Exhibiting classic hedonic adaptation, Hooded mergansers cavorting in nearly frozen water
Are you happy? I know I am because, I'm a married birder. I have all the components of basic happiness - purposeful activities, meaningful relationships with other humans and safety of home and hearth. I have the good fortune to live where there are more birds most of the time than most people see in a lifetime. Without getting out of my bathrobe, I see rarities, oddities, the diminutive and majestic, and enormous numbers. So, I should count my blessings. However, this constant stimulation does make me want more and more. One such pleasure begets the need for another. Spoken like a spoiled brat, I'm going to say that birding has been agonizingly slow here of late. It has left me Jonesing hard for a birding fix.
This time of year is especially hard on obsessed birders as most of the birds have gone for the winter. The stretch after Christmas until March is Deadsville until they start returning from the south. Let's face it: this is a hard time of year whether a person birds or not. About now, most people are in a slump and subject to the dreaded "cabin fever." I just got a call from a neighbor who, before she even said hello announced "I"m depressed." She was disassembling her Christmas tree and packing up decorations. Though all she does before the big day is complain about too much to do and the ingrates in the family she feels obligated to do things for, she is nonetheless, despondent when it's all over. Christmas puts a lot of pressure on everyone to shop, spend, cook, clean, be creative and give until it feels like the seams in the skull will split. The burden of expectations in our quest for holiday pleasure can be too much. And, no matter how we work at it, it often doesn't feel like enough.
While at the supermarket, an acquaintance just asked me "Was Santa good to you?" It's a common post holiday greeting meaning "was it enough for you?" Socially programmed, we have an immediate response to the question one way or the other. I said yes, Santa had been very good to me. It was the most uncomplicated answer and I meant it though, under our Christmas tree, there had been nothing.
In years past when it's been a lean gift scene, under the tree, I've placed fake gifts to create a feeling of opulence. I used to keep a stash of tastefully gift wrapped, empty boxes - faux gifts for under the tree, so that no matter what our economic circumstances, we didn't feel poor. Ersatzpräsent filled the empty belly better than no presents. This year, I did not bother. The pretty boxes were like expecting a duck decoy to suffice for the real thing.
Although I have enjoyed them, Christmas presents have never made me happy. Admittedly, they've given me moments of bliss, some of them intense moments, like when my husband gave me a diamond. But, even that's not happiness. The sight of a rare bird, or life first bird isn't it, either (yes, you did hear that from me!).
Differentiated from serial pleasures, happiness is a state of mind typified by love, contentment and satisfaction. It can be what gets us through when there's no presents or no birds. It's another type of gift easily confused with and often by pleasure. Proof of that is in the multitude of rich people out there that are utterly miserable, though they can buy all the pleasure they want. They can experience at will tremendous thrills, but in the end, they are human. Human beings tend to settle quickly back to a plateau of basic happiness, no matter what emotional peaks or valleys we experience. Our ability to survive depends on this knack for hedonic adaptation [1]. People in tragically poor countries are not less happy than those of us in wealthy countries. Happiness is relative to what we know, not where we are trying to go. Even prison inmates incarcerated for life are not unhappy most of the time [2]. Perhaps soon, all of the birds will fall from the sky like rain never to be seen again. I'll be deeply saddened, but I won't be fundamentally unhappy in life. Let's hope that my assumption will never be tested; keep the presents and birds coming.
Attempting to define and quantify happiness and determine its sources, psychology researchers have devised a questionnaire called The Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (click on that link if you want to see how happy you are). However, direct measurements have remained elusive. I'm not sure why this is so complicated, because my friends and I would mostly agree that one another's company, eating chocolate, new camera equipment, and birds are all the experiential quantifiers anyone needs.
On the last day of the year, while driving to see a friend with my husband and eating chocolate, I spied these Hooded mergansers. Cha-ching! A pleasure trifecta! I was well on my way to happiness. They were fishing for crabs in a tiny slip of open water at the end of a culvert that passes under a major highway. Crustaceans and small fish are their favorite foods. Hooded mergansers breed and summer in Canada and the northern most parts of the U.S. They are not uncommon in Maine, but we only get them this far south in the winter. They are short distance migrants, this being their idea of warmer than Canada. The puddle they were occupying, though ugly and small, often hosts them. To "Hoodies," as birders call them, it was a four star, vacation resort! Even they know that happiness, if we just look around us, is where we are.
