In the Right Place: Hot Tip

Green Arrow Arum (Peltandra virginica) plants in our local ponds and other freshwater wetlands are coming up like ballistic missile fields, as you can see from this image taken Tuesday (April 20):

Soon, these missiles will unfurl into leaves that will be about 30 inches long and about 8-inches wide at their widest. They’ll form green “arrow heads” that are heavy enough to bend the stalks gracefully over the pond’s lily pads. See these summer archive images:

This plant, also known as Tuckahoe, produces fruits that ducks, muskrats, and other marsh creatures eat, but humans are advised not to taste any part of the plant. The family name “arum” is thought to derive from the Arab term for “fire” and reflects the sensation you’ll have in your mouth if you chew this plant. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Blown Away

This morning arrived clear, cool (38[F]), and very windy (40 MPH gusts).

We’re feeling a meteorological and psychological broom sweeping away yesterday’s bad air and dreariness. Today’s winds also are providing a joyous opportunity to defy gravity a little at Naskeag Harbor – if you’re the right size and weight, as our young neighbors here are.

The boats in the harbor were trying their own version of leaning into the wind this morning:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place Season's Greetings

Ahhh, spring in Maine.

Yesterday at about noon here at the pond, it was partly sunny and a chilly 53 degrees (F) when I saw this pair, our first painted turtles.:

They had thrown off their mucky covers, arisen about 14 feet from their winter beds, and were desperately seeking heat from a miserly sun.

This morning, as this is written, it is 31 degrees here and snow is flurrying outside, as it has been, off and on, all morning:

I suspect that our other turtles will stay in bed this morning. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Going Soft?

This mysterious gull ritual was taking place again on Monday, April 19. It occurs from time to time in this small field pond, which is on a flat piece of land that overlooks the waters of Naskeag Harbor and Eggemoggin Reach.

The pond’s elevation above the other waters gives it the appearance of one of those “infinity pools” in luxury hotels in which you get the giddy sensation that you’re swimming on top of the world and could fall off.

The ritual appears to be carried out by a significant portion of the Harbor’s gull colony, which is mostly Herring Gulls. This colony contains some of the most cantankerous and territorial things that ever emerged from an egg. Here’s one of the screamers:

Yet, in all seasons, large numbers of these troublemakers congregate closely in this field pond as if going to church. They bathe there together making soft sounds, having been transformed from crime family seagulls into peace-loving pondgulls.

There appear to be no fish or other food in the pond; the birds meet there whether or not a storm is coming, and I’ve never seen them hunting insects in the surrounding grass. Sometimes, they’ll meet in the winter there and stand around on the ice with their wings crossed behind their backs, apparently discussing the latest gull football scores.

Is this about taking a freshwater bath to get rid of salt buildup? Are these a rural species of parking lot gulls? Do they go there because they pretty much have a 360-degree view to protect against predators?

Are our gulls going soft and fancy on us? (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Weather Report

Yesterday and today have been beautiful here, according to conventional standards. Ironically, however, we would be better off experiencing continual April showers.

We need plenty of rain to build up our low ground water and assure that we don’t slip into a drought this summer. The current federal U.S. Drought Monitor lists the southern half (and more) of Maine in the “Abnormally Dry” category with an elevated fire danger.

As you can see from the images here, taken yesterday, there have been large cumulous clouds wandering high above us, but none has released large amounts of its precious rain recently. Our fields are not yet fully green and virtually all of the cattails remain rickety dry.

Nonetheless, the pond is good at catching the water run-off from the sloping field and reflections of clouds from the sky. It was full of both, yesterday. We hear that we might get some rain tonight and/or tomorrow. (Brooklin, Maine) See also the image in the first Comment space.

In the Right Place: Bad Poetry

“’Good fences make good neighbors.’” – Poet Robert Frost in Mending Wall  (BUT, Frost is quoting his dull neighbor and being annoyed by the trite statement).

My poetry for the day:

“Bad fences are playing good death scenes,

“While good fences are making good kayak racks.”

WHAT?! You don’t think that’s good poetry?! Well, maybe not. But, at least it’s true.

(Images taken April 16 (kayaks) and 18 (fence), 2021. In Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: You First

Yesterday’s rain and very light snow came, but the storm was much less impressive than predicted; it was a whimper really, except for some high winds.

Those 25-30 miles-per-hour winds did have fishing vessels in Naskeag Harbor pulling obstinately at their mooring tethers yesterday, as you can see with Dear Abbie:, above. But, the moorings held.

And, that hard-to-anger Harbor was provoked into producing occasional two-foot beach waves. We saw one local Herring Gull apparently saying to the other: “No, George, you go first”:

But, we saw no significant damage in our area. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: To Unfurl or Not to Unfurl

This Eastern Skunk Cabbage plant in our bog is one of the plants that we’ve monitored closely and photographed regularly for several consecutive years. We’ve chosen this April 12, 2021, image to show here because it illustrates the plant’s well-engineered resilience.

