In the Right Place: Lazing

I entered the WoodenBoat School boat shed on Wednesday to see how a few old friends were doing. As you can see, they were lazing in sunshine that was pouring through the skylights and – it seemed – old Babson II, the reliable outboard skiff, was snoring lightly.

The School’s small craft apparently have survived the winter in good shape and maybe it was just the wind coming through openings in the boat shed that sounded like snoring.  Here’s a Leighton Archive image of the shed:

Leighton Archive Image

Next month, School alumni will haul the boats out, clean them up, and perhaps add fresh paint to some. By June, they’ll be back in the water, responding to the hands of students, instructors, and harbor personnel. (Top image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 6, 2022.)

In the Right Place: The Danger Within

Fortunately, wooded streams continue to flow well here in Brooklin, Maine, as you see from the images here, which were taken on April 5:

As of that date, the eastern two thirds of the State had adequate water levels, according to today’s U.S. Drought Monitor. However, Maine’s western and northwestern border counties continue to experience abnormally dry conditions (yellow) and moderate to severe drought (tan to orange):

The situation is far worse in the western half of the United States, which still is experiencing alarming conditions with “exceptional drought” (the most dangerous category) increasing during the last week, according to this latest report:

(Photographs taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 5, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Harbingers

In looking for realistic harbingers of spring on Monday, I found an expressionistic harbinger of summer: mooring buoys, mushroom anchors and their chains wait patiently at the WoodenBoat School Campus:

They’ll be returned to Great Cove’s waters next month in time for the first sailing class, which begins in June.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 4, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Investing

During the “Tulip Mania” of 1637, a single tulip bulb reportedly was sold in Holland for the equivalent of $2,500 in today’s currency.

These flowers were the bitcoins of the Dutch Golden Age; investor speculation kept driving their prices up until the market crashed, ending the first documented asset bubble burst in history. Today, in rural Maine, you can buy a kitchen-brightening bouquet of fresh tulips at the grocery store for $5.99.

One of the fascinating things about tulips is that they appear to have five or six petals. Yet, two or three of those are sepals that grew to look like petals, thereby increasing the flower’s color and attractiveness to pollinators.

As you may know, sepals are the lower, outer parts of a flower that initially are folded over the emerging bud to protect it from the elements; in most flowers, they’re green. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 3, 2022, of flowers bought in Blue Hill, Maine.)

In the Right Place: Hoodies

Water may roll off ducks’ backs, but they often shelter themselves from rain. We glimpsed this male hooded merganser in the lee of a large rock during Friday’s rain – unhooded for the moment.

These shy fishing ducks (Lophodytes cucullatus) appear to erect their proportionately massive hoods (crests, really) not only when excited, but just when they feel like it – sort of a flexing move. This flex makes their heads weirdly tomahawk shaped.

Leighton Archive Image

The effect is more spectacular on the male because his hood contains a white halfmoon and his eyes are yellowish orange. When his crest is down, the moon turns into a white racing stripe.

Leighton Archive Image

The dark-eyed and grayish-brown female, shown above, often has a coffee-with-cream color crest that usually is not as fulsome as the male’s. She doesn’t want to be conspicuous when protecting her ducklings. (Primary image taken on Little Deer Isle, Maine, April 1, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Here They Come!

The purple skunk cabbage spathes (Symplocarpus foetidus) have been emerging from the waters in our bog this week. The first image here, taken this morning, is of a cluster in our bog that we’ve been cataloging photographically several times a week for four years.

Skunk cabbages are among the first wild plants to flower during our spring. However, they flower inside the spathe from a fleshy bulb called a spadix. These flowers produce a gagging odor that smells like rotting meat to us, but apparently smells delicious to pollinating insects.

The large, beautiful skunk cabbage leaves usually start to come in May here. You should be careful not to barge through them, unless you like being confronted with an odor similar to skunk spray.