1. Brickman & Campbell, "Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society" (1971), M.H. Apley, ed., Adaptation Level Theory: A Symposium, New York: Academic Press, 1971, pp 287–302.
Whenever we have a big weather event, there are those of us who look forward to the aftermath, as long as our properties have not been smashed to bits. Interesting things get blown to the ground from the trees and in from the ocean onto the shores. Big seas can turn over rubble and debris on the beaches revealing things that were previously buried. I found this pristine arrow head on Popham Beach in February 2009 after a brutal storm. It was on the sand just as you see it here, looking like a little Christmas tree. That storm produced devastating coastal erosion. Vast chunks of beach were lost when the ocean carved it's way into the land clawing sand away from the roots of trees. Near where I found this artifact is an ancient Pitch Pine Maritime Forest. I imagine that centuries ago, an Abanaki Indian pulled back his bow, then let his arrow fly at a rabbit, missing the rabbit, and losing his bow. This arrow head had probably been buried ever since, until that storm revealed it.
Though there was a lot of junk scattered on the sand, my eye caught the shape of the arrow head right away. I have developed a good eye for picking out shapes that are out of sync from their surroundings - birds sitting in trees or in the sky, foxes in the bushes, or deer dancing on a distant beach. "How do you see this stuff?!" My husband and friends often remark. "She doesn't miss anything," my husband likes to brag. The truth is, I miss plenty. But, apparently, I also see much more than most of the people I know. I see layers and details in the same scene that my friends completely miss. This talent can be annoying. My visual world is akin to looking at a painting and seeing all the pointillist's dots rather than the impressionistic scene, Seurat surreal. Sometimes, I'm rewarded though, as in this pointed find.
"Little Auk" is another name for Dovekie
A week ago, we had an enormous storm with sixty mile an hour wind gusts. For two days afterward, the seas were eight feet high in front of our pier. On the horizon line, we could see waves twenty to thirty feet high, towering like buildings. This Dovekie was blown in to our cove from off shore. Dovekies are the smallest of the Auks, or Puffin type birds. It's about 7 1/2 inches long, smaller than a Mourning Dove. It's hard for me to fathom a being this small living out on the Atlantic Ocean riding on those immense waves, but they do. Dovekies are chubby, adorable little birds with stumpy, Sparrow-like bills. I especially liked its feet which reminded me of a duckling. There was something very innocent and endearing about this bird, though it was dead.
Dovekies breed and nest in Greenland. There are huge colonies there estimated at 30 million birds. In the winter, they come slightly south, sometimes along the New England coast. That's their idea of southern migration. They float in giant rafts out to sea feeding on small fish by diving. Storms that last for days, like the one we just had with sustained easterly winds, make feeding conditions unsuitable. Massive wrecks of starving birds can be driven landward. In the winter of 1932-33, the largest wreck recorded in North America saw Dovekies raining down on the streets of New York city. Large numbers washed up on the eastern seaboard from Florida to Nova Scotia. The visual of hundreds of the darling, diminutive Dovekies falling from the sky is a thing of nightmares! It has changed things for me forever. From now on, when we have torrential rains, I will declare "It's raining dogs and Dovekies out there!" Unlike "It's raining cats and dogs," raining Dovekies makes sense.
Thanks to wikipedia.com, allaboutbirds.com and whatbird.com for some of the information.
And:
•Montevecchi, W. A., and I. J. Stenhouse. 2002. Dovekie (Alle alle). In The Birds of North America, No. 701 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.
I'm sure all of you know that there is a big ole' storm barrelling toward the eastern coast of the United States. The storm's name is Earl. Wouldn't it be just like a guy named Earl to ruin your life? No offense to the perfectly decent guys out there with that moniker. However, there is a reason that The Dixie Chicks wrote a song about killing a guy named Earl. Most Earls turn out to be bad news.
I am a weather watcher. It's not an accident that, to my knowledge, I'm the only person to photograph a tornado in progress in Maine. I was at the ready with the camera and glued to the events out the window when it erupted. The "Thanksgiving Twister", as we like to think of her, also imparted to me a tangible sense of how bad the weather can be and very suddenly. It marked me with a lasting impression of anxious urgency which is heightened immensely when they start squawking on the T.V. about the monster's advance across the ocean. As much as I hate the relentless chatter, I am drawn like a moth to a flame. I can't help but watch the computer tracts marching across the screen and the magnificent cloud photographs taken from space.
