In the Right Place: Trapped Art

July has been a good month for abstract art here, especially mobile masterpieces of the lobstering kind.

Neat stacks of colorful lobster traps and gear are going out to fish late this year due to the confusing health and market situations.

With a little selective focusing, they can be viewed as utilitarian works of art and unintended decoration.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Soaked

Double-Crested Cormorants seem to be enjoying the summer here with fewer boats to disturb their fishing and sunbathing. Many despise these birds due to their fondness for defecating on manmade objects and their competition with fishermen.

Nonetheless, they are perhaps our most skilled fishing bird. They can dive deeply, stay down long, use their crackling blue eyes to pierce the murkiness, and pump their powerful legs simultaneously to obtain significant underwater propulsion.

However, Cormorants (Phalacrocorax auritus) are not good fliers compared to other feathered fishermen, especially air divers (e.g., kingfishers, ospreys, eagles). And, they seem to take forever to take off from the water. That, according to the literature, seems to be due to the fact that the primary feathers of Cormorants are morphically adapted to absorb water and repel air bubbles when the birds dive. This reduces their buoyancy under water, which gives them a great advantage as a below-water hunter. Those soaked wings are why Cormorants spend a lot of their spare time preening and holding their wings out to get a blow-dry. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Questionable Royal Blood

Queen Anne’s Lace plants, such as this beauty, have been flowering all week and soon will look like waves of snow rolling on our fields.

These wild celery-carrot plants are native to Europe and their scientific binomial is Daucus carota, which seems to translate into “carrot family carrot.”.

There’s a debated legend involving the plants’ name and the red or purple spot that sometimes appears in the center of their flowers. Queen Anne supposedly was tatting lace and pricked her finger; one drop of her royal blood fell and spoiled the lace; however, the royal blood made it a valuable heirloom after which the plant was named.

The debate is as to which of two Queen Annes supposedly yelled “Ouch!” – Queen Anne of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1574-1619) or Queen Anne of Denmark (1665-1714). (Brooklin, Maine).

In the Right Place: Osprey Report No. 9

This week’s report finds that Ozzie and Harriet and their three nestlings (David, Ricky and Lucy) remain well. We visited them yesterday and took these images then. The nestlings seem to be growing a quarter of an inch a day and they’ve instinctively developed that osprey head-shifting move (like a bobble doll) to get focus and depth perception. Here’s Harriett and Ricky, the second-born, having a conversation about when Dad will bring lunch:

David, the first-born, has been trying his large (but not fully-feathered) wings – flapping away for minutes without getting any lift and often whacking his mother or nest mates.. Maybe, he’s grabbing the bottom of the nest to avoid lift.

Harriet occasionally leaves the nest for short flights to stretch her own wings and to check out the neighborhood:

The ospreys recognize me. When I arrive, Harriet calmly watches me set up my tripod and put out my chair, as do the nestlings, if they’re up, and Ozzie if he’s around. Then, the raptors go back to what they’ve been doing.

It’s rare, but sometimes a stranger comes by my shaded vantage point and asks what I’m doing, as one did yesterday — with a tail-wagging dog on a leash. As usual in such a situation, Harriet went bonkers. She sounded the osprey Code Red alert and flew off the nest; Ozzie appeared out of nowhere; the nestlings disappeared into the bottom of the nest, and Ozzie and Harriet circled loudly shouting “Go Away!” in osprey-speak, often giving us the evil eye.

When the stranger and his amazed dog left, Harriet returned to the nest and calmly preened; Ozzie disappeared again, and the youngsters sat up, seemingly relieved that the drill was over. Soon, Ozzie returned with lunch for Harriet and the kids, usually a fish that Ozzie has decapitated for his own lunch. Here we see Mom and the kids waiting for their take-out meal to be brought home by Dad (left to right: Harriet, Lucy in shadow, Ricky, and David, all watching Ozzie in landing mode):

Ozzie usually stays on the nest only for a few minutes, then leaves. But he seems to be always within hearing distance of Harriet’s calls, often perched atop a nearby spruce scanning the sky for intruders (especially bald eagles and other ospreys) for him to drive out of his protected airspace:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Nymphs

Many of the ponds here are now filled with native Fragrant Water Lilies (Nymphaea odorata), such as this one, which appeared last week.

Their genus name, Nymphaea (“nim-FYE-ah”), is derived from the Greek and Roman name for “water lily,” which, in turn, originated as a reference to mythological water nymphs. The local plants’ species name, odorata (“o-dor-RAH-ta”), means “fragrant,” as you probably guessed.

