In the Right Place: Loony

Common Loons are now fishing in abundance in Great Cove. This one had discarded his boring winter garb and was wearing his svelte black and white summer outfit a few days ago. He had not quite yet gotten his summer red eyes to top things off.

These birds were not named Loons because of their lunatic-like wailing at the moon; they apparently got their name from the Old English word “lumme,” meaning a “lummox” (clumsy person). Their powerful legs are set way back on their body and, without water to prop them up, they’re very clumsy on land.

However, that design, a good pair of lungs, and solid (weighty) bones make them one of our best water diving birds. They can quickly dive over 200 feet and hold their breath about eight minutes. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Sensational

We were traveling the coast after having a delicious pizza on the lawn at Tinder Hearth when the light began to do things that were almost too much sensory stimulation for a full stomach. The sun was reluctantly setting, burnishing the sky over the Bagaduce River into orange-gold:

As we went south, the Bucks Harbor waterfront tried unsuccessfully to hold onto the dying sunlight:

The moon -- full and big -- began to rise over the trees and fields of Brooksville and Sedgwick:

We raced to get to Naskeag Harbor and made it just in time: there she was, the full moon shooting her glitter path like a torpedo into the Harbor:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Chocolate?!

Our first visiting schooner of the season, the Stephen Taber, sailed into Great Cove Saturday afternoon and sailed out Sunday morning, as you see her here raising anchor and departing. She’s a National Historic Landmark out of Rockland, Maine.

This 110-foot windjammer was launched in 1871 and still does not have an engine. But, don’t worry about the passengers – the Stephen Taber is reputed to serve gourmet food and her visit to our Cove was part of an advertised four-day “Wine, Dine, & Chocolate Cruise.” Chocolate?!

Well, the promo says it’s Black Dinah Chocolate from Blue Hill, but they could have done just as well with chocolate from the Brooklin Candy Company.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Remembering Private Gray

We went to the Naskeag Cemetery yesterday, which we try to do each Memorial Day weekend.

As we entered, the blossoms of the crabapple tree to our left were starting to tumble onto the veteran’s flag and gravestone below the tree.

That stone was small, plain, and embedded flat into the grass; it probably was a government-issued gravestone. The stone didn’t say much about who was buried beneath it, but it said enough: it was Virgil N. Gray, an Army private from Maine during World War I who died at the age of 70 in 1961.

Thus, Virgil survived the war and died a civilian. Nonetheless, we have an expanded view of Memorial Day. We like to remember our war survivors as well as our fallen. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Outrageous

We had a major eruption on our bedroom windowsill yesterday morning. There was no noise or spewing lava, but there were plenty of bright colors. Our Hibiscus plant’s single bud opened to reveal an outrageous color combination.

These flowers contain both male (stamen) and female (pistil) organs. Historically, they apparently were used as romantic signals in Tahiti: if a woman there was wearing a Hibiscus behind her left ear, she was in a relationship; if one was behind her right ear, she was looking for a relationship. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Cove Report

A few days ago, this rogue fog bank entered part of Great Cove and, for a few minutes, swallowed the color-giving sunlight there. Then, the fog drifted off to maraud elsewhere and the sunlight came out of hiding. The lonely outboard skiff, the only WoodenBoat School vessel moored in the Cove now, ignored the rude treatment.

Meanwhile, the rest of the School’s fleet is being prepared to return to the Cove soon to keep the skiff company:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Summer Visitor

This Chipmunk lives in our rock wall. These little squirrels eat seed, fruit, nuts, insects, worms, birds and their eggs, and even fungi. Their name apparently is an English transliteration of “jidmoonh,” the Ottawa Tribe’s word for “red squirrel.”

The single most frequent activity of the Chipmunk here is to eat his food on our deck and restore the primal instincts to Bianca, our house-arrested cat four feet away. When he’s not there, Bianca eagerly looks for him through the screened door. See first Comment image.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Smart

Weeding is not a high priority around here. Many of us are comfortable with grass that is festooned with bright Dandelions. Besides, Dandelions are interesting. Their name, based on the French “dent” (tooth), means lion’s tooth, referring to the plant’s coarse leaves.

