Natural History Calendar

January 2010: Meditations on Winter Irruptives
February 2010: Natural History by Car
March 2010: Meditations on Red-winged Blackbirds
April 2010: Meditations on Sky Phenomena
May 2010: Meditations on Mimics
June 2010: Meditations on Summer Birdsong
July 2010: Meditations on Eiders
August 2010: Meditations on Puffins
September 2010: Meditations on Whales

2009 Meditations (archived)
2008 Meditations (archived)

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September 2010: Meditations on Whales

As a teenager I was obsessed with dolphins and whales, although at that time the only ones I had seen were in tanks at Sea World. When people inevitably asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I loved being able to offer up a profession that no one had heard of. "I want to be a cetologist," I'd say. "Studying cetaceans. You know, whales?"

Enamored with the bottlenose dolphin, I imagined myself in warm, tropical blue waters swimming alongside a pod of these beautiful creatures, learning how to speak their language of clicks and whistles. While I had seen harbor porpoises in Penobscot Bay, they didn't seem much more exciting than seals. I don't think it ever occurred to me that with minimal effort I could see dolphins, even big whales, right here in Maine.

Now that my passion is birds, I try to get in one or two pelagic bird outings each summer, during which I enjoy the added bonus of seeing whales. Actually, one of the best ways to get out into the Gulf of Maine for deep-sea birding is to go on a whale watch. As a birder, I'm usually one of the few people on the boat who isn't disappointed if we don't see a whale. On a recent whale watch out of Portland, we saw four minke whales, the most common Maine whale. Most people on the four-hour voyage were disappointed that we didn't see more, but for me and the two other birders on the boat, the trip was a success: we also saw three species of shearwaters.

But I'm never blase about seeing whales, even minke whales. In fact, the real highlight of that whale watch was when a minke whale rolled past very near the boat, giving everyone a close up view of its 30-foot body, as well as its complete mastery of the ocean. When I'm on Monhegan Island in late September I sometimes spend several hours at a time hanging out on the cliffs watching for minke whales feeding offshore. They often come quite close to the island. There's something amazing about seeing such a big creature rise to the surface and then, just as quickly and silently, disappear again beneath the waves.

On longer pelagic bird outings, such as Maine Audubon's annual fall trip out of Bar Harbor, I've enjoyed some truly thrilling whale encounters. On one trip the boat was surrounded by a school of strikingly patterned Atlantic white-sided dolphins, including a few calves. They rode the bow waves and kept pace alongside the boat for what could only have been the sheer joy of it. On another trip we saw several humpback whales. These huge whales, which grow up to fifty feet long and can weigh as much as 40 tons, offer more dramatic action for the human observer. They often breach above the water's surface, lob their tails, and slap the water with their flukes, sometimes very near the boat.

On a late summer whale watch out of Kennebunkport a few years ago, my husband and I were excited to see several fin whales. Next to the blue whale, the fin is the largest mammal on earth--bigger, in fact, than any of the dinosaurs ever were, according to the on-board naturalist. Males can be up to 78 feet in length (and females even larger), and a baby fin already weighs two tons at birth. I like imagining these giant, intelligent mammals moving through the murky depths of our oceans, true leviathans in their underwater realm. The fin's sheer length makes it easy to distinguish from other whales. When it breaks the surface, that dark upper body goes on and on. Fins are also fast in the water for something so large, able to swim in bursts of more than 20 miles per hour. The naturalist referred to them as "greyhounds of the sea," and in the old days of whaling, this speed kept them alive, unlike the slower, now near-extinct right whale. (Alas, that speed hasn't helped them much in the modern whaling era, with its high-powered boats.)

Whale species have distinctive-looking "blows" or spouts when they exhale. The fin's blow is a columnar plume visible several miles away. The humpback's is lower and rounder in comparison. Because they're ocean dwellers, it's easy to forget that whales have lungs and need to surface to breath every now and then, albeit through a hole in the top of their head. It's also a bit strange to realize that they nurse young cradled by the sea. Because it breathes through a blowhole rather than its mouth, there's no problem with a baby whale accidentally inhaling water into its lungs while nursing in the briny deep. But I can't help but wonder if whale's milk tastes salty.

All the whales I've seen off Maine have been baleen whales--specifically, rorquals, a type of whale that features chin grooves and dorsal fins. Despite their size, these whales eat really tiny food, including krill, and small crustaceans and fish. Fringed plates of baleen hang down where upper teeth would be. The chin grooves expand the whale's mouth, enabling it to take in a large volume of water; when that water is expelled, anything edible is trapped behind the baleen. The world's largest animals are thus living on some of the smallest. When you think about the incredible amount of krill that must be needed to sustain a single whale--up to two tons a day for a fin whale--it's easy to see how essential the health of our oceans is at every level of life.

Toothed whales, which actively hunt larger prey, include the sperm whale of "Moby Dick" fame, which is not normally seen near Maine, and the killer whale. Although one or two killer whales are spotted each year in the Gulf of Maine, they're an unusual sighting. Brian Benedict, Deputy Manager of the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, encountered one this summer just off Owls Head as he was boating back to Rockland from a visit to a refuge island. He said he'd never seen one in the wild before, but he had no doubt what it was when he saw that tall, black dorsal fin and white head markings. The whale was probably about the size of his boat.

The killer whale got its name for the ferocity with which it attacks its prey, which can be almost anything else in the water. It's been observed killing great white sharks, and several members of a pod will gang up to kill much larger whales. Attacks on humans are very rare in the wild, although in captivity there have been a few dozen attacks on humans, including a well-publicized, fatal attack on a trainer at Sea World this past February. Not to sound all "Free Willy"-esque, but perhaps this should tell us something about keeping captive such an intelligent predator that is so perfectly adapted to life on the open sea. I do realize that's ironic coming from someone who was at one time inspired to be a cetologist after watching Shamu at Sea World. But I would prefer that the next cetacean I see be a free range whale living the good life on the bounty of the Gulf of Maine.

