In the Right Place: Hear, Hear!

This white-tailed deer yearling heard me before she saw me yesterday. Recent research reportedly indicates that the hearing of white-tails is even better than we thought and may be the animals’ most important sense.

These deer hear everything humans can hear, plus low and very low frequencies that we can’t hear, such as distant foot falls on the forest floor.

White-tails triangulate the location of a sound by using their three primary senses. Their ears are many times larger than ours and virtually all other animals in their habitat. Their “pinnae” (external ear parts) can rotate separately like radar dishes to locate sound and extra fur in the ear opening may help funnel that sound into their ear canals.

Their eyesight reportedly is worse than ours, except at night. With eyes on opposite sides of their head, deer can’t focus well on a spot with both eyes – they’re looking out of the side of their eyes when their nose is pointed at you. They also see at a lower resolution than we do during the day and are thought to be colorblind.

White-tails do have a much better sense of smell than we do. But, the scent has to reach them. The wind can prevent a scent from reaching their big, wet nose, which traps odor particles. (Image taken In Brooklin, Maine, on May 3, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Never too Late

The eastern skunk cabbage plant that we’ve been monitoring in our bog was just starting to leaf out seriously yesterday, as you see.

I suspect that it would have been much more advanced if we had not had such a cold and wet early spring. At times, much of the plant was under water.

Now that the vernal pools are starting to dry out, we suspect that the skunk cabbage will start to leaf out quickly. It likely will become surrounded by ferns and grasses as it is every year:

Leighton Archive Image

(Primary image taken in Brooklin, Maine, May 2, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Mellow Yellow

May 2, 2022

Forsythia is blooming nicely now. Here you see a bush arising out of a patch of bluets.

The bush below stands guard over a field pond that once might have served as a fire pond for an old estate.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 30, 2022.)

April Postcards From Maine

April is the month tasked with the important job of bringing showers needed for May’s flowers. This year, April was annoyingly exuberant. She brought more rain than was needed and more fog and cold than was wanted. The days in which she gave us serious sun, true blue skies, and racing puffy clouds provided startling contrasts.

Pumpkin Island in the Rain, Little Deer Isle

Blue Hill Bay and Acadia National Park Viewed from Brooklin

Brooklin Bog in the Rain

Brooklin Woods

Brooklin Pond in the Rain

Brooklin Spring-Fed Stream

On the waterfront, things are quiet here in April. The scallop-dragging season is over and the lobster-trapping season has yet to begin. For most of the month, there was only one, small fishing vessel in Naskeag Harbor. Yet, the vessels of the WoodenBoat School seemed eager to be let-out of storage and their mooring gear provided an impressionistic outdoor spring sculpture.

April also is a month that brings its own flowers, the first spring blooms. Some were pollen-laden lifelines for early-arriving bees and other insects.

Daffodil

Star Magnolia

Forsythia

Red Maple

Pussy Willow

Lichens, shelf mushrooms, and bog plants flourished in April’s wet weather.

Tree Lungwort Lichen

British Soldier Lichen

Red-Belted Polypore Mushroom

Skunk Cabbage Leaves Starting to Emerge

The wildlife highlight of the month was the return of Ozzie and Harriet, a pair of ospreys that have a nearby summer residence that I’ve been studying and photographing for four years.

The resident white-tailed deer start to shed their winter coats in April and the resident painted turtles arise from the muck at the bottom of ponds and hope for a little sun to get their cold-blooded bodies working.

As a personal aside, April is our anniversary month and always is brightened by an arrangement from Fairwinds Florist in Blue Hill. This year, the opening tulips were spectacular.

Finally, it rained on the night of the full moon, wouldn’t you know. However, I fortunately caught the moon the night before, when the human eye couldn’t tell that it was not completely full. It was named the Pink Full Moon by Native Americans because it arrived when pink flowers arrived, such as the red maple tree flowers above.

(All images in this post were taken in April of 2022 in Brooklin, Maine, except the indicated image taken in nearby Little Deer Isle, Maine, during the month.)

