In the Right Place: Wood Lovers

It seems probable that this recent visitor’s bad traits outweigh any good ones it might have. This is a spiny pig, according to the Latin origin of its name (“porcus” [pig] “spina” [spine]).

Porcupines like to eat wood, especially growing bark and stems in tree tops, and they kill trees in that process. When threatened, Porcupines attack with an amazingly fast swat of a tail that contains thousands of loosely fitted barbed quills. (They don’t “throw” quills.) The result of the attack can be misery for a dog, cow, horse, or (rarely) human.

We’ve not aware of any recognized benefit derived from this rodent, other than as a food. However, there is the recognized view that we should not destroy any historic part of our complex natural forest system without being certain of the effect on the whole system. Perhaps the practical answer is in numbers. Maine’s hunting regulations take the view that these rodents are numerous and those who want to kill them may do so any time and in any number. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Trust Your Feet

I guess my feet know where they want me to go.
Walking on a country road. ~ James Taylor

It’s finally May. It looks like May; it smells like May, and waves of new songbirds make it sound like May. Get outside and let the woods swallow you. If you can’t do that, get outside and walk on a graveled country road and listen to the birdsongs and the crunch of your feet – piccolos and snare drums. If you can’t do that, try looking at this image from yesterday. Let your mind put you on the back curve, walking slowly toward us with a smile on your face. May is a mind thing, after all. (Brooklin, Maine)

April Postcards From Maine

April came to us cold and hard. In the beginning, she added her snow to the receding March snow and then brought frigid, driving rain that turned uncomfortable days into miserable ones. Early April light  flickered on and off, already-full wood streams became torrents.

But, April eased up as she aged. She bestowed some beautiful days on us, often with high winds that stampeded the waters.

Nothing April did discouraged the Wild Turkeys from their annual spring rituals, however. The Toms defied the laws of physics, doubling their size with the flexing of muscles, and strutted about in competitions for the attention of the Hens; the Hens pretended to ignore the Toms for most of the month. But the Toms know it's a waiting game.

The young (Elver) American Eels also appeared on time and the nets at the mouths of streams were waiting to catch a fraction of these prized animals so that they could be air-shipped to Asia.

On the waterfront, April rain during low tide is a good time to scrub and prime boats that have been in the water all year, such as the 40-foot Pilot Cutter Flekkerøy, a visitor from Norway.

The month also was a good time to launch Sonny, the new 91-foot Cruising Sloop from the Brooklin Boat Yard.

And, in our Atlantic Boat Yard, Dear Abbie:, one of our favorite local fishing vessels, underwent major surgery all April after a heartbreaking accident. She’s in loving hands and is expected to be on the water again in May or June.

April, of course, is the month that new growth appears seemingly out of nowhere, including delicate Sumac leaves, graceful Skunk Cabbage Spathes, and new field grasses for the White-Tailed Deer.

Easter falls in April and neighbor Judith Fuller’s road banners gave us three ways to recognize it:

For larger versions of the above images, as well as many additional images of special moments during this April, click on the link below. (We recommend that your initial viewing be in full-screen mode, which can be achieved by clicking on the Slideshow [>] icon above the featured image in the gallery to which the link will take you.) Here’s the link for more:

https://leightons.smugmug.com/US-States/Maine/Out/2018-in-Maine/April/

In the Right Place: Experiments

Herring Gulls are common, which can lead to their being taken for granted.  They’re good looking birds, extraordinary flyers, monogamous and caring mates and parents, and they live for decades in the same general area – they stay “home.”

They’ll swarm incoming fishing boats for scraps, a characteristic that inspired a desperate experiment by the British during World War I: scientists fed Herring Gulls from fake German periscopes in the hope that the birds could be conditioned to swarm around the real thing near the coast of England and help detect submarines. It didn’t work.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: A Pleasing Memory

Here we see a small, tethered dinghy waiting alone Friday on a deserted beach, like a well-trained dog.

Its masters – known affectionately here as “The Vikings” –  live virtually full time on the Norwegian Pilot Cutter Flekkerøy (see post of April 27).

We remember hearing their laughter roll over the waters of Great Cove while they sailed this dinghy into the sunset on a beautiful evening last Fall. 

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Mysteries

The tiny flowers are appearing and causing their usual annoyances: (1) To see them well, we have to get down on our rickety knees and then get back up somehow, and (2) we’re not sure of the names of many of these cuties and, quite a few don’t seem to fit the descriptions in the field guides and online resources.

Oh well, perhaps beauty is best when it is part of a mystery. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Visitors

Yesterday’s rain, fog, and low tide proved to be a good time to spruce up Flekkerøy, a double-ender with a history around here.

She’s a 1936 Norwegian pilot cutter that took the Viking (North Atlantic) Route to sail here from Norway several winters ago and has been cruising the Maine coast since.

Apparently, they’ll soon head to Nova Scotia. A book by Flekkerøy’s engaging two-person crew, Bjørnar Berg and Klara Emmerfors, may be in the offing. Here's an image of her taken last summer:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Tongue-Lashings

This little bit of female fluff lives up to her name: Downy Woodpecker.

