January Postcards From Maine

January in our part of Maine is a time for many to remember Christmas. Mostly, they do so by leaving their Christmas (aka Holiday) wreaths up all month and, sometimes, in unusual paces. Actually, a good number of Mainers remember Christmas that way until the end of March.

January, historically, also is our snowiest and coldest month. However, in the past few years, the month has not been nearly as cold or snowy as in past years. This year, we only had two plowable snow storms, both of which were lovely and short, but enough to decorate the scenery when the sun came back.

Part of the scenery that looks good decorated in snow is our country lanes that wind through the srpuce and fir woods and almost always end at the sea.

The winter waters here are especially intriguing in their various January forms. The full and fast streams have snow garlands. The coves and bays into which the streams flow, sometimes are a study in gray or blue contemplation; at other times they’re places tormented by rain and wind-whipped waves. There also are the ice-filled ponds, which weren’t safe enough to skate on until very late in the month.

Speaking of water, many of our fishing vessels remained in the cold January waters, some looking just as they did in summer, but used by oxygen-tank-equipped divers to hand harvest high-priced “Divers’ Scallops.” Others have been rigged with a mast, boom, and dredge to drag for scallops. On the other hand, a good number of vessels go “on the hard” and rest in the winter like wooden bears..

Our wild turkeys, white-tailed deer, and mallard ducks don’t rest during January. The deer fawns are especially interesting as they encounter their first winter with plenty of perkiness.

As with December, The cold, dry clarity of January skies often produces stunning sunsets and afterglows. January also is the month of the full Wolf Moon, which American Colonists thought (incorrectly) attracted the attention of wolves and made them howl. This year, the Wolf Moon was behind clouds here; however, the next night was clear and the moon then was virtually indistinguishable from a full moon, as you can see below.

As January left us last night, there was news that February will arrive on the winds and snow of a major storm. We’ll see.

(All images here were taken in Down East Maine during January 2021.)

In the Right Place: Steaming Plus

Common Eiders have a design problem, which they try to overcome with two distinctive defensive moves. Their problem is that their bodies are too heavy and broad to overcome their “bow” waves and get enough “hull” speed to fly up quickly when they sense a predator in the water (e.g., a seal), air (e.g., bald eagle), or land (e.g., human).

Rather than try to fly up, they collect closer in their group (a “paddling” of Eiders) to make it difficult for a predator to isolate on a single target, as do zebras.

Then, as you see here with these Eiders in Blue Hill Bay, they perform their first distinctive maneuver, what researchers call “steaming”: they increase speed by using their wings as oars that both propel them and lift them up a bit.

If need be, they convert their steaming into what has been called by researchers “paddle-assisted flying.” (See them beginning this in the image in the first Comment space.) In this maneuver, they lift off the water, but stay low and use their powerful legs to assist their air-beating wings in giving them more speed to skim over the water. (Brooklin Maine; Leighton Archive images used)

For more on this subject, see: Gough, et al., “Aquatic burst locomotion by hydroplaning and paddling in common eiders (Somateria mollissima),” Journal of Experimental Biology 2015 218: 1632-1638; doi: 10.1242/jeb.114140

In the Right Place: Sky Performers

Here, we see last night’s spectacular moon sailing over Naskeag Peninsula at about 10 p.m. in 14-degree weather with a wind chill of 4 degrees. It was a virtually full moon. The actual January full Wolf Moon was the night before last night, but it was hidden behind mounds of clouds here.

Below, you’ll see last night’s sunset, which did a credible warm-up act for the moon:

The Old Farmer’s Almanac reported that the American Colonists named this month’s full moon the Full Wolf Moon, which still is the most common name for it. The name reportedly was based on the Colonists hearing wolves howl around their settlements when there was a full moon in January. Their basic concept, apparently, was that the full moon drives wolves a bit crazy in the harshest month of winter and the wild canines instinctively howl at the glowing orb then.

This, of course, is nonsense. Wolves howl anytime that they have a need to, day or night, and seem to pay no attention to the moon, itself. They howl to contact other members of the pack, to warn other packs to stay away, to call their pack for a hunt, and for other reasons. They are motivated by the moon’s light, which gives them an opportunity to see better and to call together their pack for a hunt then. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Form Follows Function

Frequent visitors to Naskeag Harbor will recognize this abstract artform.

It’s also functional art – part of the hoist for lifting and loading lobster traps and other things off or on to the fishing vessels when the tide is too low to pass them over by hand:

Brooklin, Main, images taken January 19 1nd 21)

In the Right Place: History Is Not Prologue

It’s finally acting a little like January in Maine around here – but nothing like historical Maine Januarys. It snowed a few inches overnight into the morning yesterday, a nice, sticky little coating that you can see in the images here.