The entire plant is edible and there are some who say the flowers make a decent wine. More important, Dandelion flowers are virtually the first flowers to bloom in our often-cold early spring; they are lifesavers for emerging bees and other needy pollinators. 

The tough Dandelion plants also come equipped with smart technology: they close their flowers at night and during rain to protect their pollen, a process known as nyctinasty.  Here, they're staring to close:

The flower heads mature into "blowballs" containing single-seeded fruits attached to detachable hairs that become kite tails when the wind comes by at lifts a seed into the sky.

The flower heads mature into spherical seed heads called blowballs[7] or clocks (in both British and American English)[8][9][10][11] containing many single-seeded fruits called achenes. Each achene is attached to a pappus of fine hairs, which enable wind-aided dispersal over long distances.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Getting the Blues

Tree Swallows are now iridescent blue streaks strafing our fields:

They do stop to bicker with each other over summer residences:

They also reject their given name by perching on colorful man-made objects, including kayak racks, traffic signs, and fence posts:

These swallows consume enormous numbers of microscopic midges, mosquitoes, and other tiny insects, but – unusually – they also eat berries. Consistent with their lifestyle, they have hyper hygiene habits: they bathe by quickly skimming a pond with their bodies, then swooping up at high speed to get a blow-dry. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Globalization

Star Magnolias (Magnolia stellata) stood up to the bullying of our Winter, perhaps because they’re originally from high elevations in Japan. They’re deciduous with graceful undulating flowers, such as this one, that burst upon the early Spring scene before their leaves appear.

As their leaves start appearing – now – the rays of the stars drop to the ground and create a little shag carpet under the plant. The native American Magnolias are either deciduous (e.g., Big Leaf Magnolia, Magnolia macrophylla) or evergreen (e.g., Southern Magnolia, Magnolia grandiflora).

To complete the international story, the genus Magnolia, which contains hundreds of species, was named after the 17th Century French Botanist Pierre Magnol, who was one of the pioneers of plant classification. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Spinking and Spanking

The Bobolinks are back, thank goodness; it’s always a relief to see them again. Their species has been decreasing drastically, apparently due in significant part to the disappearance of suitable spring fields for nest-building. Here, we see the male with his bleached hairdo:

The sparrow-like female is not at all conspicuous -- which is what you'f expect of evolution for a ground-nesting bird. Here she is:

The species received its name from the sound of its bubbling song. In 1855, William Cullen Bryant wrote a popular children’s poem that formalized the bird’s name to help youngsters remember its song: “Robert of Lincoln, is telling his name/Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link/Spink, spank, spink….” (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Cove Developments

The first vessel to return to moor in Great Cove for the summer did so earlier this week. As usual, it was Lucille, shown below. She’s a small fishing vessel used for environmental monitoring and research by the Shaw Institute. (Susan Shaw, the Institute’s founder, is a neighbor on the Cove; the Institute formerly was named the Marine and Environmental Research Institute.)

A few days after Lucille moored, WoodenBoat School’s Babson II was tied to a working mooring to assist with getting the other WBS boats and gear into the Cove. She’s an outboard skiff workhorse used for many purposes, including ferrying students to WBS sailboats for classes.  Here's Babson II:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Thriller

You won’t see this bird on your feeder; in fact, you probably won’t see much of it in the woods, where it lives.

This is the aptly-named Hermit Thrush, a plain-looking bird that would prefer to be heard rather than seen. And, now is the time to hear it. These birds, male and female, are singing to each other as the woods leaf-out and breeding season approaches.

Hearing the Hermit Thrush’s song while walking through deep woods is among the best of the delicate thrills that musically-sensitive humans can experience. It’s like hearing a flute glissando imitating a gurgling brook, with watery harmonics that echo – but better. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Behind the Scenes

There’s a lot of hard Spring work that goes into the Summer recreational glories and commercial fishing successes of Maine’s coastal waters. Early yesterday, as we see here, the moorings for WoodenBoat School’s and visiting boats were being launched into Great Cove.