The sweet-smelling flowers of these Fragrant Water Lilies open early on clear mornings and close about noon or whenever the day gets darkly cloudy. Their flowers and water lily pad leaves attract insects and become floating al fresco cafes for smaller frogs (especially green frogs) and birds (especially red-winged blackbirds. Underneath the lily pads, fish and aquatic invertebrates, such as dragonfly nymphs, enjoy the shade.

The plant’s seeds are a favorite food for waterfowl and their stems (rhizomes) are consumed by many animals, including muskrats, beaver, deer, moose, and even porcupines.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Generation Gaps

Here we see several Monarch Caterpillars on milkweed plant leaves yesterday. (Special thanks are due to neighbor Sherry Streeter whose excellent milkweed plot welcomes this sometimes-troubled species and is the locus of the images here.)

This caterpillar and its larval siblings recently emerged from eggs attached to milkweed leaves by female Monarch Butterflies that may now be dead or dying. These caterpillars soon will pull hooded chrysalises over themselves, do a quick-change trick while hidden in their tombs, and climb out as our second generation of Monarch Butterflies (Danaus plexippus), the royalty of their kind (Leighton Archive images):

Monarchs produce four generations here during the warm months, three of which die after their Maine vacation. The fourth generation butterflies, born in September or October, are the special ones that migrate south to start the cycle again. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Comb Job

With a little help from our more knowledgeable friends, this insect on an Ox Eye Daisy has been identified as a Virginia Ctenucha (Ctenucha virginica). The friends are Marnie Reed Crowell and Kenneth William Shellenberger. It’s reportedly the largest and most broad-winged wasp moth in North America.

The name for the moth genus Ctenucha (“ten-OOCH-ah”) was derived from the Greek words meaning “having a comb,” an obvious reference to insect antennae. (Brooklin, Maine) Click on image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Secrets

It’s one of those foggy-rainy-gray days as we speak. But, we have a secret remedy to prevent an attack of the blahs. Barbara goes into her garden, picks a bucketful of fresh summer flowers, returns to the house, towels off, and quickly and confidently creates a work of floral art such as this. She puts it on the dinner table and the blahs dare not enter the house.

An old photographer also lives in that house and he steals the arrangement. (Don’t tell Barbara.) He takes the flowers to various types of window light to see how they like the differing luminosity. This not only makes him immune from the blahs, it makes him feel younger. After he has taken the maximum dosage, he returns the flowers to the dinner table and the house remains blahs-free. (Brooklin, Maine) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Entanglements

This is busy Naskeag Harbor yesterday, as fishing vessels wait in line to sell their catches at the rafted lobster hut. Serene as this looks, it’s a confusing time for the lobster industry and, especially, for those of us who are just interested onlookers.

Early in the summer, prices were low and there was an apparent fear of a glut on the market that would drive them lower. There also are the extra costs that would be imposed by the proposed regulations to further protect right whales from entanglement in commercial fishing gear, the need for which as to lobster fishing is strenuously disputed.

Speaking of entanglement, let’s not forget China, customarily a major U.S. lobster customer. The Chinese government restricted U.S. lobster purchases in retaliation to President Trump’s protective tariff on other goods.

This was followed by the President’s recent surprise direction that lobster fishermen should receive subsidies due to China’s action. How and when such subsidies would reach here is unclear.

In the meantime, it appears that our fishermen continue to do what they do well – catch lobsters. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Osprey Nest Report No. 8

All is well as of yesterday with Ozzie and Harriet and their three nestlings, David, Ricky, and Lucy. Most of the images here were taken yesterday; a few were taken Monday (July 13).

The nestlings are growing quickly. Here, we see that Ricky, the second born, is starting to lose his reptilian look, but is still “all eyes,” brown ones at that:

Both parents have been attentive. Below, we see Ozzie decapitating a freshly-caught fish for his breakfast, then leaving the rest of it at the nest rim for his family. After a few minutes on the nest, he leaves, but stays withing calling range.

Staying within calling range is important. Ozzie and Harriet (especially Harriet) seen to have a concept of protected airspace near and over their nest, where intruding raptors will be attacked by them.

Yesterday, a lone female osprey got curious and came too close to the nest. Harriet screamed her special intruder call and the nestlings dove for cover as they always do when she screams like that. She even left the nest to intercept the intruder before Ozzie could come and drive the complaining female off . As he did, it was easy to see the difference in size between mature males and larger mature females.