The plant clearly is doing well now, despite heavy rains in early April that made the bog waters rise above it, not to mention below-freezing temperatures from time to time:

The purple spathes that contain the plant’s flowers are designed to both capture and circulate outside air and to contain the plant’s own warming heat that is generated internally; they also buffer shocks to the hidden flowers.

The plants’ leaves are outside the spathes, wound tightly into a scroll that will open only when the plant decides that it is time. Some Skunk Cabbage plants in our bog have started unfurling their leaves to allow them to grow, others, such as this, are keeping their leaves tightly furled. Do they know something? (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Gray Matter

The weather tellers are saying that, tomorrow, we’ll be attacked by that nasty combination known as “snain” (snow and rain). So, here’s a happy image to hold us over:  Blue Hill (the demi-mountain, not the Town) rising above Blue Hill Bay on sunny Saturday, April 10.

According to some of the histories, the Hill was virtually covered with evergreen trees in the 18th Century before it was heavily harvested for timber and quarried for granite. The original dense stands of conifers gave it a blue hue. Now, it looks like less than 10 percent of evergreens live there.

From a distance in the winter and early spring, the Hill appears to be mostly bands of gray. That’s because mostly deciduous trees live there now and have not yet produced leaves.

When summer arrives, however, Blue Hill will be the high endpoint a lush green ridge above the Town that named itself after the Hill in 1789, when it was young and blue:

(Blue Hill, Maine)

In The Right Place: Fooled Again

It was a beautiful day last Saturday (April 10), with only the gentlest of winds. They stirred the water in Connery Cove as if by sighs; just enough to create brush strokes in the reflections.

I was admiring the rippling leaves on the upside-down trees at the Cove’s north point, wondering what were those trees? Maple? Ash?

Then, my old visual cortex finally awoke and shouted inside my head: “WAIT A MINUTE! Leaves? In Maine? In mid-April?”

I looked closer. The trees were conifers, maybe spruce. They apparently had been trimmed to resemble deciduous trees. Fooled again. (Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: Out-Waited

On Sunday (April 11), I was driving past a local pond and noticed near the opposite side a slow moving “>” in the dark water, the wake of a small duck. Squinting hard, I either saw or imagined a parading duck wearing Cleopatra streak eye makeup – the sign of a female Wood Duck.

I stopped the car, fumbled for the 200-500 mm zoom lens behind the seat, found it and exchanged it for the one I had on the camera body beside me. All the while I was saying to myself, “Don’t fly yet; don’t hide yet.” The “>” had now become two (“>>”) and had entered the center of the pond and stopped; two ducks had turned toward my stopped car.

I poked the lens out the window, rested it on the half-down window, and focused: It was a pair of Wood Ducks, alright. But, they had turned again and were heading fast for the cat tail reeds. I got off four desperate shots before they disappeared into the reeds.

I waited 10 minutes; then 20; then 30. I decided then to wait only five more minutes. At 35, I decided definitely to go only another five. (I’ve got no discipline.) At 50 minutes after they had disappeared, I finally decided I’d go home and see what I had in the camera. (I need to work on my patience.)

None of the four images was great. The one above shows the male’s striped bicycle helmet head, painted bill, and Maraschino cherry eyes, all key identifiers. The female’s Cleopatra eyes can be seen in the image below:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Foiled Again

Here, we have a foil board rider at Blue Hills Falls on Saturday, April 10. The current there is fast enough to support foiling, if you attach a rope to the bridge and hold on while the water speeds by you and your board rises on its foil.

However, the situation changes when you let the line out to maneuver in the surf when up on the foil.

You have to be able to handle the incoming tide when it suddenly and unexpectedly twists and turns. Not many can do it for long, including this foiler:

(Blue Hill, Maine)

In the Right Place: For the Great-Great Grandkids

Here, you see a rare work in progress along Back Road: A real copper roof is being installed on a private residence, not an aluminum roof tinted to look like a quantitatively more expensive copper one that has achieved its gray-green patina. 

Although extraordinarily expensive, copper is malleable, yet strong and durable. It can last centuries with relatively little maintenance, according to reports. It once was the metal of choice for the roofs of important public buildings, especially before the development of efficient aluminum extraction processes.

Actually, copper roofs are a derivative of ship building. Prior to the American Revolution, it was discovered that copper sheets could be molded into hull coverings that added extra protection for ships of wars. It was a short step from there to try the metal as a building covering. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Towering

This week, our Hibiscus plant has been presenting lascivious flower after lascivious flower for its spring offering.

As one flower is appearing, another is dying after carefully wrapping itself tightly into a petaled shroud and dropping to the floor – the perfect cat toy for about a minute.

A blooming Hibiscus flower is an excellent model for teaching the basic reproductive parts of some plants. It’s long pistil (primarily of female organs) arises from its hidden ovary in the center of the flower like a city’s observation tower. Atop the tower, like radio antennas, red stigma orbs (containing pollen) protrude on their styles above a rounded yellow observation-ball-like stamen of (male reproductive) anthers and filaments.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Vernal Pools Spring to Life

This image of a Spotted Salamander 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: Beyond Gray

As we speak, the overcast here is thick and the horizon is gray, except for momentary flashes of sun trying to leak in through a weak seal. We’ve had a lot of days like this recently, including April 5, when the images here were taken.

