In the Right Place: Natural Light

This is yesterday’s sun setting behind the Pumpkin Island Lighthouse. (Thanks for the idea go to Werner Gansz, a fine photographer.)

Here's a daylight image of the three-acre island, taken last year:

The lighthouse became operational in 1854, signaling the rocky entrance to Eggemoggin Reach, northwest of Little Deer Isle. The island-studded Reach, known as one of the world’s best sailing channels, runs between Penobscot Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, with Blue Hill Bay in between. The Lighthouse was discontinued as such in 1933 and Pumpkin Island is now privately owned. (Little Deer Isle, Maine)

In the Right Place: Tough Luck

What we have here may remind some of Jackson Pollock’s ground-breaking images that (sometimes) were beautiful forms without inside or outside lines or positive and negative space. Well, this is ground-breaking, but literally so – it’s heather that survived an extended burial in snow here.

This tough beauty has for years been the symbol for independence and good fortune and sprigs of its flowers often were royal good luck charms bestowed by Queen Victoria on her favorite subjects. Its name apparently originated from the Scottish word haeddre, a descriptor of the wild, windy heathland where heather defies the elements with colorful cheer. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Fabulous Feet

A pair of Ospreys has nested nearby among the high spruce surrounding Great Cove. Their piercing calls to each other as they soar on the hunt often echo over the water and nearby fields.

These wild-eyed “fish hawks” dive at up to 50 miles per hour, splash into (and disappear under) water, and emerge with a squirming fish. This is where it gets unique:

Ospreys have a reversible outer talon that can be swiveled into a flying fish trap – two talons in front and two in back; they also have soles padded with a Velcro®-like surface to help keep the slimy prey in place; and, as they fly off to the nest or perch, they manipulate the fish so that its head is facing forward, making it more aerodynamic.

(Brooklin, Maine

In the Right Place: Creatures of Spring, Continued

One of the surest signs of Spring here is the reappearance of the elusive Spotted Mooring Amphibians, a cold-blooded species common on the coast.

They lie dormant in snow during the winter, emerge sinuously coiled in May, and then mostly disappear into the deep water – except for their colorful tail tips, which are designed to attract and grab other water denizens. The SMAs in this image were discovered basking at the WoodenBoat School near Great Cove a few days ago. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: A Gentle Life

Here we see the first Painted Turtle to resurrect itself from the muddy tombs at the bottom of our pond. He appeared yesterday. If history is prologue, he’ll soon be joined by three or four male and female summer painters to form a “bale” of basking turtles.

They’re gentle and discrete creatures: the male asks the important question by stroking the female’s face with his front claw; if she agrees, they’ll disappear into the depths of the pond and mate.

Soon thereafter, she’ll climb up into our North Field, make her nest, lay her eggs, and return to the pond while they incubate. If the raccoons, skunks, coyotes, and crows don’t find the eggs, some of the hatchlings may come back to our pond; others will look elsewhere for a summer place with a water view. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Naughty and Nice

This female Northern Flicker is waiting coyly.

Male Flickers are now challenging each other to duels: they sit within feet of each other, growl, and swish their beaks up, down, and around like fencers warming up; but, they don’t strike. They also will show their rivals (and, later, potential mates) a naughty flash of their brightly-colored feather shafts – but just a “flicker.” (Guess how they got their name.)

Male Flickers have black mustaches; females are clean shaven.  Both sexes spend as much time pecking dirt as pecking wood, since their favorite food is ants. Here's a male:

There are two major subspecies of Norther Flicker: the yellow-shafted (East) and red-shafted (West), with interbreeding by less fashionable Flickers in between. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: State of the Bog

Our bog is a small world unto itself, and we’re happy to report that, as we speak, it’s doing very well. It’s full of primal still lifes, including vibrant cabbage leaves emerging from the colorful Skunk Cabbage Spathes:

Fern Fiddlehead mummies are popping up all over the place:

Salamander eggs are throbbing in the vernal pools:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Eat Your Heart Out, Claude

It’s sunny, as we speak, and we have a bright view of the many local islands, above which gleams the crown of Isle au Haut, about 14 miles out in the Atlantic Ocean. Yesterday morning, we often could not see beyond Barbara’s garden. Ever-changing fog rolled in from the sea in waves, descended from the sky in curtains, and wafted islands with gossamer veils.

Claude Monet would have gone berserk trying to capture the shifting light patterns and perspectives. (His London trip to capture fog resulted in about 100 partial canvasses and 37 finished masterpieces.) We suspect that Claude would have loved watching yesterday’s fog swarm Naskeag Harbor Island, shown above and below.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Screamers

The male Red-Winged Blackbirds are arriving, first as broad-winged, high-flying silhouettes scouting for summer territory and then as epaulette-flaring, screaming sentries, once they have laid claim to a territory. 

The smaller, sparrow-like brown females will arrive once the homestead wars are more settled.  Here are a couple of last summer's females and a male in flight:

Then, the Red Wings will settle into one of the more polygamous bird life styles – a single male may keep up to 15 females in 15 different nests in his territory, each of which he fiercely defends as his own.  (Brooklin, Maine)

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)