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August 2010: Meditations on Puffins

As August arrives and summer reaches its peak, I think of puffins. By early to mid-August, fledgling Atlantic puffins will have begun to exit their burrows one by one, leaving their parents behind, to fly out to sea and begin their independent lives. The fledgling flies off in the night to avoid the dangers of predators like gulls. Because they disperse far out into the Atlantic, no one is really sure where they go. The young bird hangs out in the open ocean for several years, then returns to its home island to nest. Scientists are not entirely sure how it finds its way home, either. A puffin may live as long as 30 years, so it can afford to be a late bloomer. After a few years of scoping out the home island, at around the age of five it decides to find a mate, settle down, dig a burrow, and raise a chick of its own. And the cycle begins all over again.

For a bird that's as closely studied on its breeding grounds as the Atlantic puffin, it's interesting that so many mysteries still surround its life. During the late spring and summer months on several nesting islands off the Maine coast, researchers sit behind blinds from dawn to dusk cataloguing the birds' every move. Last year eight puffins that had nested on Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge were fitted with geolocator leg bands by Project Puffin staff. Five of these birds have been spotted this year, according to a recent report issued by Project Puffin, but staff have not yet been able to recapture the birds to remove their leg bands and retrieve the geolocators, which potentially hold information that might offer clues as to where puffins go in the winter when the researchers aren't able to follow.

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Adult puffin on Machias Seal Island

Atlantic puffins have historically been numerous in the north Atlantic. When I was fourteen, I remember seeing hundreds of them off the coast of northern Scotland--my first sightings of a bird that has since become a wildlife icon of my home state. In Iceland, the birds are so numerous they are regularly eaten. In fact, the name puffin, according to an Iceland puffin website, means "fatling" and used to refer to chicks of the unrelated Manx shearwater, which were also eaten. That's why the shearwater scored the Latin name Puffinus puffinus, and not the puffin as one might expect. The Atlantic puffin's Latin name is Fratercula arctica, or "little friar (or brother) of the North," presumably because of its neat black and white plumage similar to religious garb.

Here in Maine puffins were over-hunted for food and feathers. By the 1900s only one pair remained in the state, on Matinicus Rock right here in Penobscot Bay. They were protected there by thoughtful lighthouse keepers, who kept away hunters and predatory gulls, and the colony eventually grew. Today, thanks to that same oversight model, the island continues to be an important nesting refuge for puffins and other seabirds. Only researchers may land there when the birds are in residence.

In the 1970s Steve Kress began restoring puffins to Eastern Egg Rock in nearby Muscongus Bay, an island which hadn't hosted nesting puffins since the 1880s. This summer researchers on Eastern Egg Rock counted 99 active puffin burrows by mid-July and anticipated discovering more burrows and surpassing last year's record high count of 107 pairs by the end of the field season on the island. The puffin is slowly but surely making its way back into Maine waters, now nesting in established colonies of varying sizes on Eastern Egg Rock, Seal Island, Matinicus Rock, and Machias Seal Island.

Machias Seal Island, which is part of the United States or Canada depending on whom you ask, has long been a bastion of puffins. While the colony there is protected, it did not have to be restored as on other islands. A couple of summers ago I was fortunate enough to be able to join a birding group on the puffin charter boat out of Cutler harbor. After experiencing seabird cruises to Matinicus Rock and Eastern Egg Rock, on which seeing a few dozen puffins was cause for great excitement, I was unprepared for the hundreds--even thousands--of birds we saw on Machias Seal Island. Puffins were everywhere, zipping around the boat like little wind-up toys, flying in to the island with beaks full of herring, and bobbing in big rafts offshore. Although we'd heard reports that the island's tern colonies were having a zero success rate, puffins were clearly thriving--more than 3,000 pairs nest there!

Because of the island's importance as a nesting site for not only puffins but other seabirds with precarious populations, only a certain number of visitors are allowed to disembark each day. Walking on the island is restricted to a few clearly marked pathways, as well, because stepping in the wrong spot could crush a tern nest or damage an underground burrow. Groups of two or three people are ushered to the enclosed blinds (with no stopping allowed on the way) for short stints of up-close observation. Once in the blind you have to be careful not to open so many of the sliding windows that the birds around you become aware of your presence. Eggs and chicks are endangered if a parent bird is spooked and disappears.

But following the rules was completely worth it when a puffin landed on a ledge about ten feet in front of me. From so close, the puffin's colorful bill and dapper plumage were striking. The puffin is a much smaller bird than most people realize, so the experience was also more gratifying than leaning over a boat railing to peer at a speck in the water. More puffins came and went. A puffin pair touched bills and entered a cleft in the rocks that must have enclosed a burrow. (Puffins are monogamous.) Overhead we could hear the pitter-patter of little feet as puffins congregated on the roof of the blind. It was an extraordinary experience.

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Puffins perch atop a blind on Machias Seal Island

This year's young, which will be taking flight soon, will look a little different than the adults I saw on Machias Seal Island. A bird in juvenile plumage sports a gray face and less flamboyant bill than an adult, and so doesn't stand out with that "sea parrot" look that makes the puffin such a recognizable icon. Soon, the adults will molt into their darker, winter look, as well, and then head off to unknown waters, not to return until next spring.

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July 2010: Meditations on Eiders

Several summers ago my husband and I were dining at a fancy waterfront restaurant in southern Maine when we heard the people at the next table ask our waiter what those black and white birds were floating offshore. "I think those are puffins," the young man replied. Later, much to my husband's embarrassment, I called the waiter over and asked him to please tell the people at the next table that the birds were common eiders, a kind of sea duck. They were politely grateful for the clarification, although I think they'd rather have gone on believing they had seen puffins, which rank right up there with moose as an icon of natural Maine.

