In the Right Place: Sticking Points

I had an encounter with a young porcupine yesterday. He didn’t see or hear me at first while he was munching on some newly-greened grass. (Sex assumed.) Porcupine eyesight is poor, but their senses of smell and hearing seem to be fairly keen. I was trying to be as quiet as possible and was lucky to be downwind when I came upon him.

I got closer and he finally sensed me. He bristled his rear quills to start the typical defensive posture.

He slowly turned away to complete the defensive posture: rear quills up and spread and turned toward the perceived threat, tail flexed to whip about like a spiked club.

I never felt threatened. Porcupines are slow thinkers and movers. In my many experiences with them, they have never attacked or even lunged aggressively. They rely on their short tails to affirmatively swipe at threats. Contrary to myth, they do not “shoot” out quills like darts. You’re usually safe if you don’t try to touch them and stay out of tail range.

Whether porcupines have outlived any positive evolutionary role is another story. We seem not to have enough fishers to keep the numbers of these tree- (and dog-) harming quilled cuties down. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 5, 2025.)

In the Right Place: April Showers Watch

Here you see yesterday’s light rain helping to keep our vernal pools vibrant for the newly-wriggling lives and emerging flora there. Below, you’ll see two skunk cabbage spathes of the unusual yellow variety that have emerged recently in the bogs and seem to like the wet neighborhood:

We need that rain and more. Yesterday’s U.S. Drought Monitor showed that virtually the entire Maine coast and more than half the state have been classified as in moderate drought or abnormally dry. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 3, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Acceptance

Here you see the first light of yesterday reaching a white-tailed deer in the north field. She’s unaware that I’m admiring her calm acceptance of a difficult life that she didn’t choose.

It’s below freezing, but only by a little, and she’s been content to groom herself while awaiting the elemental pleasure of the sun’s warmth:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 2, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Not Draining the Swamp

Speckled alders, the wetland bushes and small trees, often are under-valued. Here you see the male catkins hanging from a leafless speckled alder yesterday:

These flower holders are full of pollen now and soon will fertilize the pine-cone-shaped female catkins on the same bush and nearby:

Speckled alders are good looking plant life, in my opinion. More important, their thickets provide cover and browsing for moose, white-tailed deer, rabbits, muskrats, beavers and other animals.  Songbirds, including black-capped chickadees, pine siskins, redpolls, goldfinches, woodcock, and grouse eat their seeds, buds, and catkins and many small birds nest in the shrubs.

Although their wood is not considered good enough for human buildings, beavers build dams and lodges with speckled alder. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 1, 2025.)

March Postcards From Down East Maine

March often is bedraggled here. She has nearly impossible responsibilities to fulfill and never enough time to fix herself up. Primarily, she has to eject winter, who often is an aggressive tenant that requires several efforts, and then she has to provide more light and give birth to spring, who always is a problem child. It’s no wonder that poor March often is in a fog. However, as you’ll see, March has a way with fog.

But first, as usual, we’ll wish that you were here with the four iconic scenes that we keep monthly visual track of. This month, you’ll see a panorama of March weather — Blue Hill and Blue Hill Bay with snow and sea ice; the mountains on Mount Desert Island over a mainland field of melting snow, the old red boat house enjoying the full sun, and Naskeag Harbor in rainy fog:

As mentioned, March is good at coastal fog; here are a few of her misty masterpieces:

We had quite a few snow flurries during the month, but most of them merely covered the landscape in a thin purification blanket. Of course, some purification, when combined with plowing, can lead to potholes that need to be filled.

Part of March’s spring birthing duties include providing enough rain to create vernal pools for the rising of aquatic and amphibian creatures and plant life. She performed these duties well this year.

It was not all gloom this March. We had some spectacularly lovely days of eye-squinting sun and blue porcelain skies that often were invigorated with racing clouds.

March flora is of the earliest kind, the cold-resistant pilgrims of the plant world: pussy willow, which wears fur catkin mittens, and skunk cabbage, which provides jester-hatted spathes to protect its flowers. This year, we again have had a few of the uncommon yellow skunk cabbage spathes.

On the furred fauna front, our generation of white-tailed deer yearlings seemed to survive the winter well and emerge in March with their coats almost unblemished.

As for feathered fauna, we’ve had wave after wave of Canada geese honking overhead and stopping for snacks. Some will remain here to breed; some will continue into Canada, if the reciprocal tariff is not too high. Less obvious are the small birds that come to pick holly berries, such as cedar waxwings.