By June, the plants are in regal form. Here’s an image of the plant shown above taken last summer:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 3, 2022, and June 21, 2021.)

In the Right Place: Almost Seeing the Light

This is the Pumpkin Island lighthouse in a rain squall yesterday as fog approaches – the kind of weather in which the light was needed in 1855, when it entered federal service.

It was said that the light then could be seen in good weather with the naked eye from nine nautical miles away.

The light is just off the northeast tip of Little Deer Isle, near the entrance to Eggemoggin Reach. The Reach is a granite-ledged and island-clogged shortcut from the Penobscot Bay to the Atlantic Ocean; in winter, there can be significant patches of ice jutting from the Reach’s islands. The Reach is some of the best sailing water in the world during a clear day, but can be perilous during a foul day or dark night, even to boats with radar.

There was no radar but plenty of traffic in the Reach when the light went into service. Coastal cruisers sailed Down East Maine carrying timber, granite, housing goods, and other commercial cargo; they were the truckers of the time for this area. The island and light were owned and operated by the federal government until 1933. They were then sold to private owners and have remained in private hands.

Nonetheless, nobody seems to know why the Island is named Pumpkin; it is not shaped like one and we’ve found no reports of pumpkin farming there. Perhaps one of you can tell us the origin of its name. (Images taken in Little Deer Island, Maine, on April 1, 2022.)

March Postcards From Maine

March gives birth to spring, which is not a simple event here. There have to be cycles of sunny fanfares with high-flying clouds, followed by leaden light and falling snows; freezing interludes, followed by window-opening warmth; and sudden surprises of fog and/or rain.

This March, snow and no-snow versions of familiar sights were remarkable, including the view across Blue Hill Bay to Acadia National Park and the view from beside the lily pond on WoodenBoat Campus:

The rain in the woods made the moss vibrant and the subsequent snow covered it with soft icing; sun-splattered country lanes were turned into monochrome etchings by falling snow; lush, rain-dappled bogs became treacherous ice; and, freezing days assured that plenty of firewood was used:

American robins announced the arrival of spring by hopping around fields when the sun shone; resident white-tailed deer rejected the concept in the half-light of dawn snowfalls, and migrating Canada geese didn’t think ice in the ponds was spring-like:

Nonetheless, pussy willow catkins appeared on time , British soldier lichens thrived, and polypore fungi hung in there:

On the waterfront, March is the last month of Maine’s scallop-dragging (dredging) season. To drag for scallops in the winter, our summer lobster boats are equipped with masts, booms, shelling huts, and drags (dredges). At the end of this March, they started to come in to have that equipment removed at the Town Dock:

Although March is rife with variables, it has two constants around here: One is St. Patrick’s Day, when you can hoist a glass of Guinness; the other is the opening of the elver season, when you can net a glass eel. (Fyke funnel nets are used to catch baby American eels. These little creatures are called glass eels because they’re mostly transparent; the nets are placed where the eels try to ascend streams to get to the ponds in which their parents matured.)

Finally, March is when the grocery stores sell spring flowers to Mainers whose gardens have not thawed yet:

(All images above were taken in Down East Maine in March of 2022.)

In the Right Place: Pregnant Paws

Below, you see the furry catkins of American pussy willow (Salix discolor) soaking up sunlight yesterday. Pussy willow catkins usually are the first sign that winter has lost its grip, although we’re never surprised by an April snow here. (By the way, “catkins” is a botanical term for slim flower clusters with tiny or nonexistent petals; the term is not limited to plants that have feline-sounding names.)

Of course, the common name for this furry plant, “pussy willow,” is due to the resemblance of its catkins to cat or kitten paws. That “fur” only is on male pussy willows to protect their flower pollen from the elements. The male flowers have no petals or scent; they’re just stamens loaded with pollen.

