We like this image of an ebbing tide in Great Cove last week, but we’re not sure why.
Perhaps it’s a scene in search of a metaphor. Perhaps it’s just a rock in the water. But, it doesn’t matter; we like it. (Brooklin, Maine)
This is a good time to go mushroom hunting, whether for food, visual delight, or to play the often-frustrating game of trying to identify all the strange and colorful fungi in your own area. The image immediately below, we guess, is of Hygrocybe coccinea, which also is known as the Scarlet Hood, Scarlet Waxcap, and – our favorite – Righteous Red Waxy Cap:
In addition to the Righteous specimen above, we’ve been working on identifying the following from a recent walk; see how you do:
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(Brooklin, Maine)
It was a good September here in Down East Maine. The dappled woods remained mostly crispy green, there was a bumper crop of Queen Anne’s Lace to brighten the browning fields; several good rains swelled the mossy streams into a state of merriment, and clear air made the coastal vistas breathtaking. It often was thrilling just to travel along our country lanes.
September also was a good month for birds. Our favorites were the Greater Yellowlegs Sandpipers high-stepping like drum majors on the low tide muck; the molting male wood ducks waiting to grow back enough feathers to accompany their svelte spouses southward, and the procrastinating female Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds that stayed here too long and had to strain to get nectar from the selfish late summer flowers.
In the cute-but-too-many category, our White-Tailed Deer fawns seemed to gambol more and more as the temperatures cooled and our Red Squirrels seemed to get more foul-mouthed when we interrupted their food-storing duties.
More important, this September produced a profusion of specialized migrating Monarch Butterflies — the last batch of the summer that, unlike prior batches, would travel to southern California and Mexico to preserve their species. We saw the full cycle of their creation in the month — eggs on milkweed>caterpillars>chrysalises>emerging butterflies that fluttered to the ground and then flew up and away.
While we’re wandering the animal kingdom, we should mention that, for the fist time in decades, we saw a Northern (DeKay’s) Brown snake here this September. We also had our usual reptile and amphibian neighbors, especially American Toads and Painted Turtles.
The waterfront was very busy this September. The annual WoodenBoat Sail-In for schooners was again a wonderful spectacle in Great Cove.
Many private sailboats visited the Cove last month, including the famous Alera, the Herreshoff-designed racer launched in 1904:
Naskeag Harbor, on the other side of our narrow peninsula, is where fishing vessels come to roost and visit the mid-harbor lobster smack and bait hut.
Many berries were latecomers this year due to a wet and chilly spring. Blackberries hit their delicious prime in September and Viburnum berries came and went before the plants’ leaves turned red. Unfortunately, invasive Asian Bittersweet berries were in profusion. On the other hand, our Winterberry plants and Mountain Ash trees were bubbling with berries.
Other flora that give September its character included Queen Anne’s lace waving in the wind; Bunchberry leaves blushing in the shadows; Beach Rose hips looking like squid, and Bull Thistles exploding.
September also was a very good month for Asters, both wild and cultivated. In the gardens, Morning Glories lived up to their names, and Dahlias were exquisite.
Our “wild apples” from the old trees of abandoned orchards and farms are a September standard. They provide cider for many people and survival in the winter for many of our wildlife.
Speaking of trees, September is the month that some maple trees begin their fall turning, while others remain vibrantly green., enabling us to better appreciate the seasonal transition.
The closing of the WoodenBoat School’s classes always is among the most poignant September moments. In Great Cove, the School’s perky small sailboats were led docilely ashore, washed, and nestled into their winter quarters. Their indestructible moorings were draped outside to brave winter storms in rough splendor.
As the School’s boatbuilding classes were ending, some of the student-built boats were put on display for sale to the public and others were stored in shelters.
Finally, September is the month of the Harvest Moon. This year, that moon was more distant than it has been for many Septembers, but the night was clear and the effect was magical.
(All images above were taken in September 2019 in Brooklin, Maine.)
We saw last week a silent September drama of the most serious sort for those concerned. The opening scene was a wildly fluttering Cabbage White Butterfly that was caught in several strands of a web.
Shortly after, the creator of the web, apparently a Hammock Spider, appeared from its hiding place and began spinning threads tighter and tighter around the Butterfly until it couldn’t flutter.
In about 15 minutes, the live Butterfly appeared to be submissive and was mummified in silk.
Then, the Spider delivered its poisonous coup de grace. It did not appear to cause pain. (Brooklin, Maine)
“Wild” apples are now in lush profusion here, crowding each other out on the branches of gnarly old trees from abandoned orchards and farms.
It seems that there are more apples than usual, which, some old-timers say, means a harsh winter.