For fauna of the wiggly variety, the glass eel (aka elver) season opened in March with a variety of nets being spread at stream mouths to catch the immature American eels as they migrate up to fresh water ponds. There also was the occasional early-rising garter snake skedaddling across trails.

On the waterfront, the scallop-dragging season ended in March for vessels that dredged Maine’s jurisdictional waters for the tasty mollusks. (Scallop SCUBA diving season ends in April.) Soon, the masts, booms, and shelling huts of these vessels will be taken down and they will spend the summer trapping lobsters.

Meanwhile, recreational craft and their gear continue to hang around waiting for their time or causing traffic jams when being taken to the boatyard for summer preps.

Of course, there always are “signs of the times.” This March, some were nationally and internationally political, some advertised gift shops:

Finally, perhaps March’s most stellar event was to perform a complete full moon eclipse for us (merged images):

(All images in this post were taken in Down East Maine during March of 2025.)

In the Right Place: March Multitasking

It’s March’s last day and she’s still hard at work using her spray hose to try to wash away the last vestiges of snow in the fields and woods. You have to feel sorry for March. Her short life is not easy.

She has to kick a whining and resistant old winter out of the house and give birth to spring, always a difficult child. She has to save us more sunlight, but provide the gray rain necessary to melt the snow and rouse the flowering plants. She has to get the season’s warmth going, but never seems to be able to keep the place comfortable for long. Good bye March; nice try as always!

Above you see an image taken down near Great Cove that seems to illustrate March’s multitasking with the past and future. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 25, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Classic Views

This is our rear window record of yesterday’s gentle spring snowstorm that lasted all morning, deposited about 1.5 inches of purity over everything, then left a fast-melting memory:

As a photographer, I’m grateful that I have a more beautiful view out of my rear windows than did James Stewart as the photographer in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 classic creep-out, “Rear Window”:

Of course, Grace Kelly doesn’t drop by regularly, but I do live with my lovely college sweetheart.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 29, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Skedaddling

It’s snowing as I write. The landscape is powdered, the driveway is solid white, and I’m wondering how this fellow here is doing:

He’s my first snake of the year, a common garter snake that dashed across my shady path yesterday and soon was gone. It was like a fast-disappearing apparition. Obviously, his cold blood had warmed up enough to enable him to reach skedaddling speed. He’s probably coiled up in a crevice now, patiently waiting for the snow flurry to stop.

It’s not surprising that my first snake of 2025 was a garter snake; they’re the most frequently seen snakes in the state, according to state wildlife reports. They eat mostly earthworms, but also feed on other animals that are small enough to fit in their greatly-expandable mouths, including very small birds. They give birth to live young during July through mid-September. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine. on March 28, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Hop Goes the Weasel

Here’s what I think are the tracks of a fisher that apparently was quickly bounding along in one of the last patches of the recent snow. One of these shy and solitary animals was seen by our lucky neighbor shortly before this image was taken.

They often are called “fisher cats,” but they’re neither cats nor do they typically feed on fish. They get their name due to their looking somewhat like a “fitch” or “fiche,” a European polecat or its pelt. Fishers (Pekania pennanti) are long, low, and muscular weasels with large claws.

Adult male fishers range up to 47 inches and 13 pounds, while the much smaller females range up to 37 inches and 6 pounds.  The adults have no significant predators other than humans. But fishers are very aggressive hunters of other animals. Here’s an image of the tracks next to my boot mark, which is 12.5” long:

They’re perhaps the only regular porcupine predators; they kill the quill-armored porcupines with a series of very quick and vicious face and underbelly bites. Surprisingly, they’re also a leading killer of Canada lynx in Maine, according to state wildlife reports. However, fishers are not at all fussy about their diets. Their diets include hares, rabbits, rodents, birds, fruits and nuts, any domestic cats and small- or medium-sized dogs that happen to come by, and the flesh of dead or dying animals that they find.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 25, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Ice and Snow on the Go

Here’s the water lily pond on the WoodenBoat campus yesterday. The ice and snow are out of many of our ponds, although not all. Given our history, it would be imprudent to say that all the snow and ice is leaving until next winter. However, we have come a long way in less than a month. At the beginning of March, the WB pond was iced in and encroached upon by snow:

Soon, I’m fairly sure that soon we’ll have trouble remembering what some of our favorite sights looked like in snow and ice. ((Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 2 [ice-snow] and 26 [no ice-snow], 2025.)