The waiter was clearly "from away," because there aren't many who live near the coast for long without learning to recognize one of our most common sea ducks. The full adult male eider in breeding plumage is a handsome bird with black belly, white upper body, black cap, long, sloping gold bill, and a greenish wash on the face. Males that aren't yet full adults, or who are in non-breeding, eclipse plumage, display varied, motley combinations of black and white. (That black and white coloring is about the only thing it shares in common with the puffin.) The female eider is a beautiful warm brown, the better to camouflage her when she's on the nest. The striking plumage of the male combined with his bulky size--the common eider's the largest duck in the United States, weighing in at up to six pounds--certainly makes him noticeable, from sea-view restaurant windows, local beaches, or a summer boat tour around an offshore island.

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Common Eiders: female, left, and male, right . Photo by Brian Willson

Here on Penobscot Bay we are fortunate to enjoy these ducks year round. Many of the bay's uninhabited islands provide traditional nesting habitat, and breeding pairs are joined in fall and winter by migrants from further north to form wide-spreading rafts of hundreds, even thousands, of ducks. Eiders are seasonally monogamous, although the pair doesn't usually stick together for a lifetime like geese do. However, if a hen finds her previous mate on their wintering grounds, they'll bond again for the following breeding season and fly back to the nesting grounds together. Then the male will guard her closely as she spends all her time eating in order to build up the reserves she'll need to spend a month sitting on the nest till their eggs hatch.

Eider nests, of course, are also protected by the infamous eiderdown, soft feathers the female plucks from her breast to line the nest and cover the eggs when she's away from them. The sustainable harvest of eiderdown from nests is still continued in Iceland, but here in the United States we've replaced it with goose down or synthetic fibers. A true eiderdown pillow or blanket would be a precious thing nowadays.

This time of year female eiders can be seen in offshore waters gathered with their downy young in communal groups called creches. Females who didn't breed or whose nests failed, called "aunts," will join these groups as caretakers and overseers of the vulnerable ducklings. An eider duckling has to run a true gauntlet of predators to survive from egg to adult--minks, foxes, night-herons, gulls (especially great-black backed), and eagles will all eat an egg or young eider when given the opportunity. So having more eyes to keep watch on the next generation seems to offer them the best chance of success.

Weather, too, can wreak havoc on an eider colony. Last summer's weeks of rain and low temperatures all but decimated Maine's eider nests. Observers who come upon creches this year should find many more ducklings, along with their extended family of mothers, cradled by the rocking surf. Eiders began hatching in May in Casco Bay and in June here in Penobscot Bay, and by all accounts are flourishing right now.

Although the eider is commonly hunted in coastal Maine, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW) monitors its population closely. In the early 19th century, thanks to over-hunting and egg-collecting, only a few breeding eiders remained in Maine on the remotest islands--in 1907 only two breeding pairs were observed, according to MDIFW biologist Brad Allen. Stricter hunting regulations and the restoration of many seabird islands have helped bring the eider population back to healthy numbers, but MDIFW continues to conduct annual surveys to keep close track of how they're doing, including nest surveys on managed islands and winter flyover surveys of the big rafts that accumulate in Maine waters. While our summer population is currently up to 25,000 pairs, in the winter more than 150,000 eiders can be found bobbing together offshore.

A few years ago for the Christmas Bird Count we walked out on the Rockland Breakwater to count eiders and other sea ducks and were surprised not to see more than a handful of ducks bobbing in the waves. Usually significant rafts congregate off the end of the jetty. As we drew closer, we quickly realized those few ducks were decoys. And soon a small boat, complete with two hunters and a wet dog, pulled into view. We chatted with them as they drew near the rocks, laughing at our poor timing for trying to count ducks. They encouraged us to tally the three dead ducks lying in their boat. After all, they'd been alive earlier in our count day.

In one essay I read recently, a hunter from California described gunning for eiders in Downeast Maine as "an uncommon experience... the pinnacle of sea duck hunts." A poet friend of mine has even written a paean to his annual eider hunt with his father over Thanksgiving weekend. Although I've never hunted eiders, I do know what the Maine coast is like in November and can only imagine that part of the thrill of hunting on the water that time of year comes from withstanding the elements--bonding through adversity, as it were--because eider meat, I've heard, is rather oily, not at all a treat.

Diet may play some part in its unpalatable taste. Like many of us, the eider enjoys mussels, which it picks off the ocean floor and swallows whole, as well as sea urchins, shrimp, crabs, and other crustaceans. A good diet for a coastal Mainer, but I'm not sure the flavors translate well into the meat of a sea duck. Otherwise the waiter at that nice restaurant where my husband and I dined might've identified those eiders out the window--they probably would've been featured on the menu as a wild local delicacy.

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June 2010: Meditations on Summer Birdsong

Although it has felt like summer for a few weeks now, with lupines blooming in roadside fields and the hum of crickets rising from our lawns, the season doesn't officially begin until the morning of June 21. By Summer Solstice migrating birds will all have passed through on their merry way to mates and nests further north. And those birds that spend their breeding season with us along western Penobscot Bay have hopefully found mates and settled down to the nature-driven task of building nests and laying eggs.

Thanks to the early start we got this spring, some birds have in fact already fledged young. Canada geese were observed with goslings in early May. Some robins were real early birds, hustling their young out of the nest by late May, just in time for another round or two before summer's end. In my neighborhood I can tell when the birds have paired up and are focused on family when they stop singing. The cardinal who woke us up like a siren each dawn is now given to only occasional fits of whistling, for example. Other birds have fallen silent altogether.

When you think about why birds sing in the first place, it makes sense. They certainly aren't doing it for our benefit (although it's an interesting question as to why humans not only generally enjoy birdsong but also find it soothing--are we naturally drawn to that which reminds us of our past lives as fellow animals in the wild?) For the male songbird, singing is primarily about establishing and defending a territory and finding a mate. Once he's paired up with a female and they're watching over a nest full of vulnerable eggs or nestlings, the last thing he wants to do is draw attention to them with a loud serenade.