Far from being the forbidden fruit that the Bible says was the downfall of Adam and Eve, apples are animal lifesavers around here; deer and other wildlife depend on them. (By the way, the Bible never identifies the forbidden fruit. Michelangelo depicted it as a fig, but the poet Milton, in Paradise Lost, decided it must be an apple, apparently based on an obscurity in the Latin version of the First Testament.)
Apple trees were brought to Maine in the 16th Century by European fisherman who planted them on the sea islands and shores where the men camped. Much of the apple crop that’s picked (and picked up) here now goes into cider presses.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Here we see Tuesday’s (September 24’s) storm coming in over Mount Cadillac in Acadia National Park across Blue Hill Bay.
Shortly after that image was taken, high winds, rain, hail, and lightning raked Naskeag Peninsula as the storm quickly passed over us. Our house was struck and the lights flickered, but didn’t go out. It was over quickly and, by evening, Great Cove was serene, as you can see here:
The next day was lovely. The schooner Stephen Taber was a beautiful sight sailing out of the Cove, which she dashed into for safety the day before:
Nonetheless, there sometimes is a price to pay for secluded beauty. The storm left us with no Wi-Fi (fried routing switch) and no TV (disoriented cable boxes and dish), which were fixed by yesterday. And, yesterday also was lovely. (Brooklin, Maine)
The bittersweetness of Autumn here is intensified by the knowledge that this week is the last week of classes at Brooklin’s renowned WoodenBoat School. Some of the most interesting people you could ever meet come to these esoteric classes, only three of which remain in progress.
One of the classes is Fundamentals of Boatbuilding, instructed by Bob Fuller. It’s a two-week course that is in its final week. The students produce works like this scaled down version of a classic Whitehall Rowboat, which the School has put up for sale outside of the classroom (background masked out):
Also for sale is one of the students’ Chaisson Dories, shown below behind the Whitehall. These two provide good examples of Carvel (edge-to-edge, smooth) Planking and Clinker or Lapstrake (overlapped) Planking.
Inside the classroom, some students are working on a Catspaw Dinghy. Here are some of them yesterday making things come together:
The second ongoing WBS class is Making Friends With Your Marine Diesel Engine, instructed by Jon Bardo. This hands-on course covers the care and repair of these motors. It’s not for those who are repelled by greasy hands. Here’s one of the students apparently removing a piston yesterday:
The remaining course is Building Half-Models, with Eric Dow as the instructor. It involves individual students using their woodworking skills to use historic boat design plans and build their own, precise half-hull model(s), layer by layer. It’s not for the impatient or the imprecise. Here’s one student being careful yesterday:
Meanwhile, works are being stored on the campus for possible use next year, including this eclectic collection out back:
If history is prologue, many of this year’s students will be back next year. The WoodenBoat School is that kind of place. (Brooklin, Maine)
We met a strange neighbor in our woods yesterday – a Dekay’s Brown Snake with a personality disorder. These snakes, also known as Northern Brown Snakes, are nonpoisonous, usually docile, and often don’t seem to mind when you pick them up. They’re considered to be good examples for children to learn about reptiles.
But, not this cantankerous, foot-long fellow. (Sex assumed.) He was sunning on the trail and, instead of trying to sneak off as we approached, he decided to stay where he was and deliver bluff strikes at us without opening his mouth. “This is my spot; don’t tread on me!” seemed to be his message.
Brown Snakes are known from the central coast of Maine south, but are listed as of Special Concern by the State due to few reported sightings. They often go unseen due to their size and shyness (usually). They’re easily distibguishable from our commonest snakes, Garfer Snakes, which are larger and have more distinctive dorsum (top half) stripes:
Brown Snakes eat things like slugs, earthworms, small insects, minnows, and the tiniest toads and frogs. On the other hand, these snakes are a favorite snack for larger snakes (especially milk snakes) and some birds (especially broad-winged hawks).
It’s tough out there. And, as in our world, having an attitude usually doesn’t help. (Brooklin, Maine)
It’s a poignant time in Great Cove. The WoodenBoat School’s sailing classes have ended and the School’s small boats are being pulled, seemingly reluctantly, from the water. These spirited vessels are now being power-washed and herded docilely to dark storage.
But, we suspect, many glorious summer memories remain bright for those who sailed them earlier this year:
The boats’ impermeable mooring gear – mushroom anchors, chains, lines, floats, and the like – also is being pulled and winched from the water and washed. But, it’s hung from outside timbers like the jewelry of giants.