In the Right Place: Delicacies Arising

Fiddlehead mummies are staring to appear here. As you may know, fiddleheads, named for their shape, are the coiled fronds of young ferns. Although virtually every species of fern starts from a fiddlehead, not all species are safe to eat.

Ostrich fern fiddleheads are edible and considered to be delicacies in New England. They can be identified by their tan paper-like or mummy-like coverings at their early stages. As they grow to edible size, they have a smooth (not fuzzy) green stem that usually has an inside grove.

(Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 29, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Weekly Osprey Nest Report

Ozzie and Harriet appear to be doing well. She’s spending more time alone in the nest, but I’ve seen no signs of attempted egg laying yet. I expect to see her laying down for that within weeks, if not days.

The highlight of last week occurred on Monday. Harriet was alone in the nest and started screaming while staring into the sky. Circling very high above her was an Osprey – but not Ozzie. The stranger’s circles became lower and lower, and Harriet’s screams became incessant.

Then, just like in the movies, Ozzie appeared out of nowhere and went right at the stranger with incredible speed. There was a wonderful looping and diving aerial chase above Great Cove and then into the distant horizon, where the birds disappeared from view. (The image of Ozzie here was taken at the beginning of the chase.)

After about two minutes, which seemed longer, Ozzie returned to the nest and was greeted by Harriet making the victory sign with outspread wings to congratulate him – wait, actually that’s not quite true; I got a little carried away.

When one of these birds zooms to the nest while the other is in it, there can be raised wings all around if the landing trajectory and speed are not perfect. Two birds, each with a five-and-one-half-foot wingspan, have to be careful in such tight spaces; there sometimes is a talons-out crash. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 25, 2022.)

In the Right Place: But Do They Dream?

Yesterday, in light but steady rain, this local quintet of white-tailed deer chose our north field to take their morning nap. Judging from a quick look at the literature, they were performing an important function.

As with all of us mammals, sleep is critical to the health of deer. However, some research indicates that white-tails spend more time bedded than on their feet. Unlike some hooved animals, deer don’t sleep standing. And, when they lie down to rest, you can’t tell from a distance whether they’re sleeping – they apparently often sleep with their eyes open, their ears alert, and their noses inhaling deeply.

When resting, white-tails reportedly nod off completely for a few seconds or minutes, then become searchingly alert for a similar time, and then return to the short sleeping state, and so on. Sleeping in groups tends to assure that at least one of them is completely alert most of the time.

Their resting periods can be fairly long and occur multiple times a day. The locals shown here started laying down a few minutes before 8 a.m. yesterday and got up and browsed their way off at 10:20 a.m. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 27, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Playing the Odds

The “paws” of American pussy willows (Salix discolor) are molting now.  Only the male plants grow these furry catkins, which protect their flowers’ pollen-producing stamens from cold and other elements. As the days warm, the fur disappears, and the flowers’ stamens emerge with their pollen grain heads.

The wind takes the pollen on flights that, if nature’s plan works, will result in some grains reaching the waiting ovules of female pussy willows, enabling them to produce fertile seeds. Each male pussy willow plant will produce millions of pollen grains to try to beat the reproduction odds and drive allergic people crazy. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 24, 2022.)

In the Right Place: A Good Turn

I haven’t seen any spring mushroom stalks arising out of the soil yet. But, of course, the stalkless mushrooms attached to decaying tree trunks are with us all year. Because of the way they grow, they’re often called “bracket fungi” or “shelf fungi” and their entire bodies are called “conks.”

The various species of these fungi also are known collectively as “polypores” (meaning many pores) because they have innumerable small tubes on the underside of their conks from which their reproductive spores drop. The large conks shown here are red-belted polypores (Fomitopsis pinicola).

One of the curious things about polypores is that they rely on gravity to make their spores drop into the world. This causes a problem when that decaying tree trunk that they are attached to falls – then, the bottom of the conk is no longer facing down to facilitate spore drops. Not to worry: over time, the conk will twist itself so that it’s bottom is again facing downward and gravity will be able to do its job.

Leighton Archive image

(Primary image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 20, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Bringers of Joy

Daffodils are blooming here now. Their frilled trumpets are at the ready, seemingly waiting for the baton’s signal to blast “Hallelujah!”  Some of the daffodils, including this one, are brightening fallow fields, apparently having been planted years ago in a garden or around a house that has disappeared.