So by Midsummer's Eve, our woods are generally quieter. But not wholly silent. A few birds seem to sing their way through summer, giving voice to the brief and glorious season. A walk on a trail along the forested slopes of Ragged Mountain or Mount Megunticook, for example, will be reliably accompanied by birdsong that, once recognized and heard a few times, may soon carry for you too the essence of the Maine woods in summer.

One of the most poignant of these is the song of the white-throated sparrow. This unassuming little bird spends its time kicking through leaves in the underbrush, one of those "little brown jobs" easily overlooked by the non-birder. But most of us recognize its voice, an initial note followed by a series of higher vibrating notes on the same pitch. My grandmother, who called the bird a "rain sparrow," told me that it was singing (with a slight vibrato), "We're going to have rain." Here in Maine, that sort of avian prediction is not often wrong. Bird books and other birders will tell you that the white-throat is singing, "Old Sam Peabody-Peabody-Peabody," or, depending on their nationality, "O Canada, Canada, Canada." However you hear it, that plaintive song is a common sound in the Maine woods, evoking for me vivid memories of running barefoot down dew-dampened paths lined by foggy spruces or picking raspberries in the awakening heat of early summer mornings.

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White-throated Sparrow. Photo by Brian Willson

Because its song is often transliterated as, "Trees, trees, murmuring trees," the black-throated green warbler seems to be singing about his home habitat--the verdant green tapestry that makes up the canopy of the mixed deciduous forest I also think of as home. As I'm walking on a local trail surrounded by red oaks, maples, and scattered pines, that buzzy song from on high invariably makes me smile. This fist-sized bird with the sunny yellow face and black bib boasts a big voice. He sings well into day and longer into summer, too, after almost all the other warblers have closed their song books. With the trees fully leafed out, he's almost impossible to see, but for some reason I find it reassuring to hear him and know he's up there, as if a friend were near. And sometimes as I'm driving down the road his song will rise from the surrounding trees, an unexpected communication from the woods itself.

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Black-throated Green Warbler. Photo by Brian Willson

The black-throated green warbler is often accompanied by another of my summer favorites, the red-eyed vireo. This bird too is near invisible as it flits behind the lush green screen of leaves, but if you know what to listen for, his incessant voice cannot be missed. His repetitive, rollicking song seems to ask a question and then answer it: "Where are you? Here I am. [pause] Where are you? Here I am," over and over again. A researcher tallying the output of one individual counted 20,000 song repetitions in a single day. Fortunately the song is a pretty one, reminiscent of a robin's. Many summer afternoons, when other birds are taking a siesta, the red-eye will still be tirelessly singing away, pausing only occasionally to catch a caterpillar, knock it senseless against a tree branch, and then eat it. A non-descript gray bird (its red eyes are not noticeable except at close range), this one appeals to me because of his persistence and familiarity. With him around, at least we'll never experience a "silent summer."

A non-birder friend once asked me to join her on a walk in the woods to help her identify a bird that had been haunting her to the point of torment. She hadn't been able to see it in the dense, coniferous forest near her home, so had nothing to go on to look it up in a bird book, but she avowed that it had the most beautiful birdsong she'd ever heard. When she said that, I knew what we were looking for: the winter wren. This elusive, tiny brown bird skulks around in the roots of upturned trees and in impenetrable thickets of spruce. But his voice arises like a crazy miracle of sound, seeming to issue from the dark heart of the very forest itself--a very long, ecstatic series of high-pitched, ethereal trills. It's difficult to hear this song while walking alone on a mossy-banked trail, sunlight filtering in through the tall trunks old trees to illuminate wildflowers and ferns in the under story, and not believe in fairy music.

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May 2010: Meditations on Mimics

One recent morning as I was leaving for work I heard the distinctive call of a broad-winged hawk--a piercing, high-pitched, two-tone whistle. The sound repeated several times. This was during the peak of broad-winged hawk migration, and I'd been looking forward to seeing my first one of the spring. Often in seasons past I've heard the call and stepped outside to see a broad-wing or two circling in the sky above Mount Battie. But the sky was empty today as far as I could see. Then it dawned on me: I was being duped by a blue jay.

And not for the first time. I've heard blue jays imitate broad-winged hawks, red-tailed hawks, and ospreys. And this spring I heard a blue jay respond to the "beep-beep" of my car door opener more than once with a pitch-perfect imitation. A friend says she has heard a jay make a sound just like a sonar "ping." I'm not sure what the evolutionary advantage is to being such a successful mimic, but given that the blue jay's real specialty seems to be raptors, perhaps it's to mess with other birds, to scare them off a birdfeeder or their eggs or to otherwise distract them for some nefarious purpose of its own. Or perhaps it just enjoys playing with sounds. Jays are generally very verbal birds, possessing a canny intelligence. This one certainly played on my expectations that morning, as if it knew just what I was hoping to see and decided to tease me.

Two of our most formidable mimics, the gray catbird and the aptly-named mockingbird, make their presence known this time of year. Both birds appropriately belong to the family Mimidae, and while their appearance may be plain--both are relatively unmarked, gray birds--their vocal talents are prodigious. On my annual May visit to Monhegan I've frequently heard catbirds singing, as it seemed, from every bush. During spring migration they seem to move through an area en masse. The catbird has shown up as a common species on my Beech Hill Preserve bird surveys, as well, singing in every shrubby corner. It gets its name from its call note, a whiny, cat-like "mew." Such a simple call belies the crazy intricacy of his song, which entwines strands of dozens of other birds' songs with improvised noises of his own.