The School’s famous boatbuilding courses will end Saturday (September 28), after which the School will tidy things up and close until 2020. We hope to be able to do a posting on the closing of the 2019 boatbuilding classes soon. (Brooklin, Maine)
Cedar Waxwings are social birds that like to tour the countryside in large groups. Strangely, these flocks are called “earfuls of waxwings” by those who insist on using collective bird names. Well, we got quite an earful of these sleek masked bandits yesterday morning.
At least 50 of them robbed us, taking mostly winterberries and serviceberries, but also spending some quality treetop time gleaning late summer insects.
Cedar Waxwings got their name from their love of small eastern red cedar (juniper) cones and the almost invisible dab of red near the end of their wings that looks like a drip of sealing wax.
(Brooklin, Maine)
We’re now at a critical time for our Monarch Butterflies: The “miracle generation” of the species is being born. This fourth summer generation here will not only be the only one to live beyond a few weeks, it will migrate south to southern California or Mexico.
Meanwhile, members of the previous Monarch generation are now taking their last sips of nectar, as this one was doing earlier in the week:
The life cycle of of each generation of Monarch Butterflies consists of four phases. The first is an egg, about the size of a pinhead, that is deposited on the underside of a milkweed leaf by a pregnant female Monarch Butterfly. She lays hundreds of eggs one at a time on this plant, which is poisonous to many predators.
The eggs quickly develop into the second phase, Monarch caterpillars (larvae). These are brightly colored to warn predators that they are poisonous from eating milkweed, the only food that they eat. The availability of this restricted diet has been a cause of concern over the years.
After about two weeks of gorging themselves, the caterpillars climb to a nearby high point — which often isn’t a plant — and spin themselves into chrysalises, the third (pupa) phase of the Monarch. In those chrysalises, a caterpillar will metamorphose into a primordial goo that incredibly solidifies into a tightly folded insect.
Usually, within two weeks from the time that the chrysalises were formed, the insects emerge as Monarch Butterflies, the final phase of their lives. Birth from that chrysalis can be a brutal struggle that lasts days, as it did for the female Monarch making her September 14 full emergence shown below. Once out of the chrysalis, this exhausted butterfly fluttered awkwardly to the ground, where she stretched and slowly moved her pristine wings for about 15 minutes.
Then, she flew erratic short and low trips for about 30 minutes, before soaring away on a breeze.
As mentioned, most Monarch Butterflies die within six weeks of their emergence during the summer. But not this female and other Monarchs born here as the days get colder in September and perhaps early October. They’re different in some unknown way. The future of their species here is their responsibility. Soon, they’ll somehow feel a duty to fly to southern California or Mexico, where they’ll rest in semi-hibernation, mate, and start next year’s migration north.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Naskeag Point’s picturesque sandspit, which really is a pebblespit, is attractive in several senses. It attracts tourist and local harbor-gazers, sea glass collectors, summer bathers, winter sea ice, dog walkers, shore birds, occasional seals, fishing vessel skiffs, kayaks, careless sailors, trucks with trailers, and lobster trap dumpers.
When it’s inconvenient to offload storage-bound traps at the Town Dock there, fishing vessel crews sometimes drop the traps into the water over the spit at high tide. At low tide, they back their trailers next to the traps, load them up, and drive them home to clean and store. (Brooklin, Maine)
Small numbers of Wood Duck returned to our area’s largest marsh pond last week and have remained there as of yesterday. The males are still in their summer molt (their “eclipse” phase) but can fly a little. In this phase, the males’ brilliant bouffant hairstyles are reduced to drab buzz cuts, although the boys do retain their big Maraschino cherry eyes:
The females’ eyes remain attractively dark and are highlighted by white eyeliner:
It’s thought that the severity of the summer molt among male Wood Ducks evolved as a survival technique. When molting, the usually brightly colored ducks are flightless at times; being drab helps to camouflage them when they’re most vulnerable. This can be especially important for Wood Ducks, which (true to their name) perch on branches with their clawed feet and occupy tree trunk cavities. (Brooklin, Maine)
The National Garden Bureau, which promotes the gardening industry and annually designates garden flowers of the year, has designated the Dahlia as the bulb flower of 2019. And, it just so happens that now is the best time in 2019 to see Dahlias around here. here are images of two Ball Dahlias that were taken last week.
The Dahlia was discovered by Europeans in Mexico, where natives grew it for its edible tubers, medicinal benefits, and hollow stems that were used for water pipes. It’s named after Anders Dahl, an 18th Century Swedish botanist who classified it as a vegetable, apparently based on its history.
Few gardeners today would chop their Dahlias into salads. The plants are among the most popular show flowers in the world and are constantly being engineered into new forms and colors. Here are a few from Maine gardens:
Most researchers recognize 42 present-day species of Dahlias and divide them into 14 groups, as of now. It seems that the only color that has not been produced in a Dahlia is blue, and hybrid speciaslists reportedly are working hard on that. (Brooklin, Maine)
This is the 46-foot fishing vessel BACC AT IT from Vinalhaven Island. She recently has been in our waters seine-netting schools of menhaden, the small perches usually called pogies here.