The decibel level caused by three ospreys screaming during this episode was amazing. But, in the end, the intruder flew away and Harriet checked us out as she returned to watch over the still-hiding youngsters. She and Ozzie seem to have gotten comfortable with us.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: The Eyes Have It

The young American crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) that has recently fledged out of its nest can fly well and is almost the size of an adult. However, it’s still a baby that can’t feed itself well and demands – with outlandish vocal and bodily expressions – almost constant attention from its parents and relatives. If you see one and don’t look closely, you might think that this youngster is an adult sounding a crow alarm about a nearby owl or some similar threat. But, no; its all about himself or herself.

We were lucky to see the above youngster land on a dock railing about 50 yards from us on Monday (July 13). It screamed and moaned and swayed its body until an adult crow came and warned it to get away from that human. (That’s one of the things that many young crows don’t seem to understand instinctively.)

There are three significant things to look for in deciding whether a crow is immature or adult. First, the babes have cloudy blue eyes; the adults’ eyes are very black. Second, the black painting on the youngsters’ beaks is not finished – it’s still white and pink at the  bases; the adults’ beaks are all black. Third, and easiest to see, the youngsters seem to beg for food or other attention from adults almost all the time.

For comparison purposes, here’s an image from our archive of an adult crow:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Eternal Life

A small two-master slipped into Great Cove Sunday evening (July 12), but she didn’t go unnoticed by those of us whose windows face the Cove – she was our first schooner sighting of the year here. The local email tom-toms sounded and it was determined that she was the Tree of Life out of Newport, Rhode Island.

She stayed the night and motored out of the Cove yesterday on an almost windless morning, when the images here were taken. She seemed to be carrying only a five-person crew, no tourists. Once she got well into the haze of Eggemoggin Reach, she found some wind and put up her sails.

The Tree is a luxuriously appointed 71-foot cruiser with a composite wood-fiberglass hull. She was launched in 1991 and has sailed the world. However, these plague-ridden times are hard on such tourist-dependent ships; in fact, the Tree is being advertised for sale by a high-end broker.

Thus, her unusual name – Tree of Life – is now ironic. Such a Tree appears as the source of eternal life in the Genesis description of the Garden of Eden. Variations of that concept appear in many religions, mythologies, and works of art. According to one report, this schooner was christened Tree of Life because an Irish folk song of the same name was playing when its owners were looking for a name. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Ditched

Tawney-hued wild daylilies (Hemerocallis fulva) are starting to congregate along our roadsides and elsewhere. They soon will become cheering crowds that will wave at passing vehicles.

These emblems of high summer are called daylilies because most of them, when they reach the flowering stage, will be opened by the touch of the sun and wither overnight. However, if it is a dark, cloudy day, many day lilies will remain closed. (By the way, they also are commonly called ditch lilies due to their ability to live in roadside ditches and other sloping surfaces.)

Unlike true lilies that grow from delicate bulbs, these wild daylilies grow perennially from tough roots and runners. That means that they can be invasive. They’re native to Asia, but came here with our earliest European colonists. Since then, they have been cultivated by horticulturists into many colorful domestic varieties, such as this yellow variety:

(Brooklin, Maine; images taken July 5 and 7)

In the Right Place: Weather Report

The weather menu for July here has been fog appetizers with a choice of the following entrées: plain fog; fog with rain; fog with mist; fog with sun sauce; sun with fog on the side; cold with fog icing, and heat and humidity baked in fog.

The most enjoyable (at least for a photographer) is sun with fog on the side, when the fog continuously and quickly rolls in and over you to turn a clear, sunny day into a wet gauzey net and then rolls back to its original threatening position.

That’s what happened here on the morning of Thursday (July 9). One minute, we were trying to focus on this happy, wind-blown osprey posing atop a tall spruce with a brilliant blue sky background:

The next moment, we were enveloped in a cloud that caused the disturbed bird to swoop away. But, not before we “shot” her and got this extraordinary image:

Out in Great Cove, one moment, Lavera from Blue Hill was watching the fog come toward her; the next moment, she was lost and we had to use a big lens to find her (in closeup form):

The surrounding coast and islands tend to stand out on a day like this, when the fog rolls in and out and often becomes a background curtain:

Eventually, the fog won its battle of attrition and took over the day. This is how Naskeag Harbor looked in the afternoon:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Pogey Pursing

This is Fool’s Gold out of Eastern Harbor, Maine. She’s on the hunt in Great Cove on a misty July 6.

Fool’s Gold is a “purse-seiner,” which is an unusual word worth considering for a few seconds because there’s a good New England part to this story.

In the 14th Century, before real pockets were invented, there were “purses” within which valuables were carried – usually cloth or leather pieces that could be “pursed” shut with an imbedded drawstring. There also were “segnes” (later spelled “seines” and pronounced “sanes”); they were and still are fish nets.