A catbird can go on for 15 to 20 minutes at a stretch when so inspired. Thanks to the complexity and rapid change of phrase in his song, you never hear the same song twice. Even after coming across a dozen or more in the course of a day's birding, I'm never bored by the catbird, because I never know what's going to come out of his mouth. When listening to a catbird, or especially a mockingbird--whose vocalizations are more distinct and reliably in sets of three to five--it can be a fun challenge to try to pick out what birds are being imitated. With the mockingbird this test can be a special challenge because he knows many birds I don't. Once a fellow birder picked out the song of a buff-collared nightjar in a mockingbird's song. (I didn't know what that was, either.) And like my beeping backyard blue jay, he also imitates non-avian sounds--car alarm, barking dog, squeaky wheel, or whistling human.

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Northern Mockingbird. Photo by Heather Gerquest.

The mockingbird's behavior and singing style reflect his brash personality. He readily swoops at those near his nest, flashing white wing-patches. And he sings loudly and long, sometimes into the wee hours of the night. A blast of nighttime birdsong might disturb some, but others, like vocalist Neko Case, find it soothing. In "Magpie to the Morning," she sings, "Hear the mockingbird sing in the middle of the night. All of his songs are stolen... Stole them from whip-poor-wills, screaming car alarms. He sings them for you special. He knows you're afraid of the dark."

Though not afraid of the dark, ornithologist Donald Kroodsma, who has studied birdsong for over thirty years, also appreciates the mockingbird's night singing. He has determined that the nocturnal soloists are as-yet unpaired males. Listening to one individual from midnight to 6:30 a.m., he estimated the bird knew about 100 different songs, from Carolina wren to phoebe to song sparrow. In his book "The Singing Life of Birds," he cites a Florida study in which some mockingbirds were found to have as many as 200 different songs. Another study indicates that birds seem to increase their song repertoire from one year to the next, learning more songs each successive year. Thus, a mockingbird that can show off a lot of different songs is an older and potentially more enduring mate.

As with me and my blue jay, Kroodsma was naturally led to wonder, "Why does a mockingbird mock?" He dismissed imitation as an easy way for the bird to expand its song base, because other species have many more songs on their internal playlist--a catbird can have up to 400! In considering whether it's a warning to other species to stay away from either nest and/or feeding territory, he questions, "But why, then, a kingfisher rattle? Why a washing machine or a car siren, as other mockingbirds have been heard to sing? Is the mocker just hedging his bets by imitating broadly, making sure he has a song for all possible comers?"

Ultimately Kroodsma's theory is that the answer can be found in knowing what female mockingbirds really want. Something about the singing must resonate in a good way in the female's brain. And as for the male, Kroodsma adds, "I want to believe that he 'enjoys' singing, that doing what he does so well satisfies some inner need for performing well." So if you're awakened by a mockingbird in the night, try to appreciate what you're hearing. Or if you can't, at least wish the bird well in finding a mate so he'll shut up soon.

Other birds act as mimics. Crows are well-known for imitating human sounds. And parrots, of course. The ubiquitous little starling has surprising vocal agility. I've had one wolf-whistle at me from a power line so convincingly that I was utterly confused when I turned around and no one was there. Was he, like so many guys on street corners, offering up his own misguided idea of "what women really want"? In any case, as with the blue jay in my yard, the many catbirds of spring, and the mockingbird down the street, he gained my appreciation for his imitative abilities. I bet he also had a little fun at my expense.

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April 2010: Meditations on Sky Phenomena

April showers bring May flowers, goes the saying. April in Maine, we expect rain. But mid-spring skies hold potential for more than rainy weather. For one thing, the still chilly air often offers opportunities to see a sundog or two. These commas of light bracketing the sun are technically called parhelia, meaning "beside the sun" in Greek. Caused by the refraction of sunlight through ice crystals, a sundog can be seen any time of year anywhere, though usually when the sun is lower in the sky. Sometimes only one will be visible, just a bright patch of colored light next to the sun. I consider it lucky when I see two, especially if their colors are vivid--they look like fragments of a rainbow which, if completed, would form a perfect circle of light around the sun. I've heard that in some atmospheric conditions these halos do occur, accented by sundogs that are always at the same level as the sun.

Several apparent references to sundogs in historic chronicles refer to the phenomenon as "three suns," and, as with many unusual sights in the sky, they were naturally regarded as portents--good or bad depending on what happened next. According to literary legend, Edward of York saw "three suns" on the morning before a decisive battle in the England's War of the Roses--and eventually went on to become King Edward IV. Saskatchewan weather lore has it that if you see a sundog, the next day will be bitterly cold--but there are probably many signs that point to it being bitterly cold in Saskatchewan in the winter!

I'm told moondogs also exist, a result of the same light and ice crystal combination that create sundogs, though I've never seen one. They require a full moon, though apparently the moon's light is rarely bright enough to create more than blurry white patches beside the cold white orb. I've seen halos around the moon, however. Moon halos are different from moondogs, being caused by the reflection of moonlight off surrounding clouds rather than the refraction of light through ice crystals. The old saying, Ring around the moon means rain will come soon, points to the fact that halo = clouds. The April full moon, called by various cultures the Pink Moon (for the bloom of early pink wildflowers), Fish Moon (for the shad run), Seed Moon, or Sprouting Grass Moon, falls on April 28 this year, late enough in the month to actually correspond with sprouting grass and wildflowers here in Maine. To celebrate this month's full moon, you could play Nick Drake's beautiful song "Pink Moon" and toast with a bottle of Full Moon ale.

In addition to the Moon, several planets are visible this April. If the skies aren't clouded by too many April showers and the night air grows a bit warmer, planet viewing could be quite rewarding. Red Mars, which has been with us through the winter, will still be high overhead in the southern night sky. Our brightest planet, Venus, now rises in the west as the Evening Star, an easily recognizable heavenly body that has played a role in the mythologies of cultures around the world. It's no wonder, because at its brightest, Venus casts shadows. Only the Moon is brighter in our night sky. Venus rises as the Evening Star throughout April, and then disappears for a while to re-emerge as the Morning Star--this eternal pattern the perfect inspiration over the millennia for stories of birth, death, and resurrection. In mid-April Venus engages in a short dance with the crescent moon--the two will switch places, with the moon moving above Venus. Throughout the month Venus slowly moves higher and more easterly in the sky. Saturn rises in southeastern skies after dusk. Its rings aren't tilted at a sharp enough angle now to be easily visible, but it's always cool to view this big bright planet through a telescope or even binoculars. As an added planetary bonus in April, those with keen eyes may be able to pick out Mercury very close to Venus in the first week of April. Using binoculars right after sunset, look just to the right of Venus for the non-twinkling speck of this tiny, distant planet, which will disappear once more by mid-month.