In the Right Place: Tiny Toms

American pussy willow catkins have emerged, despite Monday’s snowstorm, as you see from these images taken yesterday.  (Although a “catkin” sounds like a word coined for pussy willows, it’s a general botanical term for slim flower clusters with nonexistent or tiny petals.) These are the flower clusters of American pussy willow (Salix discolor).

In much of the country, pussy willow catkins usually are one of the first signs that winter has lost its grip. But not necessarily here, where winter sometimes makes a comeback in April. Of course, the common name for this furry plant, “pussy willow,” reflects the resemblance of its catkins to tiny cats or kittens. However, that “fur” only is on male pussy willows to protect their flower pollen from the elements; so, they’re all Tom cats.

The male flowers have no petals or scent; they’re just stamens that are heavy with pollen. The fur soon will be shed, allowing the stamens to cast massive amounts of dusty pollen to the wind, often producing small, drifting yellow clouds in the nearby air and sneezes in nearby noses. The wind has the job of making sure that some pollen finds eagerly awaiting female flowers.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 25, 2025.) See also the image in the first Comment space.

In the Right Place: Imperfect Storms

As you see, we had a spring snowstorm here yesterday, which raises the intriguing question: If April rain showers bring May flowers, what do March snowstorms bring?

In Maine, for one thing, they reportedly bring more skiing. March is the third best month for skiing in Maine, according to the Saddleback, Maine, resort’s ratings. Better than November and December, not as good as January and February. Of course, this comes from a March posting by the resort.

Nonetheless, for me, snowstorms after St. Patrick’s Day should be banned as unseemly. March is not very good at doing snow. And, the older she gets, the poorer her efforts. She often loses control and produces imperfect storms.  They range from self-consuming snow-turning-into-rain washouts, like yesterday’s effort, to snow-turning-to-ice devastators, like the one last year at about this time that caused major damage.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Fruitful Thoughts

I know a place where buoy berries bloom during our cold winter and in our turbulent spring. There are two species: Buoy lobstertrapicus, which is the high bush version shown above that even blooms in trees, and Buoy mooringmarkeria, which is more of a clinging vine, as shown below:

Of course, their habitat is the WoodenBoat campus. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 7 [tree] and 14 [“vine”], 2025.)

In the Right Place: The Glass Menagerie Returns

Here you see glass eel fishermen, male and female, setting up a Fyke net yesterday to catch migrating baby American eels before they swim up Patten Stream:

The lucrative season for these fish (yes, eels are fish) opened yesterday and will run through June 7, unless the State closes it earlier for conservation or other reasons.

These eels are now about three inches long and transparent except for their eyes and backbone. Some call them “elvers,” a name for young eels, while others say that the glass eels only become elvers when they are four to six inches long and turn opaquely yellowish like their larger parents. Here’s an archive image of them:

Fyke (usually pronounced “Fick”) nets are named after 9th Century Dutch netted fish traps. They’re large, thin-meshed funnel nets on long poles and/or ropes with a trap and capture bag at the end. They’re placed in the historic paths of the incoming eels that are migrating from the Sargasso Sea area and trying to get into fresh water to mature.

Under Maine regulations, the young eels also may be caught by license holders with a dip net or a “Sheldon eel trap,” which is a netted or screened box trap that is named after its Maine inventor.

The glass eels caught in Maine are sold to dealers at very high, fluctuating market prices, which have averaged over $2000 per pound in recent years. They’re then mostly resold to Asian importers at even higher prices. Most of the squirming youngsters reportedly are sealed into watertight containers and flown to various locations in Asia, especially Japan, where they’re raised into adult eels and resold as expensive delicacies for use in sushi and other traditional meals. (Images taken in Surry, Maine, on March 22, 2025, unless noted otherwise.)

In the Right Place: In Memory of Tom

Here you see Great Cove Drive extending to infinity with the empaneled WoodenBoat School boatshed sunbathing alongside. Great Cove is at this end of the Drive, behind the camera about 50 feet. The panels on the shed are removed in May when the beauties sleeping therein are awakened and prepared for their summer jobs in the Cove. Some peeping Toms like to look in the shed’s end windows during the winter and admire the uncovered beauties therein:

By telling you this, of course, I’m reminded of Lady Godiva (not Gaga), who was responsible for the coining of the term “peeping Tom.” Remember the tale of beautiful Lady G? She rode naked through Coventry to protest taxes while everyone was supposed to avert their eyes. But, poor Tom the tailor (understandably) couldn’t resist a peek and was struck dead (or blind in the more forgiving versions). The peeper who took the images here survived without incident, I’m happy to report.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 14, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Dreaming On

Well, spring has sprung – a leak. Ever since it officially arrived yesterday, we’ve been enshrouded in fog and episodically doused in rain. It hasn’t been inspiring, but it’s also not unusual. You have to learn to like (or at least be accepting of) wet and foggy springs to live an enjoyable life here on the Maine coast. Besides, many fogs make familiar sights, such as this one, dreamily different:

This image of spring’s opening act was taken a few minutes before damp (not high) noon in Naskeag Harbor yesterday. “Dear Abbie:” was in her usual guarding stance, the green-shuttered summer residence seemed to be squinting into the harbor, the tide was rising fast, and it was a relatively warm 42° F without wind.

