WoodenBoat School’s summer fleet remained in hibernation while its mooring gear was left to live with the elements..

February’s diversity was well-suited to the diversity of structures here on the Blue Hill Peninsular.

There were two unique events here this February: repairs of the damage done to our shoreline during December’s and January’s extreme storms and a “cold-water dip-in” (a mostly Maine thing) in the frigid waters of Naskeag Harbor to raise money for abused women.

Of course, February is when maple trees are tapped for their sweet sap and the full Snow Moon rises.

Finally, February sunsets and afterglows — when the weather allows us to see them — can be almost as good as January’s clear day-ends. There’s an intriguing subtlety in the February evening green and yellow nodes that mingle with the burnt orange glow of the last light.

(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during February 2024.)

In the Right Place: Happy Leap Day!

Today is February 29, usually known as a Leap Day in a Leap Year. Today is when one custom calls for a woman to propose marriage to the man she wants to marry. Scientifically, it’s the day added to February every four years because Julius Caesar (and subsequent calendar controllers) determined that we had to make up for the gradual loss of seasonal time in our imperfect calendar.

Where’s the “Leap”? A standard year consists of 365 days, which (oddly) is 52 weeks (of 7 days each) plus 1 day. If your birthday were on a Sunday one standard year, it would be on a Monday the next standard year. In a Leap Year, your birthday would “leap” over that Monday to Tuesday because of the extra day.

However, if you were born today, on February 29, you would be a “Leapling” and have an actual birthday only every four years. (Most Leaplings celebrate birthdays on February 28 or March 1 in standard years; some claim with a smile to be much younger than their contemporaries because they have fewer birthdays.)

As for that marriage proposal custom, it supposedly started in Ireland, where St. Brigid reportedly negotiated with St. Patrich for the right of women to propose to the man of their choice, but only on Leap Day so that the situation didn’t get out of hand. The idea allegedly was to provide a little countervailing balance to the powers of the sexes the way a Leap Day provides a little balance to the length of the seasons.

Speaking of balance, in some areas, reportedly, if the man refused to accept a woman’s serious offer of marriage, he had to give the woman something of significant value. (Leighton Archive Image taken in Brooklin, Maine.)

In the Right Place: The Fix Is In

They talk about Maine’s “rockbound coast,” but lately some of that is no longer original. The extreme storms of December and January caused considerable erosion along Maine’s coast and Naskeag Harbor suffered its share. Here you see the just-repaired northeastern sweep of the Harbor area:

The bank has been shored-up with fill dirt, a layer of containment fabric that is covered with medium-sized stone riprap, and a nubby blanket of larger rocks, which makes it more rockbound than ever. The boat launching area also has been enlarged with the addition of more interlocking cement launch slabs:

( Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on February 17 and 26, 2024.)