Beachcombing Research

I don't know how many of you have discovered Pinterest, but I find it very useful for storing research projects - places I will be visiting, rooms I am decorating, and even identifying things I find while beachcombing.

The link above is to the Beachcombing board, where I've stashed all kinds of fascinating sites dealing with stuff found on beaches: everything from clams of the Pacific Northwest to drift seed identification to explanations of sand formations. There's even a Feather Atlas! Fabulous stuff, so I figured I'd share it with you. If you've got some favorite sites, let me know in the comments - I'm sick in bed this week and could use some virtual exploration...

Snowy Owls at the Bar Harbor Airport

We've had an unusual influx of snowy owls here in Maine, and there are five who have settled in at the local airport. I was lucky enough to see three of them today (but only two were close enough to photograph.) The owls are huge. The one on the telephone pole was probably twenty feet away from me (and not at all fazed by the five or six paparazzi snapping photos), and I would guess it to be a good two feet tall. The wingspan of the one below must have been four feet. They are an arctic species who usually nest on the ground in the tundra, and what I've been told is that their main prey species (lemmings? or voles? some sort of small rodent) is prone to population spikes and crashes. When the prey population crashes, the owls come south looking for food. And here they are - hello there, Hedwig!

P.S. I'm testing a larger type size - what do you think? More readable, or too big?

Critters

I ran into a bunch of interesting animals last year that never made it onto the blog. Either I didn't have enough information to write a whole post, or I just never got around to editing the photos. I thought you might enjoy them, though, so I'm rolling a whole bunch of random critter pictures into this one post.

Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) on the beach at Hulls Cove:

Eggs of the Longfin Squid (Loligo pealei), found by a friend of mine, also on the beach at Hulls Cove:

Eastern Willet (Tringa semipalmata). Aren't those wing patterns dramatic?

Beavers (Castor canadensis) on the Eagle Lake Beaver Pond just after sunrise:

White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) just off the Jesup Path:

 An alewife (Alosa pseudoharengus) struggling up the fish ladder to Somes Pond:

An osprey (Pandion haliaetus) looking for alewives in Somes Pond and the Somesville Millpond:

 And to finish off, a baby Guillemot (Uria aalge, I think). Just look at those little feet!

I learned a new word

Shinrin-yoku

It's Japanese.
shinrin = forest
yoku = bath

I gather the idea is to take a walk in the woods to refresh oneself and reduce stress. Some of us have always done that, but apparently it's a Thing now, like yoga or aromatherapy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_bathing
www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24806994
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793346/

Fall colors at Eagle Lake

Took these photos about two weeks ago at Eagle Lake on a grey October day with a chill in the air and the leaves glowing all around.

Sometimes birch trees do this

A Walk in the Park

 Last week I strolled out along the Hemlock Road to catch the fall colors.

Wow!

 It was 8am, and the sunlight lit the trees up like stained glass windows.

 Fallen leaves floated on reflections of branches.

 Everything was sparkling with dew,

 the air was crisp,

 and I had just enough time for this walk before a breakfast date with good friends.

Not a bad way to start the day.

Apparently Fall Foliage Season starts today

News from the MaineFoliage.com website: "The official start of the fall foliage season begins today in Maine. The 2013 Fall Foliage Report from the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry reports that the northernmost part of the state is experiencing subtle color changes of less than 30% with very low leaf drop at less than 10%. However, the state anticipates an outstanding foliage season according to the Maine Forest Service."

The website posts regular updates to the map, so keep an eye on it if you are planning a trip to Maine. Looks like it's going to be a good year for leaf-peeping! Peak season is usually the last week of September/first week of October - I'm looking forward to some long hikes with my camera.

Stars over Eagle Lake

On the second night of the Perseid meteor shower, my husband and I went to Eagle Lake in Acadia National Park. I was hoping for some more interesting foregrounds and lots of falling stars. Definitely got more interesting compositions, but didn't catch a single star. The parking area is a five minute drive from my house and while we stood there letting our eyes adjust, watching layers of stars appear overhead, I thought, "Sixteen years here, and I'm still gobsmacked on a regular basis. There are worse ways to choose a hometown."

We saw plenty of shooting stars, though, and it was beautiful out there with little lake ripples lapping the shore and the occasional bullfrog making sleepy noises. They sound like very large rubber bands to me. That's the Milky Way at the far right, looking like smoke behind the spruce trees.