I have always been interested in the weather and what makes it. One of my favorite books is about identifying cloud formations as part of anticipating weather events. I'm a member of The Cloud Appreciation Society and proud of it. It fascinates me that the huge, rotating clouds coming across the Atlantic start out in the African desert. Earl will be carrying dust from the sands of the Sahara.
Of course, living on a rock sticking into the Atlantic ocean prompts me to be more than a passive observer. Not just a weather voyeur, watching from the comfort of my living room as events unfold and approach; I'm emotionally involved!. After all, there is nothing but ocean between my recliner and Morocco. When you look at a world globe with that in mind, it's sobering. I can almost feel the grit of those Saharan sands in my teeth as the storm gets closer. And closer, and closer. But, I'll wait until the wind whips up and the rain is slashing before I get serious about putting away any patio furniture. Though I'm a nervous wreck, I'm also a procrastinator. I work best under a ridiculous deadline.
With that in mind, I'm still printing and matting photographs for the Boothbay Regional Arts show on Saturday. Yep, art on the waterfront under a lovely, white tent. It ought to be interesting when Earl gets his teeth into that tent and our photographs ragging it all like a dog with a bone! We're Mainers in our camera club, so we are waiting it out to see what develops - no cancelling too early for us! Wish us luck (we do have a rain date of Sunday the 5th). Now, I must get back to finding the remote control and the weather channel - background music for my photo matting.
A few weeks ago, I went to the Maine State Prison. I went there to attend the graduation ceremony of a friend who had just completed training as a Corrections Officer. After I got home, I delighted in calling my other friends and saying that I had gone to prison that day. I imagined them quickly checking their caller IDs to see where I was calling from and thinking, "Oh God, I hope she isn't going to ask me for bail money!" I'm sure some of them also thought things along the lines of "It's about time they locked her up!" I never went in to the actual prison, only the administration building. There were speeches, cake and coffee and a slide show about prison life as it is today. It was all very benign. Nonetheless, I was moved and found it deeply thought provoking. First of all, my friend, the new Corrections Officer, is a woman and the only woman in her group of graduates. Many of her fellow C.O.s fit the stereotype of a prison guard in that they are big, burly guys. Two of them are former United States Marines. I'm told that one is never an ex-Marine, only ever a former Marine, "Once a Marine, always a Marine." In the case of those new C.O.s, that is definitely the case. My friend, however, is a quiet, soft spoken, very gentle woman. She doesn't swear nor raise her voice. She has never been married nor had children, so prior to her prison guard training, she never had any reason to swear or holler, either. During her C.O. training, she had to learn to scream which did not come naturally to her. The Maine State Correctional Facility, which houses only men, takes great pride in being a place that is safe for the inmates. As much as possible, they try to make a kind of normal life for the men who live there. The hope is that when they are released, they will have a better grasp of how to live with other people without committing crimes. If they never leave the prison, they hopefully won't hurt anyone inside either and can live with dignity and the respect of the other men with whom they'll spend their lives - fellow inmates and C.O.s. My friend's inherent gentleness is representative of the new corrections mindset. The prison is new with a modern campus design without prison walls. When it was built and they moved the prisoners from the old facility, they not only left behind the scenes from The Shawshank Redemption (which was filmed there), they left behind a certain barbarism. The men who live in the prison are human beings, after all, even those who have behaved like monstrous animals. We owe it to our own sense of dignity and self respect to treat them as human beings. Unlike the inmates, I got to go home. On my way, I turned on my car radio with the volume high for a song I liked. I rolled down all the windows and sang along loudly, because I could.
PRISON
A man in a cell
will learn
to live
inside
the simple rules
and swirling hell
within
his head.
The window is high
"Can't see nothin',"
he said.
Fist clenched at his side,
He must look upward
to see
the sky.
His time will teach him to see
it all,
meaning in the clouds,
the quick, single dove.
His hand will open
he will
learn love.
Robin Riley Robinson
House Sparrows are widespread in this country though they were only introduced here in the 1800s. They are concidered a pest because they eat agricultural products like grain seeds and spread diseases to humans, like West Nile Virus. There's no law against killing them and lots of programs are employed to do so across the country. One of the reasons they are ubiquitous is that they adapt readily to living around people, even taking advantage of things like dumpsters and nesting sites. This pair was nesting under a corrugated tin roof of a car dealership. House Sparrows are what I call the Big Box Birds or Wallmart Birds. They are the birds you hear and see high up in the warehouse rafters and chirpping around in the lawn and garden centers of the big box stores. They poop on merchandise and rip open bags of dog food and you guessed it: bird seed, too. Even birders don't care about the Big Box Birds because of the problems they cause other birds. But, the House Sparrows don't know any of this; they are just being birds. They fly; they are acrobatic in flight and shenanagins employed to get food; they sing socially, not just for mating; they are monogamous, and they mate for life.
One of my best friends is a 'Main'ah,' born and raised here like me. Because we grew up here, there are a lot of tourist things that we have never done before. Walking the mile out the Rockland Breakwater is one of those things. Last Saturday, we took a leisurely stroll to the end. There was just the slightest breeze and in the seventies, it felt like June. There were not many other folks walking because the official start to "The Season," is not until Memorial Day. In the lighthouse seen at the end, is a museum. They were painting the floors and organizing the display cases of brick-a-bracka tourist trinkets for sale. The smell of paint drifted out the doors and opened windows, mixing with the seaweed and mud smell from shore. A group of volunteers was gathered around the flag pole receiving instruction in how to raise, lower and fold the American flag. A couple of guys were arguing lightheartedly with the instructor. "I was in the Army for thirty-seven years and we neva' done it like that!" one declared. The other said he had been an Eagle Scout and he hadn't done it that way, either. A family of Asians were fishing from the east side. The man got his line caught in seaweed and was chattering away ferociously while trying to free it. I couldn't understand a thing he said, but his frustration and irritation came across very clearly. A woman sat as far out as she could get on the rocks, alone just staring out to sea.
The breakwater at 4,300 feet is constructed of granite blocks. It took eighteen years to build it starting in 1881. Running north to south, on the west side it protects Rockland Harbor from the ferocious seas that would pound the harbor from the northeast. In the 1800's limestone was big business in the area. Rockland Harbor was one of the busiest ports on the east coast. The granite blocks show fascinating patterns of holes where they were divided and split off in the quarry and when fitted into the breakwater. Sea birds fish the breakwater for marine life and use the surface like a massive kitchen table for smashing and picking. Someday, I would like to walk the breakwater at sunset and maybe, if I'm ambitious, at sunrise.
Purple Sandpipers wheeling around the breakwater's east side.
Double -crested Cormorant still has his lid closed to protect his eye underwater. I saw a Great Cormorant off in the distance perched on rocks.
A Common loon in non breeding plummage takes a big stretch
This Starfish had been dropped onto the breakwater by a gull.
The tide was outgoing and the wind was from the west. These conditions were less than ideal for birding, though I'm sure the birding on the breakwater can be fabulous. I did not see this man catch anything, so perhaps the same can be said for fishing.
"Do you think this would this look good on me as a hat?"
Sea Urchins were popular with the gulls.
For more information on the breakwater, click this link - Rockland Breakwater
Evergreen Cemetery in Portland is one of the premier birding spots in Maine. It's an old fashioned, 'garden style' cemetery that was established in the early 1800s. There are 65,000 people interred there. Through huge, old trees lovely paths and trails meander around several ponds on 239 acres. This is warbler migration season, so the birding is intense right now. Thousands of birds of all kinds can be heard in the dense canopies of deciduous and conifer trees. I am not good at vocalization identifications, but I'm learning. It's very difficult to see through the leaves to identify what one might be hearing, and even more difficult to take great photographs. The birds are very flitty and hoppy by nature and even more so with migration and mate choosing underway. The top photo is a Beech tree where I was looking for a Bay-breasted warbler when I saw these Scarlet tanagers. My heart about blew out of my chest when first I saw this blaze of red streak through the leaves. I almost didn't believe what I was seeing. The male landed several times then eventually sat still. It's a good thing I was able to get this photo because otherwise, I would have thought some of that old chemical stuff from the seventies was leaking out of my liver or from the fat cells where my brain used to be.
His mate obliged as well. She is nearly the same color as the new Beech leaves. I haven't seen a Scarlet tanager in seven years. I took photographs then, but they are terrible. The bird was here at Totman Cove on a feeder. It was evening and it was raining. In those photographs, the bird is an orange blob. Scarlet tanagers migrate to South America for wintering. They breed here in these kinds of woods. They are insect eaters and spend most of their time up in the trees just as I observed them at Evergreen where they glean bugs from the branches. Evergreen is lovely. If you ever get the chance to go there, you should take it. Take a lunch. It's beautiful and relaxing and there is loads to see. You'll get a natural high just sitting there listening - no chemical enhancements from your youth required.