Europeans reportedly brought daffodil bulbs to North America in the 1600s and the resulting plants have been one of the most popular flowers ever since.

Botanists designate “daffodils” as any plant within the genus Narcissus, which would include jonquils, paperwhites, and more than 20 other species, not to mention tens of thousands of hybrids.

However, as far as I can tell, most people consider the early spring flowers with the trumpet-shaped coronas and surrounding collars of petals (perianths), shown here, to be the “real” daffodils. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 23, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Hidden Romance

April is the peak breeding time for Eastern painted turtles (Chrysemys picta picta), the subspecies that resides in Maine. The seduction most likely will be hidden in the shallow water at the edges of a freshwater body, which is what I suspect was going on with these two PTs Thursday. (Look closely.)

The smaller-bodied male usually will approach the female, moving his face in front of hers. When he’s got her attention, he’ll wave his long-clawed front feet in front of the female in a mesmerizing way and sometimes touch her face lightly with them. Then, he’ll swim away. If she doesn’t follow him, he’ll repeat the performance until she does (or doesn’t and he gives up).

If she’s willing and ready, the female will swim after the male and then sink to the bottom, where the male will mount her. His shell bottom (plastron) is slightly concave to accommodate her shell top (carapace). And, his front claw nails are longer than hers so that he can grab her shell. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine on April 21, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Fly Me to the Ground

One of our first trees to bloom is the red maple (Acer rubrum). Here you see male red maple tree flowers blooming yesterday. The flowers are starting to release their pollen, some of which may fertilize the waiting stigmas of female red maple flowers.

At about the time that the trees are in leaf, those fertilized female flowers will have elongated into fruit in the form of double samaras (winged seeds) that spin through the air before they land and try to germinate into little trees.

Curiously, red maple samaras are reddish and fly in the spring, yet the samaras of sugar maple (Acer saccharum) are green and fly in the fall. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 22, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Weekly Osprey Nest Report

Ozzie and Harriet had a busy week of spring activity in the wild: mostly copulation and nursery preparation. Both ospreys worked daily on improving their penthouse nest atop an 80-foot spruce overlooking Great Cove.

They brought large branches for the rim and outsides of the nest, some looking to be about four feet in length. Smaller branches and moss were packed into the inside, where Harriet will brood. Sometimes they would get in each other’s way, as you see here with Ozzie bringing in some home siding yesterday and Harriet hunching in expectation of a rough landing:

Several of you have asked how I tell them apart, since they’re not much different in size. Frankly, during these early stages, I often can’t, but I’m starting to be able to differentiate differences at a glance, such as Harriet’s white spot behind the eye. I think that this is Ozzie:

I do get helpful visual presentations from time to time – it’s Ozzie on top during copulation; all I have to do is try to keep them straight after that. That’s how I know that this is Harriet about to take off and in flight:

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

In the Right Place: Air Conditioning

The white-tailed deer are starting to lose their luxurious gray fur coats. They’re entering the spring molt that will leave them with thin, reddish summer coats. The process apparently is an itchy one, judging by the additional time that the deer are spending on grooming themselves and each other.

The molt primarily is to provide better summer heat control. The deer don’t have enough sweat glands to prevent overheating by evaporative cooling the way we do. Thus, their winter coats’ insulating underfur is molted away in the spring. This leaves only short and thin guard hairs that allow cooling breezes to reach their bodies in a form of air convection. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine on April 17, 2022.)

In the Right Place: What Would Noah Do?

The images here were taken in yesterday’s windy deluge, which knocked out our power, dropped a reported 1.7 inches of rain on us, and flooded our bog, as you see.

Fortunately, we have a generator that powers the house during outages and a bog full of new growth that loves flooding rain.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 19, 2022.) Click on image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Famous Unknown

I suspect that there are a good number of common and interesting birds that many people don’t see – brown or gray blurs that don’t make enough of a first impression to get our attention. I also suspect that this summer migrant is one. He’s an Eastern phoebe (Sayornes phoebe) that I saw Easter Sunday, my first phoebe of the year. (Sex assumed; only phoebes can tell males from females by sight or sound and both sexes sing.)