Males are virtually identical except for a red taillight in the back of their heads:

One of the amazing features of woodpeckers is their highly-adapted tongue, which has fascinated scientists (including Leonardo da Vinci) for centuries. Woodpecker tongues are huge in proportion to the birds’ heads, in which they’re coiled like circular springs and act like shock absorbers when the birds are hammering. When the birds are not hammering, their tongues can be extended into a crevasse where the appendages’ barbed ends spear insects. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Seeing Red

There’s something different going on in many of our Blueberry fields this year. The new leaves should be green in the Spring, at least not as red as they are now. (This image was taken April 23.) According to experts, the most likely cause of this “red tinging” is the unusual lengthy cold temperatures during this year’s first four months.

The tinge is expected to fade into green as temperatures climb (unless there also is a disease, which does not seem to be the case). In the meantime, we’re enjoying a reminder that, in the Fall, the fields will (or should) turn even deeper reds than these, as the plants start to nod into dormancy and their pigments (anthocyanin and carotenoids) are synthesized. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: One for All and All for One

We thought we saw a rare Triple-Tailed-Tom yesterday morning, as this non-doctored image indicates:

But, it was just those Old Boys playing Three Musketeers again for a Hen who couldn’t care less:

They tried to keep her still by singing "Girl of My Dreams" as a trio, but she was having none of it.

You have to admit, though, that the Boys' makeup and costumes are fantastic (even in the literal sense):

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Waiting

Our deciduous trees and bushes are filigreed with millions of buds -- a dull haze that is just about to explode into green. We watch and wait impatiently.

Here's a closeup:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Unconnected Dots

The Gulf of Maine reportedly contains more islands than all the islands of the other east coast states combined. There appear to be at least 4,600 Maine islands, including 15 unbridged ones with year-round human populations; many private, summer residence islands; a varying number of islands on which sheep are the only full-time residents; a growing number of nature preserve islands, and some islands consisting of granite ledges that appear only at lower tides.

After the American Revolution, Massachusetts owned the islands as public land until the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when Maine was lopped off Massachusetts as the 23rd state. Thereafter, Maine began auctioning its islands to interested persons. Happy Earth Day! (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Change

Greening is the beginning of Spring, and some of it finally is starting to happen in the fields around here. We’re not the only ones to notice, as you can see.

Nonetheless, it’s still unseasonably cool. When this image was taken, at 7:11 this morning, the temperature was 37 degrees (F). It probably will peak today about 10 degrees higher, if it stays sunny. A few seconds later, we saw why these are called White-Tailed Deer.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: The Remedy

Yesterday, the depressing weather we’ve been having reminded us that we were overdue for our regular mental tune-up. We went to our favorite place to poke around under our hood: a roiling stream in the dark woods, where the water's shapes and music are constantly changing and the smell of damp moss rises like incense.

The old gray cells are working a lot better today. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Size Doesn't Matter

This guy is just a little bigger than a credit card, about the weight of two pennies, and has the courage of a lion when it comes to protecting his territory.

He’s too small to be King of the Forest, but he’s just right to be a Golden-Crowned Kinglet. (His mate is virtually identical, but without the touch of red-orange in her golden crown.)

Many GCKs are full-time residents here, braving the cold and eating seed and dormant insects. They have evolved a curious feature: each of their tiny nostrils is protected by a single feather, perhaps warming the incoming air. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: A Newtonian Moment

Fungi are full of interesting tricks. Take these Red-Belted Polypores (Fomitopsis pinicola), for example. Their shelf-like appearance on trees places them in a group called “Shelf Fungi” or “Bracket Fungi.” The undersides of their colorful “conks” have small tubes containing their reproductive spores.

Shelf fungi position themselves the way they do so that their tubes are pointed downward to allow gravity to help disseminate their spores. But, when the dead or dying host tree falls – here’s the neat trick – these fungi slowly reposition themselves on the now-horizontal tree to, once again, take advantage of gravity. This “positive geotropism” often results in a fungus “shelf” becoming a fungus “pretzel.”

Thanks to neighbor Dr. David Porter for guidance on geotropism. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Pardon Me

Despite days of driving rain and freezing nights, the Skunk Cabbages’ flower-containing spears (“Spathes”) are breaking through the ice-skimmed bog waters, bringing us some of the first Spring color.

By summer, the Skunk Cabbage will be a regal, shade-producing canopy for smaller wildlife:

The plant’s name is uncharitable, but descriptive; it has bad breath when it flowers or is bruised. But, that’s why the plant has survived for centuries: that odor is very pleasant to bees and other pollinators and obnoxious to larger animals that might crush it. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: The Blackbird That Is Not

Common Grackles are back, looking for summer real estate and significantly increasing the noise level in our trees and marshes. Their strange name comes from its Latin root, “Gracula,” which is thought to have been coined to imitate one of the sounds made by the birds.

Many call these birds “Blackbirds”; however, in the right light, the males can glow with iridescent hues of purple, blue, and bronze. Grackles apparently will eat anything that looks like it has nutrients, including smaller birds and parts of food-caked wrappers. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Doin' What Ya Gotta Do

This is a Spotted Salamander apparently after its so-called “Big Night” breeding frenzy. Warming temperatures, melting ice, and reproductive urges have gotten these and other species of salamanders on the move this week – virtually always at night –  heading toward vernal pools and shallow streams, where they swarm while laying eggs and sperm.

Concerned humans with flashlights have their own Big Nights, giving the marching amphibians a hand crossing roads and assisting the state in surveying the little troopers. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Stepping Out

We’re not sure, but we think that these might be the instructions for how to do line dancing if you have no hands and feet.

(Brooklin, Maine)