The cat fur soon will be shed, allowing the stamens to cast massive amounts of dusty pollen to the wind, often producing small, drifting yellow clouds. The wind has the job of making sure that some pollen finds eagerly awaiting female flowers and that some pollen finds the noses of bunch hikers so that they will sneeze and stop talking loudly. Okay, that was peevish; that last sentence is only half true. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 30, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Spring Cleaning

The scallop dragging (dredge trawling) season has ended in most Maine fishing zones. The winter fishing vessels are starting to come in to clean up and remove scallop-related gear (masts, booms, shelling huts, drags [dredges], etc.). They’ll be back as lithe lobster boats by June.

Above, you see Fishing Vessel Tarrfish made fast to the Town Dock in Naskeag Harbor yesterday as the tide goes out. This image of her deck below shows that her drag apparently is ready to be taken off the vessel:

The drag’s “chain bag” seems to be rolled-up around its wooden “club stick” and, on the left, you can see part of the winch that raises and lowers the drag.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 29, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Of a Different Stripe

I glimpsed my first white-throated sparrow of the year here Sunday. I haven’t heard one sing, nor have I been able to get a decent photograph of one yet, so the illustrations used below are from prior sightings.

White-throats (Zonotricia albicollis) have a characteristic that has been the focus of much study: They come in one of two color variations called “morphs” or, technically, “plumage polymorphism.” These morphs are genetically determined and play a unique part in the birds’ behavior.

One form, shown first below, is the “white-striped” morph (also known as “white-crowned” or “bright” morph). These white-striped sparrows, whether male or female, have been found to be more aggressive than birds displaying the other (tan) morphism, among other differences.

That other form of white-throated sparrow is the “tan-striped” morph (also known as the “tan-crowned” or “drab” morph), shown here:

These tan-striped sparrows, whether male or female, have been found to be more nurturing than birds displaying the white morphism, among other differences.

This dual morphism is passed on in the species because – and here it gets strange – the individual birds virtually always (95%+) mate with a bird of the opposite stripe and produce young of both morphs. Why this “dissassortive” mating? Apparently, it evolved to preserve the morphism that corrects for a genetic weakness. Mating of birds of the same stripe has been found to be significantly less successful in the production and/or raising of young than mating of the opposite. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine.)

In the Right Place: Moody March

It’s snowing as I write and has been snowing since the dark hours of this spring morning. It’s also colder than it has been. It was 25 degrees (F) at 7 a.m., when one of our regular white-tailed deer troupes came browsing through the half-light without a care.

Note that the snow is not melting on the fur of the deer; that's a sign of good insulation.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 28, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Standing Still

Here’s a moment in a patch of local woods during Friday morning’s light rain. The moss and lichens are glowingly alert and the scent of balsam fir is being carried here and there by light breezes. It’s a time to stand still, listen to the pitter-patter of raindrops, breathe deeply, and try not to think.

(Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 25, 2022.)

In the Right Place: More Immigration Issues

Maine’s most valuable fish on a per-pound basis are returning and being “hunted” with nets in or near streams and rivers, as you see here in the mouth of Patten Stream yesterday.

These fish are baby American eels (Anguilla rostrata) known as elvers or glass eels. (Yes, eels are fish.) At this stage, the eels are transparent except for their eyes and backbone, as you can see from this Leighton Archive image:

The elvers are thought to be migrating here from their parents’ breeding grounds in and around the Sargasso Sea. It’s also thought that the babies are seeking to – somehow – find the freshwater streams and ponds in which their parents matured. But it’s hard to find out what is really happening in eel migrations.

The price of these babies is controlled by market ups and downs. This year, the opening elver price is a reported $1,800 per pound. The high price of more than $2,360 occurred in 2018 and the low was $525 in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic turmoil. They’re sold live to Asian importers who raise them and resell the mature eels for delicacies.

At some time after maturity (usually years), many of these eels will – again, somehow – migrate from here back to their species’ breeding grounds and die there after breeding. Thus, they are “catadromous” fish that have life cycles in fresh and salt waters.