Not one of my photos came out the way I intended them to, but some look pretty cool anyway. I have a lot to learn about star photography (astrophotography for those of us who like ten-dollar words) but I'm an expert at working with serendipity. In fact, this one (taken while trying to master an unfamiliar wide-angle lens in the dark) might be my favorite from the night:

Waiting for the Perseids

The Milky Way seen from the Bar Harbor Yacht Club pier, looking back toward the mainland. 20 seconds, f3.5, ISO 800, 28mm. (Really wish I'd remembered a wider lens.)

 

I've decided we need a new verb, and I propose adapting 'to mother' to describe the times when one decides in one's capacity as Mother that the family will do something whether they like it or not. It is not precisely a synonym for 'to bully' and usually involves motherly statements like "You'll be glad you did" or "You'll remember this when you're old and have forgotten all about the video game you'd rather be playing." Also, "You can sleep anytime, the stars are falling right now."

So I mothered the whole family, including my very patient in-laws, into trekking out to a nice dark place around 10:30 last night to see if the Perseid meteor shower had started. We did see several dramatic shooting stars, and my son clambered into a rowboat to show us the bio-luminescent ripples around its oars. It was dark and peaceful out on the floats, and we could see the lights of Bar Harbor not too far off.

The show should peak tonight, so if you are in the Northern Hemisphere try to get out somewhere really dark. I plan to go back out around midnight by myself. I drag the others out on principle - it's my job as Mom to make damn sure they see miracles and build a little character - but trying to be Mom and Photographer at the same time rarely works. By the time I set up the camera and tripod basically blind (and then fetch my red-light headlamp from whomever has borrowed it so I can read my camera settings) and take a few 20-second exposures, everyone else is cold and ready to go home. Last night I had less moral authority than usual since I'd already made everyone sit through a two-and-a-half-hour performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, so we called it quits after 30 minutes. I'm a loving tyrant.

Do you go star-gazing? What's your favorite place?


P.S. I'm still learning how to take this sort of photograph - I've got a Pinterest board full of night photography tutorials if you're interested.

P.P.S. And if you want regular updates on meteor showers, solar flares and other cool space activity, you can sign up for email bulletins from SpaceWeather.

Tadpoles

Spring is moving so fast I don't even have time to edit the photos from one day before something new and awesome happens on the next. I may do a bunch of posts that are long on photos and short on text. As if that were a bad thing!

The Wood Frog eggs we saw on April 16 in the Frenchman's Hill fire pond have hatched into tiny tadpoles about 1/4" to 1/2" long. They must have hatched at least a few days ago because they were swimming all over the place. The eggs turned greenish a couple of weeks ago (which is normal) and algae has started to grow in the pond: see how much murk is in the water now?

When the tadpoles stop moving, they lie on their sides and you can see the translucent tail structure. There are two not-tadpoles in this shot; I think those are mosquito larvae.

The eggs we saw along the Hemlock Road on April 17 have also hatched:

This brood is younger than the Frenchman's Hill crowd: they are still clustered tightly around their egg sacs.

 And just to keep things interesting, a new crop of egg masses appeared sometime in the last week:

 They are big blobs of jelly and you have to look hard to see the eggs inside. I think these might be salamanders!

Baby Foxes!

It must be spring because every day brings another miracle, and I feel a bit dazed by all the marvels I get to see. This morning it was a mother fox nursing her kits. This particular fox family has had a litter every spring for several years in my friends' back yard, and this year I finally got to see the babies!

My friends are very respectful of their fox neighbors, so we watched from inside the house at least a hundred feet away. I'm sure the foxes appreciated our discretion, but my poor little 300mm lens was not quite up to the job. There's a lot of cropping and pixel-boosting in these shots, but I think you can see enough to be overwhelmed by the sheer cuteness.

Here she is nursing four babies:

If you look very closely, the middle baby is licking its nose off after nursing with a little pink tongue:

And just so we don't forget in the midst of all the cuteness that they are wild animals, here's Mama Fox carrying around a formely-cute-but-now-dead squirrel that Papa Fox brought for her breakfast.

 Even though the babies are nursing and not eating solid food yet, they are still running after Mama's squirrel.

My kids were like that, too, when they were little. "Whatareyoueatingisityummygivemesome!"