Today it has been snowing since early morning – fine, dandruff-like flakes that are having trouble hanging onto spruce and fir needles, probably because the temperature has been hovering at or above 32 degrees (F). The forecast is for the snow to continue all day into the night.

Historically, January has been Maine’s snowiest month. Overall, during this month, we have had about 50 to 70 inches along the coast and 60 to 110 inches inland. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration location-based records for 1983 through 2010, nearby Acadia National Park averaged 23 days of snow in January, which accumulated to 72 (71.8) inches for the month on average. We’ve had nothing like that since climate warming has arrived. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Fetus

Here, we see one of “our” White-Tailed Deer fawns prancing in our North Field yesterday. She’s one of a pair of twins born last summer who doggedly follow their mother on her rounds in the neighborhood. (Fawn sex assumed.)

These youngsters are experiencing their first winter and seem to be enjoying it. It snowed a few inches here overnight and continues to do so intermittently this morning; but, the twins are large enough now to navigate in the snow. Which brings us to a nomenclature question.

There apparently is a bit of a debate as to whether our twins are too large to be “fawns” and, therefore, must be “yearlings.” As far as I can tell from the biological reports, a White-Tail has to be between one and two years old to be a yearling; hence, their name, “yearling.”

Deer younger than a year, such as the twins, are still “fawns” and fawns do not have to be tiny with spots. (However, they’re cuter and more memorable when they’re tiny and spotted. Here’s an archive image of a spotted fawn taken last August in the same field:

By the way, the noun “fawn” is derived from the Old French word “faon,” which is based on the Latin “fetus,” meaning offspring. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Tipping

As we speak, these and many other Christmas (aka Holiday) wreaths still are being displayed around here on public buildings, homes, barns, and in the most unusual places.

In fact, quite a few wreaths will remain displayed until at least Easter. Why are they displayed so long? The most frequent answer goes something like this: “Well, my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents did and, besides, I like them and they smell better than plastic.”

Mainers also should be proud of them. The State reportedly is the leading producer of balsam fir wreaths and greens in the United States and probably in the world. It’s a commercial and cottage industry here that is perhaps best known for donating all of the wreaths on the veterans’ markers in Arlington Cemetery. And, it’s a sustainable industry – only one to two feet of branch tips are cut (by “tippers”) without killing the trees. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Twinkle, Twinkle Little Aperture

Yesterday, the conditions were right for shooting sun stars off the cabin windows of “Dear Abbie:” She was facing generally toward the low sun and swinging slowly on her mooring in Naskeag Harbor. At intervals, she would come around and face directly into the sun rays and her windows would become a huge glaring ball that would block out everything from cabin to bow and make watchers’ eyes wince closed.

Sun stars are created by the aperture that lets light into the camera when its blades whirl open. They’re not created by the sun or the reflecting glass. When intense light passes through a small aperture and is diffused across the opening aperture blades, the blades will create the points of a star on your image.

The more blades, the more star points; the straighter the blades’ edges, the sharper the star points; the smaller the aperture, the clearer the star. This image was taken with an aperture of f22 and an aperture opening speed (“shutter speed”) of 1/200th of a second. (Brooklin, Maine) Click on image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Branding

Here, we see snow-bordered Patten Stream chortling south from Lower Patten Pond toward its mouth, where it empties into Patten Bay in the town that used to be called Pattensborough. The town is now Surry, Maine.

Two things are illustrated here. First, there’s plenty of water in this wooded stream (and others) in our area. Curiously, we’ve been getting more precipitation than average; yet, in much of Maine, this January (so far) has been one of the 10 warmest we’ve had.

Second, somebody named Patten once lived around Surry and he wasn’t modest about people knowing it. That would have been Captain Mathew Patten, Surry’s (Pattensborough’s) first settler and an apparent believer in self-branding.

The Captain arrived in the unsettled area in his coastal schooner sometime in the 1760s. He bought his first 100 wild acres there in 1767 for very little money. Thus began his life as a successful land speculator and a supplier of goods for the settlers. He would use his schooner (later schooners) to deliver timber cut by the settlers to Boston and points in between and return with goods not available in the wilds of Down East Maine.

(Surry, Maine; images taken Friday [January 22])

In the Right Place: Gambles

Here, we see one of several local ponds yesterday with ice skaters trying their skates for the first time this year – and, for the first time ever, mostly wearing plague masks.