Another reason to watch the sky near the end of April is the Lyrid meteor shower, so named because the shooting stars appears to emanate from the constellation Lyra. This small constellation is dominated by the star Vega, one of the brighter stars in the April sky. The real source of the meteors is dust from the tail of Comet Thatcher, which the earth passes through this time each year. The drag about meteor showers is that to really maximize your falling star tally and rack up lots of wishes, you ideally need to be looking for them between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. If you happen to be awake then, put on a warm coat, grab a blanket, find a place away from streetlights and other light pollution, and look up. The peak date for this shower is April 22, but there's a lot of cosmic dust floating around before and after.

A recent New Yorker cartoon by P.C. Vey showed a man looking through a telescope saying, "You never really know how boring the sky is till you see it up close." I found that funny enough to write down. (And if, as a friend of mine says, stars and planets leave you cold, keeping watching the skies... This is also the month when male woodcocks perform their spectacular mating flights.) But really, as with most things, the closer you look at it, the more interesting the sky becomes. You begin to notice the phases of the moon and the patterns of clouds. Or perhaps the rising Evening Star or a sundog illuminates your day in a small but wonderful way. As spring returns in April, we become focused on the arriving birds, the green haze of leafing trees, and the beauty of blooming flowers. But we should also remember once in a while to look up, to see the sky up close.

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March 2010: Meditations on Red-winged Blackbirds

When we think of harbingers of spring, most of us think of crocuses, robins, or peepers. For my husband, it's the onset of fishing season. For me, it's the return of turkey vultures, which seem to arrive back in Camden about a week before the official first day of spring (or Vernal Equinox), which falls on March 20 this year. My mother, however, marks the season with the re-appearance of red-winged blackbirds at her feeder. Ornithologist Peter Vickery estimates that blackbirds should arrive in the Camden area by the second week of March, perhaps even earlier depending on weather patterns. So get the feeders ready, Mom--they're on their way!

Red-winged blackbirds are considered short-distance migrants, rarely traveling more than a few hundred miles south of their breeding territory. Birds in warmer regions may not even migrate, and even in southern Maine a handful may sometimes winter over. On a breeding map, Maine is a red state just north of a sea of purple--in this case, red indicating summer breeding range and purple indicating year-round territory. Because they don't have far to go, they're among the last to linger in the fall, though dispersed from their nesting area, and the first to return. And when they do, I know it, because my mother immediately calls me up to ecstatically inform me that "her" blackbirds are back.

As songbirds go, the male blackbird is not subtle. He's larger than a sparrow, shiny black, and in the spring--when he's staking out his territory and advertising for a mate--he flashes those bright red epaulettes all over the place. In my yellowed edition of A Popular Handbook of the Ornithology of Eastern North America by Thomas Nuttall (revised and annotated by Montague Chamberlain in 1896), Nuttall describes blackbirds as moving about the southern rice fields in winter flocks "like blackening clouds, rising suddenly at times with a noise like thunder, and exhibiting amidst the broad shadows of their funereal plumage the bright flashing of vermilion with which their wings are singularly decorated." But by the time they're back with us, they're already shifting from flock mentality to pairing off.

The red-winged blackbird's loud and distinctive song--described by one friend as "Walter Leeeee!"--rings out repeatedly in the spring air. (To get herself through the blackbird-less winter, my mother has a little stuffed toy blackbird that repeats this song when it's squeezed.) A marsh or wetland large enough to comprise many blackbird territories echoes with a near-constant cacophony as each male claims his space and engages in various skirmishes. As he sings, he fans his tail and flashes his shoulder patches, but in a less passionate mood, he can also make the red feathers less conspicuous. In the fall, when he's no long posturing, it may sometimes take a minute to figure out what that black bird with the buffy wing bar is: it's simply a red-wing that's tucked away his red for the winter.

blackbird

Photo by Walter Siegmund (via Wikipedia Commons)

Nuttall, who says blackbirds can be heard from two miles away, describes their songs with particularly poetic language: "This music seems to be something betwixt chattering and warbling,--jingling liquid notes... then complaining chirps, jars, and sounds like saw-filing, or the motion of a sign-board on its rusty hinge; the whole constituting a novel and sometimes grand chorus of discord and harmony, in which the performers seem in good earnest, and bristle up their feathers as if inclined at least to make up in quantity what their show of music may lack in quality." Granted, blackbirds can make some crazy sounds, but to my ears, the simple, trilling song of a single blackbird perched on a cat-tail in my parents' backyard heralds spring's return with as much poignancy as a bog full of spring peepers. And the two sounds together fully encompass the range of spring's glorious chorus.

With those sounds in my head, I can't resist sharing Nuttall's description of a duet between a bullfrog and a blackbird: "The great bull-frog elevates his green head and brassy eyes from the stagnant pool, and calls out in a loud and echoing bellow... which is again answered... by the creaking or cackling voice of his feathered neighbors. This curious concert, uttered as it were from the still and sable waters of the Styx, is at once both ludicrous and solemn." This passage has certainly inspired me to listen more carefully to the vocal interactions going on in a nearby marsh this spring.

During breeding season, the male blackbird is constantly vigilant, ever ready to launch a charge in defense of his territory. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, he spends more than 25% of his daylight hours defending his turf, fending off encroaching males, predators, and other birds and beasts. That doesn't leave a lot of time for important activities like eating and mating.