The Maine elver fishing season opened Tuesday, March 22, and will end June 7. Methods for harvesting them are limited to hand-dipping nets and “Fyke” nets (usually pronounced “Fick” nets).  As you see above, Fyke nets are large, thin-meshed funnel nets with a trap and capture bag at the end. They’re placed in the historic paths of the incoming eels.

(Images in Surry, Maine, on March 25, 2022, except for noted Leighton Archive image.)

In the Right Place: On the Job

It rained angrily here last night, and it was still raining when these images of our bog were taken this morning. But, the anger was not there in the bog; something soothing had replaced it.

Maybe it was smelling a bit of balsam fir while seeing raindrop circles repeatedly appearing, ballooning, and disappearing on reflective waters.

Maybe it was just because bogs soothe everything; that’s their job. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine on March 25, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Streaming

This trove of “jewels” is at the bottom of a mossy-banked stream. The small amount of dappled sunlight reaching the pebbles was being re-dappled and bubbled by the fast-moving waters. The water, itself, is dark, apparently due to the tannin being released from last fall’s sunken leaves.

Despite higher precipitation over the past few months, soil moisture and stream flows in western Maine have not improved as of March 22, according to today’s U.S. Drought Monitor. In fact, areas of drought and abnormal dryness there have expanded a bit over last week, according to the report.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 22, 2022.)

In the Right Place: At Peace

Here we experience a typical, but nice, moment in Naskeag Harbor on Friday. Fog is approaching slowly from out in Eggemoggin Reach; the sun is blinking light here and there; there’s no wind to speak of, except the occasional slight breeze that is little more than a baby’s breath. Hard-working Captain Morgan rests, her mooring line slack. She seemingly waits unconcerned, at peace with a changing world.

Note that Morgan is rigged for scallop fishing, but that mast, boom, and on-deck shelling hut soon will disappear. March is the last month for scallop dragging (dredging) in Maine. If all goes well, she’ll be fishing for lobsters by June. (Image taken on March 18, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Success and Excess

These migrating Canada Geese were having no problem icebreaking in a local pond yesterday. The Canada Goose is the only wild goose species that breeds, winters, and migrates through Maine. (Other geese just migrate through.)

Canada Geese have a tragic history here, but have become increasing plentiful due to a State revival that “has been a bit too successful,” according to the late New England ornithologist Peter D. Vickery (Birds of Maine).

During pre-colonial times, Canada Geese were plentiful and bred successfully in Maine. However, they were killed off by the 1800s due to nearly constant hunting for food, sport, and feathers. They also were trapped, wing-clipped and penned for eggs, and tied down as live decoys for hunting their kind.

They were reintroduced in Maine by wildlife officials in a program beginning in the 1960s and have now increased to record levels in all seasons. Climate warming has resulted in increasing numbers of these geese overwintering and producing young that become non-migratory. These young, full-time resident geese don’t develop the instinct or skills necessary for high-altitude migration.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 21, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Well Fed

State of the Woods Report for yesterday afternoon, the first day of spring: virtually all of the ice is out, the ground is spongy in places, and the birds have not yet begun to sing.

However, the silence is broken here and there by the gurgling glissandos of well-fed streams.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 20, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Reassurance

Today is the first day of spring and she’s wearing a chilly fog this morning in Down East Maine. However, today also is the day of the Grand Opening of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in warmer and sunnier Washington, D.C., an event that belongs to all of us.

Having been headquartered in D.C. for many years, I always think of the cherry blossoms at this time of year. The popular reappearance of such beauty is reassuring, especially during cruel and uncertain times.

The National Park Service has predicted that this year’s blossoms, which are already appearing, will peak during the period March 22 through 25. So, you have time see them peak, if you hurry. For those who can’t travel to the Tidal Basin this month, I’m posting below a few Leighton Archive images of previous Washington cherry tree blossoms: