In the Right Place: Familiar Change

It’s time to publish the May view of the iconic Conary Cove boathouse for the record. Here you see this landmark in the mysterious light of a May morning that can’t decide what kind of a day she wants to be.

The boathouse was damaged slightly during one of this year’s vicious winter storms and has been repaired, but not repainted yet, as you can see.

The scene simply cannot be ignored by any passerby who is not eye-dead. To many of us, it’s one of those familiar, but paradoxically ever-changing, sights that just makes you feel a little better while on your way to someplace else. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on May 16, 2024.)

In the Right Place: O’ Nest Report VI

It’s been another week of tedious waiting and infrequent sightings at the Osprey Nest, the summer home of Ozzie and Harriet, a local osprey couple. This image is the most of Harriet that I saw all week; she’s been lying very low and moving very little. I suspect that she’s incubating the family eggs, which will hatch in June.

At least I had a good opportunity to study this summer home. It’s a fortress built decades ago and added to each subsequent year. It was constructed in the space left by a blown-out top of a 100-foot spruce on the shore of Great Cove.

I saw NOTHING of Ozzie all week. That’s zero sightings of our hero. Zilch. Nowt a feather! I can’t figure out his schedule for delivering fish to Harriet.  I went to the nest at least once a day and at different times this week: no sign of our able fisherman coming home with a fat fish that’s still flipping.

But, here’s one of my archive images of Ozzie doing his duty as a reminder:

Note that ospreys almost always point the fish’s head forward when flying with it because it is aerodynamically efficient and easier to get a secure grip that way. (Primary image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 17, 2024.)

In the Right Place: A Sure Sign

It must be getting close to that time, that wonderful time: summer by the sea. Here you see a sure sign: “Vulcan,” Brooklin Marine’s moorings vessel, setting moorings in Great Cove yesterday. Soon a summer fleet of varied and colorful sail, power, and rowing/pulling boats will be hooked to those moorings out there, bobbing and swinging in between flights of salty-scented freedom.

Basking nearby were some small sailboat mooring gear – metal mushroom and rotary anchors that will be chained to the roped buoys.

They’re being readied by the WoodenBoat School to be set in the Cove, where only the buoys and some of their rope will be visible until fall.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 15 and 16, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Double Dapples

Dappled light often makes it difficult to notice this naturally-dappled, five-inch warbler that recently arrived from the south. It’s a Magnolia Warbler (Setophaga magnolia) and a male judging by the broad white “arm band.”

He’s not in a magnolia tree, which he doesn’t especially find attractive, nor is he colored like a magnolia. In fact, he usually prefers evergreens in the spring.

These birds are apparently misnamed. The story is that Alexander Wilson, the “Father of American Ornithology,” collected one of these warblers from a magnolia tree in Mississippi in 1810. The species had not been officially named, so he gave it the common name of “Black-and-Yellow Warbler,” which was appropriately descriptive.

However, Wilson also gave the warbler the scientific species name “magnolia,” apparently based on the incorrect assumption that the bird was attracted to magnolias. “Magnolia Warbler” was easier to say than “Black-and-Yellow Warbler,” and the birds’ common name officially became “Magnolia Warbler” after being used for decades.

In fact, to confuse things further, in the spring and fall you might see a birder look up toward the top of a spruce tree and hear him say: “There’s a magnolia!” He would not be referring to a magnolia flower growing on a spruce tree. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 13, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Sunny Beam

It’s not every day that you see a yellow-hulled lobster boat. ”Sun’s Up,” one of the smaller-but-brighter local fishing vessels, is back bringing sunshine to Conary Cove. Judging from her deck, she’s eager to set some traps.

Our inland (state) water fishing vessels usually start to return to the trap lines in June. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on May 11, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Color Me Short

It’s time to publish the May view of Blue Hill for our year-round visual record. As usual, this image is taken from our favorite Hill-watching cove, where we can get a good idea of any cloud activity and see the clear, greenish water of high tide or the muddy bottom at low. High tides isolate some of the little islands that are accessible by land during low tides.