But he apparently has great cause for his overly aggressive stance. One of the things I remember best from a college ornithology class was that red-winged blackbirds are primarily polygynous, meaning one male may have more than a dozen female mates. I remember this so well because the guys in my ornithology class naturally made a big deal about the benefits of this type of breeding behavior. For those considering this as a lifestyle option, however, they should also know that DNA-testing has shown that 25 to 50% of all nestlings hatched within a particular territory were fathered by a bird other than the territorial male. I don't think the guys in my ornithology class really put much thought into what it would mean to have to actually defend and keep in line that many women all at once.

The streaky brown female blackbird almost looks like a different species from the male, and is frequently mistaken for a big sparrow. Because she's brooding eggs and guarding the nest, she doesn't want to draw attention to herself or her young. While the male flies his red flags overhead, she skulks in the reeds, generally blending in well with the brown stalks of marsh grasses and sedges. Blackbirds may raise two broods in a season--clearly there's a lot of love going on in those noisy marshes. So keep your eyes open, because it's coming soon to a wetland near you.

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February 2010: Natural History by Car

While a passenger on a long drive to Boston recently, I realized that even in winter things can get interesting out the window. Paying a little attention while watching the world go by can greatly improve a road trip, and feels better than just sleeping the trip away. By keeping your eyes open, you might awaken your body and your mind.

Of course, my first interest is always birds. I'm fond of tallying the number of red-tailed hawks I see perched in trees along the highway, love picking out those bulky hawk bodies with the diagnostic dark "belly band," recognizing that imperious look of a creature surveying its domain. My personal record is 15 on a six-hour drive from Camden to Burlington, Vermont.

I've had even better luck with eagles, but that entails a special side trip on Route One in Warren past Last-Stop Poultry. The St. George River valley is one of the premiere gathering areas for off-season eagles. (Another well-attended winter eagle convention can be found Down East near Cobscook Bay.) Dozens of bald eagles of all ages hang out in the trees around the poultry farm and its abutting fields, transforming rural Maine into a scene right out of the Chilkat River delta in Alaska. Because it takes bald eagles about four years of molts to attain that white-headed and -tailed adult plumage we all recognize, seeing so many birds in one place offers a unique chance to study up on their more confusing juvenile feather patterns. But you don't have to be a hard-core birder to appreciate a tree full of eagles. Possible bonus points: ravens and hawks often accompany the eagles, and last year a rare black vulture spent the winter at the poultry farm.

Route One crosses a lot of water, both fresh and salt, providing further birding opportunities: the Marsh River Bog Preserve in Newcastle sometimes harbors hooded mergansers, as does a little pool just this side of the Taste of Maine restaurant. An inlet north of the Wiscasset bridge is a prime spot for buffleheads. Peregrine falcons often hang out year-round near bridges, as in Bath and Topsham, scoping out the pigeons that huddle together in silvery flocks. Where 295 crosses water in Falmouth and Portland's Back Bay, sea ducks can easily be seen bobbing and diving throughout the cold season. Come spring most of these ducks will head back to the Arctic, but for now, eiders, buffleheads, goldeneyes, and mergansers can often be seen and readily identified even at 50 miles per hour.

The many farm fields one passes on most any road in Maine often host flocks of turkeys, also good for roadside entertainment. And counting crows can keep one occupied for hours in any habitat or climate--sometimes they're the only bird I see for a hundred miles. But birds are only part of the fun. When the bare skeletons of the trees are fully exposed, playing "name that tree" gets a little easier. That may sound absurdly nerdy, but in my opinion it beats singing "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" or playing the license plate game.

Deciduous trees in winter reveal their postures, their textures, the full shape of their naked branches. Clumps of skinny black locusts with grooved bark raise high their wriggling arms. Lone red oaks stand guard over old farm fields, their broad crowns of twisting branches dangling remnant leaves like crisp dry hands. Smooth grey beeches flaunt fluttering strings of small brown leaf pennants. White birches look especially stark against the snow, showing their true bones. Bending gracefully over rivers and along the edges of flood plains, willows define the reaches of water. Here and there the trunk of a fortunate elm that has thus far escaped Dutch elm disease rises straight up to its spreading broom top. Thickets of staghorn sumacs lift up their clusters of fuzzy red fruits like offerings--which they are, for hungry robins and waxwings. And this being the Pine Tree State, the soft bushy branches of pine trees--as well as the darker, sturdier looking boughs of compact spruces and firs--provide contrast almost everywhere, helping to soften the wooded edges and inject some longed-for green into our roadside vistas.

A trip down the Maine coast can also remind us how the whole state is vertically striated by its rivers, like stretch marks, echoes of the ancient glaciers. Damariscotta, Sheepscot, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Fore, Mousam, Saco, Piscataquis--each one was once a watery highway leading early settlers deep into the forested interior. In the bleak midwinter, ice floes drift, heave, and clutter these rivers and shallow inlets like frozen puzzle pieces trying to come back together. Gulls shine above the white face of the winter waters. Cold light filtering through their wing feathers transforms them into creatures more pristine and angelic than they really are. And somewhere down below those frigid waters, fish drift. I think of the giant sturgeon that in summer heave and spin their whole bodies out of the Kennebec. What are they up to now? Catching smelts, like the ice fishermen in their rows of shacks?

Maine towns sprung up around its waterways, but they were built on its bedrock. If birds, trees, rivers, or just admiring the exposed contours of the February landscape aren't enough for you, you can always watch for road cuts. When I studied geology in college, half our field trips were to road cuts. What better place to study the solid bowels of the earth exposed? My favorite was a shiny phyllite cliff in southeastern Vermont studded with low-grade garnets. I haven't seen anything so dramatic in Maine, but there are, for example, some attractive road cuts along 295 between Falmouth and Brunswick that showcase the Vassalboro formation. This mineral layer cake of dark schist and light granite was, according to The Roadside Geology of Maine, exposed by the Norumbega fault series. If I remember my New England geology correctly, this fault zone was an artifact of the Acadian orogeny, or mountain-building event, that happened over 400 million years ago.