“Abbie” will finish her scallop-dragging (dredging) season this month. I’ve got to imprint on my memory how she looks in the winter with her scallop-dragging and shucking gear – mast, boom, drag (dredge) and shelling hut behind the wheelhouse. She’ll be losing those and hauling lobster traps for the summer. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 20, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Honk If You Like Spring

Today is the first day of spring and I saw yet another flight of Canada geese this morning migrating north in the fog above Great Cove. We seem to be getting more of these jumbo-liner migrators this year.

You don’t have to be close to these birds to identify them from their slim necks, heavy bodies, and large, slow-flapping wings – not to mention their constant honking badinage. There also is their wardrobe of formal day-wear: wing collars and white bow ties, white vests, and well-tailored gray morning coats.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 18, 2025.)

In the Right Place: Harbingers of Spring, VI

We know spring is almost here when these neighbors, Wallace and Gromit, are out in the sun and smiling. They’re very friendly miniature donkeys that come to their pen’s fence for some nose-petting and a little chat when you come by.

Wordsmiths have a lot to consider with these animals. A “donkey” is NOT the same as a “mule,” which is the sterile offspring of a horse and a donkey. However, a “donkey” IS the same as an “ass,” which is derived from the Latin word “asinus,” meaning the age-old  “donkey.” (The scientific name for a donkey is “Equus asinus.”)

 A “Jackass” is a male donkey that also is called a “Jack,” while female donkeys also are “asses,” however, they usually are called “Jennies.”  Both male and female donkeys also are “burros,” the Spanish word for donkeys that also is used in English. Finally, the English word “donkey” is thought to be derived from the Middle English word “donekie,” meaning a miniature dun (brown) horse.

Thus, to be imprecise and drive wordsmiths crazy, Wallace and Gromit might be considered to be miniature-miniature horses. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 13, 2025.)

In the Right Place: A March Fog, Part II

The fog down here crawls haphazardly in from Great Cove behind me. When it reaches the fire pond, it rises to full height and strides confidently straight up the north field. The snow around the pond and the ice within it are as soft as vanilla sherbet and soon will be gone. But now they provide a pleasing contrast to the blurry, winter-browned landscape. The silence is penetrating. I feel like I’m inside an immense bell jar.

Once again there is the consternation of feeling I’m alone when I know I’m never alone here. My senses are just too dull for me to perceive my surroundings adequately. I search the woods’ edge with a long lens; sweep too quickly over a color change that triggers an instinct; move the lens back slowly, refocus. There!

The resting doe stares at me with what appears to be quiet disdain. She seems to know that my awareness skills are not as good as hers, here in her world. She also apparently has learned that I’m a member of an invasive predator species. She looks calm, but her ears and steady gaze tell me that she’s alerted and, if need be, she could spring up and be gone in a second.

She apparently has come to terms with predators. She was born with evolved instincts and has been taught by elders how best to deal with predatory behavior. Lately, I’ve come to realize that human education is lacking in that regard. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 16, 2025.) See also the image in the first Comment space.

In the Right Place: A March Fog, Part I

The fog has stopped at the wetlands, encircling them, but not fully entering. I infiltrate through and enter the bog. A damp chill is the first sensation. It’s colder than cool, warmer than cold.

The slow, sloshing sounds of my boots in the darkened vernal pools seem too loud and discordant, evoking memories of long-lost arpeggios. I head for where I know there’s an invisible curtain of balsam fir scent, and I boldly trespass through it with deep breaths, each a small thrill.

The surrounding fog suddenly decides to ease its way through the trees, seemingly searching silently for me. The movement triggers a prehistoric impulse that only occurs when I’m alone and realize my insignificance: Beware But Behold!

And then it starts to rain fat drops that I can hear gulp giddily as they dive into the pools and become spreading targets. The mood is broken.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 16, 2025.) See also the image in the first Comment space.