If you want to know more about Scarlet tanagers, check out allaboutbirds. There is a great recording of their song, too.
Thanks to Wikipedia and David Allen Sibley, The Sibley Guide To Birds for information.
Yesterday, I went birding all day with a birding pal. We made a couple of stops in Portland. The first was Evergreen Cemetery and the second was Capisic Pond Park, both off from Stevens Avenue. I saw Yellow Warblers at both places, but at Capisic, I also saw this nest. I'm assuming it's the nest of a Yellow warbler as I saw the bird several times in the branches of the trees just above the nest, which was tucked into some of the wild honeysuckle. The honeysuckle was in bloom and the sweet fragrance wafted through the air. If I were a warbler, I'd make a nest in the honeysuckle, too. There was white and pink; this warbler had chosen the pink. Could that mean that it was expecting a girl? The nest was only about four feet off the ground though, which didn't look too safe to me. I was struck by how soft the baseball sized nest looked and how well constructed it was.
Before I had headed off to Portland, I stopped on my way out of The Burg at a spot where I know there to are two eagle's nests. One I thought had been abandoned two years ago, but I wasn't sure. The second was built last year, but it never looked like eggs had been laid. It does look as if this year, they may either have eggs or are about to do so. Both adults were there, though one was a few trees away. I'll be checking on them regularly now to see what if anything takes place. By comparison, the eagles are real slobs about their nests. Both nests are about four feet across and a big mess of sticks and branches, each fifty feet or so up near the tops of White pines. The structures look solid enough, but very sloppy and unattractive. If bird nests were compared to furniture, the warbler's nest would be a fine, slender legged Chippendale chair. The eagle's nest would be more of a Lazy-Boy recliner thing with a holder in the arm for a beer can, practical but lacking elegance.
I often suffer from sleeplessness. Since I was young, thinking back as far as when I was no more than ten, sleep has been an elusive and unreliable event. My brain will simply not shut off and let me go, let me drift to the bottom of the dark pond called sleep. I consume an alchemist’s concoction of medications compounded to over ride my hot fired brain, but it does not always work. I simply get less sleep, sometimes none at all, awash in chemical stew that leaves me feeling hung over. Nights when sleep won’t take me, in advance I can feel the neuro-chemical process that kicks in, then assumes command of my brain. It’s like hearing the rumbling of an army off in the distance, thumping bombs, marching feet, rumbling trucks of an approaching front. And then I know – I will be awake, tortured for hours, restless, ill feeling and just waiting. Waiting for daylight or a miracle to let me go. I lie awake, listening to the night sounds of my house, my husband’s breathing, my dogs twitching legs. Sometimes, I do math problems. I pick a long number like 1,331,750 and divide it by 15.3. Over and over I start the problem in my head, but get lost along the way. Then I start over. I keep at it, in the dark, until I either reach the answer or I’ve tricked my brain into clicking off for sleep. There is no rhyme nor reason for my sleeplessness; I don’t have to have some anxiety or worry or event on my mind. It does not have to be the full of the moon. Though all of these things can jump start the toxic brain chemistry, often it is just nothing. Last night was one of those nights of torture.
SLEEPLESS
It’s a fight
Waiting, waiting
for the light,
for dawn.
So tired,
I can’t even yawn
And every hair
Annoys
And every sound
Pounds.
A clock
Strikes the hour
One, two, three
“Please!” I cry
For sleep
Or death,
Whichever will come
Before the rising sun.
Robin Riley Robinson
Sleep would be a golden goose.
Canada geese and goslings, Upper New Meadows River May 3, 2010
The Belted Kingfisher has always been a favorite of mine. They evoke strong, childhood memories. My mother was not a singing kind of woman, but one of the few things she did sing was The Kookaburra Song. It went like this:
"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
"Jolly jolly king of the bush is he!"
"Laugh Kookaburra, laugh kookaburra,
"Gay your life must be!"
We always sang along. Frequently, my father would butt in with his own song and he and my mother would sing together. They would sing:
"Oh, she beat him with a shingle,
"till she made his panties tingle!"
"Then he ran down the lane,
"with his panties full of pain,
"Oh a boy's best friend is his mother!"
(This triptych shows a Belted Kingfisher hitting the water then hauling itself upward and out with its catch.)