As you may know or infer, at some atmospheric times, the Hill takes on a blue cast. The massive mound is one of the major local landmarks. The town at its foot also was named Blue Hill, as was the Bay seen here. It’s a big hill, but it is 66 feet short of 1,000 feet high, which was the height requirement to be called a “mountain” when Blue Hill was officially named by Europeans. (Image taken in Blue Hill, Maine, on May 11, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Enchanted

Purple leaf plum trees (Prunus cerasifera) are starting to bloom. The buds create galaxies within the tree’s universe of dark leaves. When they open into delicate flowers and are found by dappled sunlight, they seem enchanted. (See also the image in the first Comment space.)

These are on an ornamental plum tree that produces only a few small plums a year. It’s not an agricultural/orchard tree that produces large plums that are grown for fruit or for drying onto prunes.

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

In the Right Place: Happy Mothers’ Day

We salute caring mothers wherever and whatever they are, from beach strollers to barn swallows and beyond.

In the Right Place: O’ Nest Report V

It’s been mostly a week of tedious waiting at the Osprey Nest, the spring and summer home of Ozzie and Harriet. I hardly ever see Harriet, who seems to be spending virtually all of her time lying low and unseen in the nest. Occasionally, she’ll stir and briefly raise her somewhat untidy head and shoulders so that I’m able to see her.

Although it seems a bit early for her to be laying eggs and/or incubating them, I prefer that interpretation to inferring that she’s injured or otherwise ailing. It usually takes about 40 to 45 days to complete incubation. So, I’m assuming we’re in that waiting phase of family founding.

I haven’t seen a lot of Ozzie this week, either. I can’t figure out his schedule, if he has one. Above, you see him doing one of his fly-overs while I’m there. I have seen him deliver fresh fish by unceremoniously plopping it into the nest. He does that after posing with his scaly prize and gulping down his share of it in an old birch tree that’s near the nest. That posing-gulping-and-plopping routine seems to be part of his daily activity.

In the birch, as you see above, it’s easy for him to keep his eye on me and vice-versa, when I’m there at an opportune time. He seems comfortable seeing my car with the big lens sticking out of the window, which is a sight that he’s probably seen for years.

Most important, Ozzie appears to be acting as if all is going the way it should go, and he would know better about that than I would. I think that we both may be sharing the hope of seeing three or four featherless, red-eyed nestlings in June. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 3 and 7, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Not Time for Tree Party (Yet)

This image of a towering Maine pine tree appears in my monthly column in the current Ellsworth American.  To read the column about Maine’s unique Arbor Week opportunities relating to planting and celebrating trees and other flora, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Slow Sweeps

Greater yellowlegs (Tringa melanoleuca) and their half-sized cousins, the lesser yellowlegs (Tringa flavipes), are arriving here. These sandpipers are easy to identify as yellowlegs at the beach, when they’re using their disproportionately long and disturbingly yellow limbs to wade in the shallows. But greater yellowlegs pipers, such as this fellow, also work the marshes alone, where it’s a different story.

It’s not that greater yellowlegs are hard to identify in marshes; it’s that they’re almost impossible to SEE when they stand still there. Their yellow legs can seem to be dead vegetation and their neutrally-checkered bodies make their familiar shapes dissolve into the complex backgrounds.

Fortunately, greater yellowlegs seem to find it impossible to stand still when they’re secretly watching you looking for them. They’ll often teeter-totter in place, flit nervously, or fly off fast and low. That’s when you’ll notice them most.

Nonetheless, when you’re slowly sweeping a big lens along a marsh edge and your viewfinder suddenly finds a yellowlegs that’s standing still and secretly watching you, it can be one of those slightly-creepy-but-delightful discoveries. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 5, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Records Division

Here’s our monthly photographic record of this iconic view from Brooklin’s Amen Ridge, with a semi-hidden bonus: a bald eagle hurrying home that you might have missed on your first glance.

As you probably know, this scene is one of the views to the east from our peninsula across Blue Hill and Jericho Bays to the western mountains on Mount Desert Island. MDI is Maine’s largest island and is accessible by bridge. It contains most of Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor, MDI’s largest town. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 3, 2024)

In the Right Place: Seasonal Wardrobes Department

American red squirrels, also known as pine squirrels, are easing out of their grayish winter coats and slipping into their reddish summer jackets here. They soon will be mostly red with dark stripes along their sides, sort of the rodent version of racing stripes.