So on your next long winter drive, if the weather affords you the freedom of being able to sit back and watch the landscape go by, you can amuse yourself by pondering the natural world on many levels. Enjoy the ephemeral moment of a crow in flight above your car, the more static lives of long-lived trees--tight red buds of maples beginning to rouge the forest--or the seemingly eternal bedrock that channels rivers and bounds our highways. It's all good.

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January 2010: Meditations on Winter Irruptives

Every winter Maine is invaded by birds. But I don't mean the malevolent gulls from Hitchcock's "The Birds." I'm talking about flocks of innocent songbirds from Canada's boreal forests. Their unexpected visits, called "irruptions," are all about food, not climate. They go where food is, and thus their travel patterns vary from year to year, and even week to week. Winter birding and feeder-watching in Maine can be unexpectedly interesting because we never know who's coming for dinner.

It helps to look globally to understand what's happening locally with these birds. Most winter irruptives, including the redpoll, evening grosbeak, and crossbills, rely heavily on seeds and cones. Others, including the pine grosbeak and Bohemian waxwing, depend on wild fruit crops, primarily mountain ash berries. If these food sources are poor in their particular neck of the woods, birds are going to head for other parts of Canada and northern New England in hopes of finding better eats.

Every fall, Canadian ornithologist Ron Pittaway analyzes the seed and cone crops in Ontario to determine what the general patterns of bird irruption might be. To my delight, his forecast is favorable for Bohemian waxwings showing up in Maine this winter. Because of their sleek beauty and gregarious nature, waxwings are among my favorite birds, so I've been thrilled to see so many "Bohos" in recent years. The 2007 Christmas Bird Count tallied hundreds in the Thomaston - Rockland count area. One crabapple tree on Old Country Road swarmed with at least 100, with a few of the more common cedar waxwings mixed in, all greedily eating the frozen fruit. We even had a visitation at the Land Trust office last year. They travel in numbers and are quite vocal, so a flock is usually hard to miss.

boho

Bohemian Waxwing. Photo by Don Reimer

Some winters common redpolls are everywhere. While watching ducks from the shore of partially frozen Tolman Pond in West Rockport a few winters ago, I was surprised to come across a handful of these sparrow-like finches feeding in a corridor of alders and small birches. These little birds with raspberry caps are very fond of birch seeds. I also recall a snowshoe hike on conserved land in Greene that was made memorable by a tree decorated with redpolls like living ornaments. And during Maine Audubon's winter ecology weekend up at Claybrook Mountain Lodge in Highland Plantation one January, the feeders were inundated with redpolls visible from the breakfast table--a real treat. We didn't even have to stop eating to enjoy them.

The redpolls were joined on the feeders by several evening grosbeaks, the striking black and gold males in particular drawing lots of "oohs" and "aahs." Evening grosbeak numbers have diminished throughout its range due to the decline of its primary summer food, spruce budworm. So any sighting is cause for excitement. As a child they were a regular visitor to our tray feeder, but in recent years I've seen fewer than a dozen total. According to Pittaway's report, "A few Common Redpolls should move south into southern Ontario and farther east and south. However, most redpolls may be drawn to good birch crops in northwestern Ontario and westward in the boreal forest into Saskatchewan." So we might see them, or we might not. Sadly, his expectations are low for sightings of the beautiful evening grosbeak.

Driving around on snowy inland roads, we've often come upon pine grosbeaks in small groups on the pavement, apparently drawn to the road salt--not a safe habit. National Geographic's Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern North America describes them as "usually unwary and approachable." They certainly don't fly from an oncoming car as quickly as they probably should. These large finches are attractive backyard visitors. The deep pink male is especially noticeable; my mother always calls to tell me when she sees them at her feeder. But the female's more subtle hues--grey body with olive-orange head--give her a rather exotic appeal, as well. Again, our healthy mountain ash crop--boosted by backyard ornamental berry bushes and crabapples--may draw them our way this winter. We can hope, but only the birds know for sure.

The white-winged crossbill is one of our more interesting invaders. Last winter flocks of crossbills seemingly topped every clump of spruce, greedily pulling apart the small, soft cones that are their food of choice. Several years ago I helped with the Christmas Bird Count on Matinicus Island in early January, and crossbills were the bird of the day. They flew overhead constantly, bouncing from spruce to spruce in small, sweetly chirping flocks. On a pilgrimage to see a northern hawk-owl lingering in South Bristol last winter, we observed the owl flying to the top of a spruce that also harbored several crossbills. I later saw photographs of the owl eating a crossbill. Given that both birds hang out at the tops of spruces, it makes sense that crossbills would be natural prey for the owl. (Several northern owl species, including the northern hawk-owl, snowy owl, and great grey owl, are also irruptive, depending on sub-Arctic rodent population swings.)

Crossbills are worth a close look because their bill is indeed crossed. And interestingly, just as people can be right- or left-handed, some crossbills' bills cross to the left and some to the right. The unique bill structure gives them a specialized edge, providing the proper torque for prying out spruce cone seeds. Pittaway's forecast for crossbills this winter? Well, if you've paid attention while hiking in the woods lately, you might have noticed that this fall's cone crop was abundant. Spruce tops laden with cone clusters will hopefully beckon the birds southward.

It seems insane, but if the crop is good enough, crossbills will even nest in mid-winter. Sure, there may be a few feet of snow on the ground. But with a safe and warm nest nestled in evergreen boughs and plenty of cones near at hand, what more does a bird need to raise a family? So keep your eyes and ears open in the woods this winter, vigilant for these potential invasions. You never know what might fly in, and unless you're Tippi Hedren, it should be cause for delight.

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