But, that's a story for another day. Back to the Belted Kingfishers - Kingfishers, often called just "Fisher" around here, are related to the Kookaburra. Kingfishers live across the United States from Maine to Alaska and Canada while the Kookaburra, or "Australian Jackass", lives in Australia. Though they are both Kingfishers, the Kookaburra doesn't eat much fish nor does it hang out near water. They live in more arid areas or humid forests and eat snakes and mice. Our Kingfisher will eat small animals, but it's preferred diet is fish and amphibians. Look out little froggies when you hear the rattling call of the Kingfisher. Kingfishers sit on look out posts in trees, utility lines and poles waiting to dive bomb the water for a catch. They chatter in a loud rattle while they wait to strike. The Kookaburra has an even louder call. I think one of the reasons I like Kingfishers so much is that they remind me of the old Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller. If you listen to the Kookaburra call, you'll recognize the background sounds of Tarzan movies. Interestingly, Kookaburras don't live in Africa where Tarzan and Jane and Boy did. That was a Hollywood fictionalization of jungle sounds, but it stuck with me. Our Kingfishers are migratory because they need open water to fish. When they come back in the spring, I hear a distant memory of my mother singing and Tarzan in the jungle.
I got this video on Youtube. I've never been to Australia, nor the Cincinnati zoo. If you'd like more information on Kookaburras, click this link: Kookaburra
Next to Mallards, Wood ducks are the most shot ducks in this country. Can you imagine shooting this thing?
Wood ducks' red eyes make them look kind of hung over.
It has been raining for two days without interuption. Even my electronic rain gauge has drowned and isn't keeping score anymore. I'm guessing we've had between four and five inches. At five P.M., the local evening news said that it was about to break the record for the most precipitation in any March. When I left the house to do some errands today, I almost didn't take my camera with me. That's right. You heard me. That's how bad it has been. I thought there wasn't much point as it would be impossible to get good shots of anything. But, I stuck with my personal rule to never leave home without it. And wow, was I glad I did! In Bath, I stopped by the cemetery pond where I had previously taken photos of Wood ducks. There was nothing there except a couple of plastic bags snagged and floating. I continued north to a turn around then headed home. I was discouraged. I also knew that in the middle of the day it was unlikely that I would have seen anything anyway. Most birds and beasts do their feeding early and late in the day. In the middle, they stay at home and catch up on their soap operas. On the north end of the pond is a puddle. As I drove by, through the trees I could see some ducks. I pulled the car off the road and scanned the group of Mallards. Suddenly, I saw not one but three Wood ducks! There were two drakes and one hen. There might have been more, but at least two of them took off into the air. One drake stayed behind. He called and called to his friends "Hey, you guys! Wait for me!" You can see in the photos that there is rain falling and drops on his back. You can see his bill open, too. Wood ducks don't quack like most ducks. The make an adorable little sqealing noise. This guy was probably really ticked off with his pals for dumping him. Maybe they all took off for a sports bar and he was worried that they'd guzzle all the martinis before he got there. I can hardly wait for the sun to come out so I can check out the puddle again. Maybe next time, there will be an alligator.
The classic, black and white Common Loon is a regular on calendars, wall paper borders, coffee mugs and any chachkee for the tourist trade in North America where there is a body of water. The haunting yodel, which only males produce, can be heard across lakes and ocean coves through out the summer. For some, the shrieking tremolo is frightening and sends shivers up the spine. For others, it's a familiar comfort, the sound of lakeside camping and fishing trips with your dad. Maybe that's why images of Common Loons sell so well. But, they aren't the only loons in town.There are five kinds of loons, Arctic, Pacific, Yellow-billed, Common and Red-throated.
A Common Loon eating a crab, non-breeding plumage.
Red-throated Loons, or Red-throated Divers are the most widely distributed of all the loon family. They are common on the cove where I live in the winter months. I saw five of them two days ago. I sat on the end of my pier for more than an hour to get these photographs. The sun was shining and it was just under 50 degrees. But, the wind kicked up coming off the water and it was COLD! Nonetheless, I had to sit very still for long enough that they forgot I was there. I looked like just part of the peir to them after a while. Each time I needed to move, to blow my nose or something, I had to wait until they dived. While they were under, I met my movement needs, being careful not to clunk on the deck. That would have vibrated down through the pilings into the water. Once, they resurfaced very close to me, so I could get these photographs.
"Is this my good side?"