This one also has something going on near the shoulders. I wonder if those patches might be a case of mange from mites, which I’m told is not unusual in red and gray squirrels.

Nonetheless, this little fellow seemed chipper and normally nasty when cursing me out Saturday. Red squirrels (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus Erxleben) are one of our most unsociable, aggressive, and territorial mammals, notwithstanding their size. They usually don’t even tolerate their own mate or any other squirrel species in their territories, except when breeding.

Some of them will take food handouts from humans when they invade human territory, but when we invade their territory, most get angry and sputter, growl, and deliver curses in squirrelese. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Surf’s Up!

Many forsythia flowers are peaking here now with bright yellow blooms that probably will last about two or three weeks. The bushes are in various shapes. The ones that have been allowed to grow without restraint often form waves of bright yellow that seem to be arriving like surf.

Those that are pruned often look like yellow explosions erupting unexpectedly. Some larger plants along the sides of structures often become huge yellow barriers.

As you probably know, the buds for the plant’s tiny four-petaled yellow flowers are on last year’s branches; they bloom before the leaf buds on the new wood. When the flowers fall and the bush becomes fully leafed-out, forsythia becomes a dense green bush.

The plant is native to China, but has been a favorite in the United States for many years. It was named after the Scottish horticulturist William Forsyth (1737-1804). (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Peaceful

Naskeag Harbor was calm and reflective yesterday. The two moored fishing vessels taking their spring break there added just the right touch for the peaceful mood. Below, you’ll see “Christopher-Devin III,” a Nova Scotia design lobster boat (a “Novi”). Her scallop fishing mast and other gear haven’t been removed yet, but will be gone by the summer lobster season.

As you’ll see below, “Tarrfish,” a classic Maine lobster boat, has had her scalloping gear removed and been cleaned up a bit after her winter season’s scallop dredging (“dragging”) and diving by her captain and owner, David Tarr.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: O’ Nest Report IV

It’s been a week of great concern, brief relief, and then worrisome confusion at the Osprey Nest, home of Ozzie and Harriet. I watched the nest on Sunday through Thursday, sometimes multiple times a day. I neither saw nor heard Ozzie or Harriet on any of those days.

The nest looked abandoned, but it is deep and I can’t peer into it from my distant perspective, which is through a long lens stuck out of a car parked at the edge of a field. I was beginning to panic, but there always is the hope that I was just visiting the right place at the wrong times.

Then came sunny yesterday. When I arrived, the nest still looked abandoned. I decided to hunker down and spend some serious time there. Nothing relevant happened for 52 minutes. Then, there was a blur to the right: It was Ozzie! He flew onto a lower branch of an old birch tree near his home tree. And he had a good-sized fish in his talons!

Ozzie began to tear apart and eat the fish’s head, which is his usual starting point. The nest remained inactive and silent while he ate gustily. After more than 15 minutes of tearing and gulping, Ozzie stopped eating, defecated, looked at the nest and started calling with a series of loud, high-pitched Osprey “Cheeps.” And calling, and calling. This went on for more than 10 minutes without a response. And, of course, by then I’m thinking, “Oh God, she’s gone; Harriet’s jilted him or she’s dead!”

Then, there was a “Cheep-Cheep” from the nest that still looked empty. But, no. Soon, Harriet’s head appeared over the edge of the nest, looking down at Ozzie. When that happened, Ozzie flew to the nest, delivered lunch, and tried unsuccessfully to copulate with his mate. He then flew off over the Cove and Harriet ate hungrily without comment. The scene happened so fast that I couldn’t hand-focus my big lens well. Here’s Ozzie delivering the fish:

I don’t know what to make of this.

Harriet’s lying low in the nest for extended periods is consistent with egg-laying or egg-brooding behavior. But, it’s very early for that, based on past years at the nest and a little research. She didn’t appear injured, but then I haven’t seen her fly for over a week. I wonder if it’s somehow related to the higher temperatures and more violent storms brought on by Climate Change. Let’s hope that there’s a better explanation by next Saturday. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 3, 2024.)

In the Right Place: As the Saying Goes

This is the reaction of a molting white-tailed doe that was surprised at seeing me in yesterday’s light rain:

On seeing this (for some weird, inexplicable reason), I thought of what was once famously said by Joe Louis, the legendary heavyweight boxer of the 20th Century, before a fight: “He can run, but he can’t hide.”