State and regional regulators reopened the pogy quota to avoid a lobster bait shortage. Ironically, that bait shortage concern was caused primarily by a protective reduction earlier this year of the quota for netting herring, the preferred lobster bait fish that has been stressed.
BACC sells some of its pogy catch to the bait and lobster smack operation for local fishermen here in Naskeag Harbor:
(Brooklin, Maine)
Here we see last night’s rising full moon, the first to rise on Friday the 13th since October of 2000. And, we’ll not see another rise on Friday the 13th until August of 2049. Although last night’s moon rose on the 13th, it didn’t reach full luminosity until 12:35 a.m. today, the 14th.
Last night’s moon also was this year’s full moon closest to our autumnal equinox, which occurs September 23. Thus, the moon was the Harvest Full Moon or Corn Full Moon, because its rise coincides with the traditional harvesting time for corn and other crops. Often such moons were bright enough to do some of that harvesting at night.
(Brooklin, Maine)
This young Osprey appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American.
To read the column, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column
Here we see the coastal schooner Angelique making the southern turn into Great Cove, followed by the Stephen Taber and Lewis R. French.
These are three of a dozen Maine windjammers that paraded in Great Cove Tuesday, September 10. They came for the 33rd Annual WoodenBoat Sail-In and evening party at the WoodenBoat School campus.
The red- (bark-tan-) sailed Angelique, out of Camden, was launched in 1980 and is 130 feet long overall. The big-flagged Taber, out of Rockland, is 110 feet long, and the gray-hulled French, out of Camden, is 101 feet. Both the Taber and French were launched originally in 1871.
Erratic winds kept captains on their toes and episodic, hazy sunlight frustrated photographers. Nonetheless, it was spectacular. Three-masted Victory Chimes, the largest of the schooners at 170 feet, required some fancy tacking and jibing when the winds softened and shifted. She’s out of Rockland and was launched in 1900.
Here we see the yellow-hulled Heritage overtaking Victory Chimes. The Heritage, out of Rockport, was launched in 1983 and is 145 feet long.
Far out in Eggemoggin Reach, Mary Day overtook the dark Angelique creating an interesting contrast. Mary, out of Camden, is 125 feet long and was launched in 1962.
Ladona and American Eagle, both out of Rockland, sometimes looked like ghost ships in the hazy light. Ladona originally was launched in 1922 and is 108 feet long. American Eagle was launched in 1930 and is 90 feet long.
The last of the official parade members were wide-beamed Grace Bailey, slim J.&E. Riggin, and small Mistress. Grace, out of Camden, is 118 feet long and was launched in 1882. The Riggin, out of Rockport, is 120 feet long and was launched in 1927. Mistress, out of Camden, is 60 feet long and was launched in 1960.
After mooring, the schooner passengers greeted each other and prepared for a party on shore, including good food, good music, dancing, and fireworks. Here you see the yellow-hulled Heritage moored next to American Eagle:
We should note an unofficial parade member that was present in Great Cove as the others began to arrive. It was the brigantine Actress, out of Belfast. She was launched in 1937 and is 56 feet long. Here she is going out to greet the arriving schooners:
(Brooklin, Maine)
Take a hard look at this image:
Those are maple tree leaves at their peak summer magnificence being ruffled by a slight breeze on a 72-degree (F) day last week.
It’s hard to tell how many more days like that, if any, we’ll have. Today, aAs we speak, it’s a gray, raw, and rainy day here, with 15-mile-an-hour wind gusts coming of the sea that make the 61-degree temperature feel colder. Leaves are fading and a few are falling. (Brooklin, Maine)
This female Belted Kingfisher has been a welcome angler in Great Cove this summer and early fall, even though, as with all her kind, she always has a bad hair day and curses profoundly at any human whom she sees.
She’s a daredevil fisherman, hovering like a helicopter over a school of small fish and then power diving headfirst into and under the water to catch one of them with her beak. (Ospreys are not so reckless – they go in talons-first and use those weapons to grab their prey.)
Here’s a male using a gangway to a pier as his perch:
Since many of Maine’s coves and other semi-protected sea waters have not been freezing fully lately, Kingfishers are staying longer and some reportedly have been over-wintering. The sloped banks of the Cove contain some good nesting areas for Kingfishers, which lodge and give birth in earthen tunnels. By the way, the origin of this bird’s name is unclear, but most researchers think that it stems from “king’s fishers.”
(Brooklin, Maine)