In Naskeag Harbor, we see an empty summer house on Harbor Island, empty fishing vessel, and empty Town Pier:

In Great Cove, we see an empty WoodenBoat School pier and Eggemoggin Reach:

I’ve been searching for the right adjective that describes such a day beyond the one-dimensional “gray.” “Gloomy” or “Dreary” come to mind. Gloomy originates from the Scottish for “a sullen look.”

“Dreary” has a much more interesting history. It derives from the Old English for “sad” and “sorrowful.” However, “dreary” originally meant “cruel, bloody,” or “blood-stained.” It was used first in the sense of “lonesome, dismal, gloomy” by John Milton in his 1667 publication of Paradise Lost. (Brooklin, Maine; Online Entymology Dictionary used)

In the Right Place: Air Wars

Here, we see a small part of a highspeed aerial fight on April 3 between a non-resident Common Raven who wandered into our area and some of our local American Crows who nest here.  (Note that the Raven, lower right, is larger, has a stouter beak, and has a fan tail that is much more rounded than the Crows’.)

Within about 10 seconds of the stranger’s landing atop a high spruce here, one of our local Crows was attacking it and calling for help. The bigger Raven did a credible job defending itself, even when a second and third Crow joined the fight. But, the advantage tipped to the Crows when the fourth Crow screamed in. By the time the seventh Crow was strafing the stranger, the Raven’s tail had lost a feather and there was a loose primary feather in its right wing. It fled followed by a ridiculing mob of our crows warning it never to return.

These are large birds. A Raven will usually be about two feet long and a Crow almost a foot and a half. Here’s an image of a mature Crow:

Leighton Archive Image

Crows and Ravens regard each other as enemies, even though they are cousins in the same Corvid family. The primary reason, according to recent research, is that they both have been reared to rob the other’s nest of eggs or chicks and to otherwise compete for food and territory. That is, they know each others’ harmful habits. Most of their fights are initiated and won by the smaller Crows, who are better (indeed, magnificent) fliers and have learned to fight in larger numbers than the less communal Ravens. However, when the Ravens outnumber the Crows, it can be a bad day for the smaller cousins. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: The Unliving

Here, we see a stand of local woods playing with the light on April 2. They’re a mixture of evergreen balsam fir, spruce, and other conifer trees interspersed with gray- and white-barked maples, birch, and other deciduous trees and bushes that are not yet in-leaf.

April sunlight tumbles through the leafless branches onto the mosses and lichens, while at the same time creating darkness in the form of shadows streaking from the backs of trunks and treetops.

These woods can be wonderfully silent now, with no or few bird songs or people noises. It’s the kind of silence that comes when standing still and alone among the trees and a tingling comes from being touched by something primeval and invisible that is made of nothing that “lives.” (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: In the Hood

This courting pair of Hooded Mergansers appeared in our field pond in April of 2017, the last time that we saw Hoodies there -- until last week. The 18-inch adults of this species are the smallest and oddest of the three types of American Merganser, but they’re the most handsome of the Mergansers in my opinion.

When excited, or just when they feel like it, Hooded Mergansers erect their proportionately massive hoods (crests, really), which contort their heads into tomahawk-shaped structures. This is particularly spectacular on the orange-eyed, black-faced male Hoodie.

When his crest is down, he sports a white racing stripe on each side of his head; when his crest is up, he wears a cresting moon in a black sky.

(Brooklin, Maine; Leighton Archive images used)

In the Right Place: Easter Unscrambled

Happy Easter to all those who celebrate it religiously and/or secularly. Here, we see the Fuller Family driveway banner featuring an Easter egg in a nest, an old and interesting practice.

Although Easter is revered by Christians as a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus, it also historically has been celebrated as a time for exchanging decorated eggs and, later, building nests for the magic rabbit that lays Easter eggs, usually called the Easter Bunny in this country.

The custom of exchanging eggs at Eastertime has been traced to the early Christians of Mesopotamia, where eggs were symbols of fertility and new life. Western Christians would not eat eggs during Lent, but would exchange decorated ones and then eat them on Easter day. The concept of decorating the eggs was extended to the extreme in the 1800s by Russian nobility, which exchanged jewel- and gold-encrusted eggs on Easter.

As for the Easter Bunny, the leading theory is that the origin of that tradition was the pagan festival honoring Eostre, the fertility goddess whose animal symbol appropriately was a rabbit. The imaginative idea of exchanging “rabbit eggs” at Easter reportedly came from Germanic peoples.

They developed the custom for young children to enjoy Easter by making nests for the “Osterhase” (Easter Hare), which would come by while they were sleeping and lay decorated eggs in their nests. Apparently, in 18th Century German settlements in Pennsylvania, the Easter Hare was translated into English as the Easter Bunny for the children. (Brooklin, Maine)