Red-throated Loons are migratory. They breed and summer in the arctic circle. Monogamous, they form long term pair bonds which can last a couple of decades. That's a better marriage record than most humans I know! Both sexes build a mud and stick nest on the ground and care for the eggs and young. Though the Red-throated loon is the smallest of all the loons, their young are ready to hit the water in a couple of days. This differs from Common Loons whose babies ride on their backs for a few weeks. All loons are water birds only coming on land to build nests and lay eggs. The legs of the Red-throated loon are set so far back on its body that it can not walk on land. Like all loons, they dive for fish, mollusks, amphibians and crustaceans. Into the 1800's, the Red-throated loon was used to predict the weather. When the "Rain Goose" flew inland and it's cry was short, the weather would be good. When it flew out to sea with a long, wailing cry the weather would be bad. Loons are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 and some international treaties as well. Nonetheless, their populations are declining in some places. They have natural predators, but it's thought that fishing nets, habitat destruction and oil spills are the biggest threats to loons.
Barr, J. F., C. Eberl, and J. W. McIntyre. 2000. Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata). InThe Birds of North America, No. 513 (A. Poole and F. Gill, eds.). The Birds of North America, Inc., Philadelphia, PA.
Whenever we have a big weather event, there are those of us who look forward to the aftermath, as long as our properties have not been smashed to bits. Interesting things get blown to the ground from the trees and in from the ocean onto the shores. Big seas can turn over rubble and debris on the beaches revealing things that were previously buried. I found this pristine arrow head on Popham Beach in February 2009 after a brutal storm. It was on the sand just as you see it here, looking like a little Christmas tree. That storm produced devastating coastal erosion. Vast chunks of beach were lost when the ocean carved it's way into the land clawing sand away from the roots of trees. Near where I found this artifact is an ancient Pitch Pine Maritime Forest. I imagine that centuries ago, an Abanaki Indian pulled back his bow, then let his arrow fly at a rabbit, missing the rabbit, and losing his bow. This arrow head had probably been buried ever since, until that storm revealed it. 
Yesterday, I went birding all day with a birding pal. We made a couple of stops in Portland. The first was Evergreen Cemetery and the second was Capisic Pond Park, both off from Stevens Avenue. I saw Yellow Warblers at both places, but at Capisic, I also saw this nest. I'm assuming it's the nest of a Yellow warbler as I saw the bird several times in the branches of the trees just above the nest, which was tucked into some of the wild honeysuckle. The honeysuckle was in bloom and the sweet fragrance wafted through the air. If I were a warbler, I'd make a nest in the honeysuckle, too. There was white and pink; this warbler had chosen the pink. Could that mean that it was expecting a girl? The nest was only about four feet off the ground though, which didn't look too safe to me. I was struck by how soft the baseball sized nest looked and how well constructed it was.
(This triptych shows a Belted Kingfisher hitting the water then hauling itself upward and out with its catch.)
It has been raining for two days without interuption. Even my electronic rain gauge has drowned and isn't keeping score anymore. I'm guessing we've had between four and five inches. At five P.M., the local evening news said that it was about to break the record for the most precipitation in any March. When I left the house to do some errands today, I almost didn't take my camera with me. That's right. You heard me. That's how bad it has been. I thought there wasn't much point as it would be impossible to get good shots of anything. But, I stuck with my personal rule to never leave home without it. And wow, was I glad I did! In Bath, I stopped by the cemetery pond where I had previously taken photos of Wood ducks. There was nothing there except a couple of plastic bags snagged and floating. I continued north to a turn around then headed home. I was discouraged. I also knew that in the middle of the day it was unlikely that I would have seen anything anyway. Most birds and beasts do their feeding early and late in the day. In the middle, they stay at home and catch up on their soap operas. On the north end of the pond is a puddle. As I drove by, through the trees I could see some ducks. I pulled the car off the road and scanned the group of Mallards. Suddenly, I saw not one but three Wood ducks! There were two drakes and one hen. There might have been more, but at least two of them took off into the air. One drake stayed behind. He called and called to his friends "Hey, you guys! Wait for me!" You can see in the photos that there is rain falling and drops on his back. You can see his bill open, too. Wood ducks don't quack like most ducks. The make an adorable little sqealing noise. This guy was probably really ticked off with his pals for dumping him. Maybe they all took off for a sports bar and he was worried that they'd guzzle all the martinis before he got there. I can hardly wait for the sun to come out so I can check out the puddle again. Maybe next time, there will be an alligator. 