Skating (thick) ice has been late coming this year due to temperature fluctuations. However, yesterday was one of those beautiful winter days when even Herring Gulls wanted to the on the ice:

Nonetheless, we’ve had at least two reported near-fatalities with people falling through thin ice last week, according to Game Warden reports in the Bangor Daily News. The Wardens say that ice that is two inches or less thick is definitely not safe to skate on, but four or more inches is safe. They don’t say whether three inches is worth the gamble. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Watch Out

We had a dusting of snow very early this morning that already has melted away in many places – except places like this with tempting untrammeled snow that you don’t want to walk on. Why? Because there is slippery ice below it; and, below that, very cold water. This bog is part of Maine’s many wetlands.

The State government reports that 25 percent of Maine's land area is wetlands, four times the wetland area of the other five New England States combined. Over five million acres of Maine's wetlands are freshwater wetlands, which are defined as wooded swamps, shrub swamps, bogs, freshwater meadows, freshwater marshes, and floodplains. Only 157,500 acres are tidal or coastal wetlands, which are defined as tidal flats, salt marsh, freshwater/brackish marsh, aquatic beds, beaches, and reefs. Among the many benefits of wetlands is that they are home to myriads of wildlife, including endangered and threatened species. (Brooklin, Maine; image taken January 20) Click on image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Dramatic

This is yesterday’s dramatic ending here to a historic day nationally. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: The End

(Image taken today, January 20, 2021, in Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: Treasure Hunt

Many boats are in winter storage buildings or shrink-wrapped now and you don’t get a chance to see them. We were lucky Sunday, January 17, to get a peek at this green-hulled jewel in storage at the Atlantic Boat Company.

Her name is “Kismet” and she’s 27 feet in overall length with a beam (widest part) of about 8 feet, according to her owner, Bruce Fowler. She hails out of Brooklin now, but she was built in 1995 on the west coast and designed by Bill Garden, based on the designs of fishing trawlers there. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: A Bit Rusty

Here, we’re looking at one of our favorite red barns yesterday. It’s a local barn well-sited high on the Flye Point peninsula overlooking Herrick Bay. It apparently is not a “working barn,” in the sense that it stores grain or shelters farm animals, but it’s a picturesque reminder of days gone by.

While red barns are considered picturesque now, that wasn’t why that color was favored by many farmers in past centuries. According to experts. farmers needed something to seal the barn wood and protect against things like fungus and rot, but they had to make their own sealers and paints.

They usually used linseed oil from flax seeds, which is an orange-like stain that will adhere to wood. They mixed that with ferrous oxide (rust), which was plentiful and turned the mixture red. When manufactured paints of various colors became available, many farmers chose red because that was the traditional barn color.

By the way, the word “barn” derives from the Old English word “bere,” which meant barley specifically, but also grain, generally. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Warm and Windy Gray

 Today has been one of those frequent gray January days during which the sun battles to get through the overcast and never makes it for long, while the wind messes with the sea by gusting up to 26 miles per hour. Nonetheless, there is something that has been unusual during the past few years: the temperatures have been too warm – in the 40’s (F) when the images here were taken.

Above, we see the gray-on-gray of this morning: the gray water of Center Harbor slapping the piers of the gray Brooklin Boatyard dock.

Below, , we see a little color on the ridge overlooking the gray northern waters of Great Cove.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed

January, historically, is our coldest and snowiest month. This January, however, is not living up to its uncomfortable reputation. For those who leave their filled bird feeders outside overnight, the unseasonably warm weather has been producing a risk around here this month: Our raccoons have been awakening and taking winter strolls. Unsubstantial bird feeders are being found in shambles.

Raccoons aren’t true hibernators like turtles that reach a near-death state all winter. Raccoons are more like their distant cousins, the bears. They put on fat in the fall and early winter, find a den, curl up, and go into a deep sleep that can last up to 30 days. But, they can be awakened from their dreams and, once awake, they think of food – the easiest to find, the better.

Brooklin, Maine; Leighton Archive images used)

In the Right Place: Howling Into the New Year

This image appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American.

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

In the Right Place: Flurry Redux

Yesterday’s post, about the picturesque snow flurry in Blue Hill on Monday morning, motivated requests for more images from the brief snowstorm. Here are two additional ones.

Above, you’ll have to peer through the heavy snow (as I did) to see the cause of the big moving arrow in Blue Hill Bay: a male Mallard Duck followed by a pair of Mallards on their way to an important appointment.

Below, you’ll see the beginning of the flurry’s light powdering of the small, tidal island just south of the Blue Hill golf course.

(Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: Bluster Buster

This snow flurry rode in on the back of high tide yesterday morning and blustered for about 45 minutes before the sun took control again.

Fortunately, I was riding beside the picturesque old red boathouse in Blue Hill’s Connery Cove at 9:22 a.m., when the flurry reached its peak and I took the above image.

When I came back south at 10:47 a.m., the sun was heating up the day, the Cove was still, and the snow on the boathouse’s roof had melted already. I took this image then:

(Brooklin, Maine)