The floating white Mooring Buoy and its gear were dropped seconds before the above image was taken; that buoy is attached by chain below to a very heavy Mushroom Anchor gripping the Cove’s floor.

Below, one of the launching crew is tossing out the Pennant line and its smaller orange Pickup Buoy; this line is attached to the top of the Mooring Buoy. As a boat comes by, an occupant can grab the Pickup Buoy by hand or hook and tie the boat up to the Pennant.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Yesterday's Lesson

If you’re watching Alewives swim upstream and you get a feeling that you, yourself, are being watched, don’t look around first; look up. There may be a rowdy-looking poacher without a fishing license hidden in the trees.

This young adult Bald Eagle, quickly glimpsed yesterday, is still growing into his white hood and dark body.

(Penobscot, Maine)

In the Right Place: Clean Sweep

Maine’s beautiful rock-bound shores and pocket beaches are most evident at low tide on islands, such as nearby Deer Isle here.

In this image, we see a good amount of granite ledge bedrock that has been swept clean over the years by the winds, surf, and constant tidal action. The 10- to 12-foot high tides cover the dark rockweed and algae about every six hours. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Puzzler

We simply don’t understand why some visitors keep saying that Brooklin makes them feel as if they’ve entered a time warp.

Everything significant around here seems to us to be up-to-date – for example, take a look here at the price of gas at the General Store a couple of days ago! That price is about as up-to-date as you can get. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Luck

We got lucky and, for a few seconds, had a clear view of this Northern Parula Warbler. She was migrating and feeding in lower branches that had not leafed-out.

Soon, she and her kind will reside at the top of the tree canopy. And, that’s when they become indistinguishable from dappling sunlight and effectively disappear. They’re only an inch longer than a credit card with a mostly blue-gray and white body that is camouflaged with a yellow daub on the breast and yellow-green daub on the back.

James Audubon named them Blue Yellow-Backed Warblers, but later name-givers thought they looked like titmice (genus Parus) and named them Parulas (“little titmice”). The Northern species lives mostly in the United States and the yellower Tropical Parulas live mostly in Central and South America. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Fit for a King

Yesterday's Spring Concert of the Bagaduce Chorale was an afternoon of extraordinarily beautiful and complex music performed extraordinarily well. Under the baton of energetic Chorale Music Director Bronwyn Kortge, the singers, Piano Accompanist Christina Spurling, and the GEM Orchestra filled Blue Hill's First Congregational Church with music "Fit for a King" -- the concert's theme.

The concert opened with Johann Michael Haydn's Te Deum in C, an ancient hymn with complex harmonies. The remainder of the first half was a rousing performance of Beethoven's Fantasia in C Minor (Choral Fantasy) by Ms. Spurling accompanied by the Chorale and Orchestra. Here we see Ms. Spurling's reaction to a standing ovation:

The second half was taken up with intricate English Coronation anthems by George Frederic Handle and ended, as usual, with Peter Lutkin's Benediction. As the concert came to a close, as if on cue,  the honeyed afternoon light made a stained glass spring bouquet glow.

Here we see the beginning of a standing ovation for Ms. Kortge and all performers:

(Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: Sowing the Wind

Early Friday afternoon, the steady wind speed was 14 miles per hour with gusts of up to 24. That's when John McMillan of Blue Hill arrived here at one of his favorite spots. He asked that the exact location not be identified because what he was about to do was dangerous and it gets increasingly dangerous as more people (especially novices) do it in the same area. John is an expert Kiteboarder.

After pumping up the frames of his huge kite and harnessing himself to its long lines, John takes off, ripping through the water on his short board.

Much of his maneuvering is on the edge of his board:

But, every now and then, John gets the urge to fly:

(Brooklin, Maine)