On the other hand, speaking of inappropriate quotes, this hiding doe’s nearby companion might have been inspired by Captain John Parker’s order to America’s first troops at Lexington Green: “Stand your ground!”:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 2, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Muscle-Bound

Back in the day, some of us teenage boys would get preened up and congregate on a street corner or other place where people were going by to ogle and comment on the passing young women. There even was a popular song about “Standing on the corner, watching all the girls go by.” We thought that we were irresistible and never wondered why most of the girls never gave us a second thought. Dignity seems to develop late, if at all, in males of all kinds.

Well, take a look at these four Toms yesterday doing the wild turkey strut-and-gobble shuffle:

And, this was all about one, that’s 1, I say ONE passing hen. And, she also never gave the Toms a second thought:

Pity the poor Toms who are compelled by nature to take the initiative to propagate the species. Researchers point out that these birds have to exert a tremendous effort to flex the musculature system over most of their body and keep it in peak tension for extended periods to do the strut-and-gobble shuffle. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on May 1, 2024.)

April Postcards From Down East Maine

April, the bringer of Spring, this year also brought us a significant snowstorm; torrential and damaging rain-and-wind storms; a historic solar eclipse; a white full moon named Pink; the end of the scallop fishing season; the return of fascinating flora and fauna, and some tingle-inducing sunny days. We, of course, begin with sunny days and their reflections.

In her first week, April brought forth a significant snow storm and all the beauty and trouble that go with such events. The snow flakes soon were followed by more damaging torrential rain and high winds.

The precipitation swelled the streams to flood levels and the winds brought down trees, which brought down power lines, which brought out power company trucks and road graders on our country lanes.

As for our flora, our earliest flowering plant is the beautiful (unfairly maligned) skunk cabbage. (It doesn’t emit bad odors unless crushed.) It didn’t seem to be bothered by being under snow or under water, probably because it generates its own heat and hides its flowers in pointed pixy hats (“spathes”).

Our trees weren’t leafed out, but that made it easier to see the arthritic curvatures of old apple trees, the fuzzy blooms of red maples, and the cats’ paws of pussy willows.

Blue Quaker ladies and yellow daffodils often kept company in support of Ukraine. On a larger scale, eager masses of forsythia were welcomed by the waving buds and pom-poms of star magnolias.

In the formative stage, the arrow arum had not yet grown its massive arrow heads and the ferns had not grown out of their fiddleheads.

On the wild side, the white-tailed deer had some frosty-flaked breakfasts, the migrating birds began to return, and the painted turtles rose from their murky beds to bask in the sun. Of special interest was the return of a pair of ospreys to a nest that we monitor yearly.

On the working waterfront, scallop-fishing season officially ended in April and the dredging (“dragging”) booms, masts and netted dredges (“drags”) were removed from the fishing vessels and stored. On the recreational waterfront, fleets of lazy boats continued to snore in their winter sheds as their mooring gear braved the elements.

As to things lunar, April was spectacular. The April 8 moon created a historic total eclipse of the sun for much of central Maine and a 97 percent eclipse (all but a radiating sliver) for us here on the coast. We were able to see and photograph the sun and interfering moon through solar-filtered (black polymer) glasses and camera attachments

Finally, later in the month, the April full moon rose on a chilly evening. It’s called the Pink Moon, one of the names that Native Americans gave it because it appears when pink phlox does (so the say). Nonetheless, it was a white moon and not nearly as spectacular as the black (new) moon that dared to hide the sun. But what was poor April to do? She had used up most of her magic by then in a bravura performance.

(All images above were taken in Down East Maine during April 2024.)

In the Right Place: Star Bursts

Our star magnolia buds are bursting hourly into beautiful, free-form flowers like this:

The wind sometimes tosses the sun-radiating petals in a way that creates a pom-pom effect, with the whole bush wildly waving cheers.

The buds look like large pussy willow catkins at first, and then they burst and the flowwers unfurl out:

The plants (Magnolia stellata) are among the first large plants to flower in the spring. As with many of our more outrageous flowering plants, star magnolias are natives to Japan. They reportedly were introduced in the United States during the difficult 1860s. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 29, 2024.)