He's a small “flycatcher,” a group of birds that have the amazing ability to catch flying insects on the wing. Here he is eating a hard-to-identify breakfast:

Phoebes often sit upright on a twig and bob their tails while identifying themselves with a very raspy “FEEE-BEEE” song. They’re not shy; they often build their nests on or near human residences.

Eastern Phoebes are famous for allegedly being the first bird species to be banded in North America. The bander was an 18-year-old John James Audubon doing an experiment in Pennsylvania in 1804. According to Audubon’s account (which some dispute), he used silver thread to band young phoebe nestlings and documented their return to the same area the following year. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 17, 2022.)

In the Right Place: The Ozzie and Harriet Season Begins

Yesterday, these two familiar-looking ospreys appeared separately and reclaimed their nearby nest, which I’ve been visiting daily lately in anticipation of seeing the first ospreys of the year.

(I’ve been photographing and reporting on this nest for four years and always call the adult occupants Ozzie and Harriet to avoid the he-she-it syndrome.) Ozzie arrived first and immediately began nest repairs.

Of course, I can’t be certain each year that I’m seeing the same two parents. However, ospreys are nest-loyal and these two seem to be very comfortable with the nest and each other – there has been no hesitation about occupying it and no challenges from other pairs. There also usually is little to no courting; copulation attempts usually begin right away in the nest and nearby, as they did yesterday.

Nonetheless, there is a concern about the safety of ospreys such as these that have been nesting along the Maine coast. Bald eagles are on the increase along the coast and they love to harass and rob hardworking ospreys of their fish, eggs, and even chicks.

There seems to be a correlation between the eagle population increases and coastal osprey nest abandonments. According to Maine banding reports and Vickery (Birds of Maine), it appears that significant numbers of osprey are shifting their nesting to inland lakes, where the eagle-to-osprey ratio is better for the ospreys as of now. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 17, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Not in the Pink, But With the Blues

Last night’s rain squalls prevented us from taking a look at the April full moon at its peak luminosity. However, the moon was virtually full on Friday, the night before, and we caught this glimpse of it.

The April full moon most often is called the “Pink Moon,” which reportedly is a translation of the Native American description of the moon that arrives with the emergence of pink wildflowers.

Well, those Native Americans must have been enjoying their emerging pink flowers in latitudes south of here. I may have missed them, but I’ve seen no emerging pink wildflowers here. However, I have seen some blue-purple flowers emerging in the form of this dwarf iris (Iris reticulata):

The April full moon also reportedly was known by more inclusive Native Americans who called the month’s full moon the “Sprouting Grass Moon,” “Hare Moon,” “Fish Moon,” and Growing Moon.” (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 15, 2022.)

In the Right Place: Skunk Cabbage, Humans, and Bears

As of yesterday, as you see, this colony of Eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) that we’ve been monitoring has not shown any leaf shoots, but its purple spathes appear to be doing well.

A nearby smaller plant had opened a spathe yesterday to advertise its internal spadix of flowers and allow their foul smell to drift farther to attract pollinators, which apparently think that rotting meat is a heavenly scent.

Skunk cabbage has a very high content of oxalic acid, which makes it virtually toxic for humans – the smallest taste creates almost unbearable, burning, needle-like pains in humans. The plant is eaten by few wild animals, but is almost essential to one group of mammals that give the plant its alternative name: Bearweed.  

Black and brown bears will eat the roots and other parts of the young plant in the spring as a form of self-medication when the animals arise from hibernation. They usually are severely constipated at that time by up to a foot-long detritus blockage that accumulated in their lower intestines while they were dormant. You probably do not want to be near any bear when the acid of its skunk cabbage breakfast meets the firmness of its hibernation blockage. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 15, 2022.)

In the Right Place: A Bobbed Tale

In the Right Place: A Bobbed Tale

This image of a bobcat appeared yesterday in my monthly column in the Ellsworth American.

To read the column about the resurgence of Maine bobcats, click here: http://www.5backroad.com/montly-column