Here’s the good part, according to historical reports:  In 1826, one or more fishermen in the Rhode Island fishery put together the two concepts of a drawstring purse and a trawling net. The first “purse-seine” was created there to catch menhaden (pogeys), about 15-inch-long fish often used for lobster bait. The purse-seine type of net is now used worldwide to catch big and little fish.

A purse-seine is designed to capture all or most of a school of fish. When the school is found, the fishermen deploy a large seine (net) out of their vessel’s stern to descend like an underwater curtain that will encircle as much of the school as they can. Fishermen spread out their seine for encirclement nowadays by using an outboard motored skiff or the fishing vessel, itself. 

The seine is held up by floats. Its bottom is open when deployed, but it is lined with rings through which a pursing or “lead” (as in leader) line is threaded. When the catch is within the encircling seine, the fishermen pull the pursing/lead line like a drawstring and close the bottom of the net, entrapping the fish above in a mesh swimming pool.

Then, the closed purse-seine and its contents are drawn back onto the vessel or brought alongside for bringing the catch on board. In the first Comment space, you’ll see Fool’s Gold deploying her purse-seine around a school of pogeys in Great Cove.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Deliverance

This image appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American. Click on the image to enlarge it.

To read the column, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column

In the Right Place: Float-It-All Express

On Tuesday (July 7), the small Town Pier at Naskeag Harbor was more congested than we’ve seen it in a long time. Fishing vessels were tied up on either side and atop was a local pickup truck and trailer plus an enormous crane truck and trailer (18 wheels and 5 axles). The truck was offloading its massive cargo directly into the water.

That cargo turned out to be the prefabricated parts of a large float that was destined to be the docking end of a pier now being constructed. The off-loaded parts were roped and towed by a small outboard motor boat to the middle of our Harbor, where they were tied together.

According to the truck driver, arrangements had been made with the owner of a local fishing vessel to tow all of the lashed segments to Deer Isle, where they would be bolted together and connected to the new pier. Deer Isle is a fairly large island that, at its closest point, is about two miles across the waters of Eggemoggin Reach from Naskeag Harbor.

The famous Deer Isle - Sedgwick Bridge, below, serves Deer Isle and Little Deer Isle (where the bridge actually lands). But, that high suspension bridge has narrow lanes going and coming that apparently can’t accommodate a large vehicle with a load like this. So, the float-to-be will be floated to its home.

Leighton Archive Image

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Osprey Nest Report No. 7

There has been an important development in the saga of Ozzie and Harriet, the ospreys that we’ve been monitoring since April: We’ve actually seen the suspected third nestling in the family’s fine Brooklin waterfront home. We’re calling her Lucy for identification purposes. She seems as active as her apparently older siblings, David and Ricky (“the Boys”).

Now that the nestlings are about three weeks old, Harriet takes frequent short flights, leaving them home alone. She often comes back to the nest with part of a branch, to (sometimes literally) spruce up her home. In the image here, she’s returning on July 3; if you look closely, you’ll see the tops of the heads of Lucy and the Boys.

Ozzie is still delivering fish daily to the family and always is flying or perched close by. We’ve recently seen him take off screaming after a high-flying bald eagle that was not interested in ospreys or a fight with one.

Brutus, the spurned osprey that attacked Harriet several times while she was brooding, has not been seen for months.

Ozzie sometimes flies to the nest for no apparent reason other than visitation. When he does, things get crowded there. He has to step gently, picking his large taloned feet up high and placing them down carefully to avoid the tottering youngsters. Ozzie also collects hefty pieces of wood for Harriet’s home renovation, as he was doing here on July 6:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Washing Regularly

Lavender is at its peak here now, its slim wands waving in the breezes, creating a fragrant blue mist. It’s part of the aromatic mint family. There are wild Lavenders, but most of the Lavender here appears to be English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), a cultivar shown below:

Lavender has been used throughout the ages for its fragrance and reputed disinfection and antiseptic characteristics. It was part of the Egyptian mummification process and an additive to Roman baths. Perhaps that’s why its name originates from the Latin verb “to wash.” (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Convenience

The bait and lobster hut in the middle of Naskeag Harbor is back, providing fishermen with a convenient place to get bait going out and sell their catches coming in. It’s operated by Billy Damon out of Stonington.

Above, we see the Lily Ann from nearby Benjamin River coming into that rafted hut on Friday (July 3), apparently after a day of fishing. Below, we see her tying up to it:

(Brooklin, Maine)