"Peeps Give Me A Headache!" Plover, Sandpiper Or Lover

Top left and right: Semipalmated sandpiper, Lower left: Spotted sandpiper, Lower right: White-rumped sandpiper. The photos were all taken on the same day at Totman Cove.

 "Peeps" is birding slang for any of a number of North American sandpipers. Their vocalizations are numerous versions of the sound, "peep peep peep." Even though it's only the first week of August, they are beginning to congregate for migration, so there are a lot more of them around these days. The youngsters accompany their parents, adding to the numbers and also the difficulty of identifying them. The plumage of the newbies is not as distinct as they will be next year. They also move really fast on the ground and in flight, so it's hard to get a good look, unless you can get a photograph. And as we know, that presents its own challenges. They can be seen singly, as in the case of the Solitary Sandpiper pictured below, or in large groups skimming the water surface in wheeling arcs. Peeps and plovers, at the end of summer, separate the men from the boys (as my father would have said) in the world of birding identifications.

These two photos of Semipalmated sandpipers were taken within a second of one another as the birds turned en masse against the sunlight, making them look like completely different birds. I was whizzing along in our small boat when they whizzed by me even faster. I nearly broke my neck and fell out of the boat trying to turn fast enough to photograph them. My husband, the helmsman says he would like advance notice when I intend to spin in my seat like that, lest I tip us over. Imagine that. In my efforts to be sure about identifications, before opening my mouth or zipping the keyboard beneath my fingers, I have spent way too much time beating myself up plowing through bird books. Ultimately, I'm probably wrong anyway. If I have mis-identified any of these, I'm sure my loyal readership will let me know. It's a lot more fun racing around in a tin boat with a boyfriend than it is looking through field guides anyway. I'll leave the academics of birding to those with less imagination than I have.  

This is a Spotted sandpiper beautifully camouflaged against the rocks. I've only seen them one at a time and always like this scurrying across the rocks.

Solitary Sandpipers don't hang out with other sandpipers. I only see one or two a year. When I took this shot, I thought I was photographing another Spotted Sandpiper, which I had just seen moments before. It wasn't until I developed the photo that I realized they were not one in the same.

This isn't a sandpiper at all, it's a Semipalmated plover. I know - you think this is a typo, since I just said that one of the birds pictured above is a Semipalmated sandpiper. Since it isn't a sandpiper, but a plover, it's not a peep, either, even though it looks cute enough to be called a "peep." Do you see now why they all give me a headache?

August Is The High Season - Summer Terns

Semipalmated plover atop giant net floats - Lobster Cove, Phippsburg, Maine

Juvenile, Common terns vocalizing to its mother for food - Totman Cove, Phippsburg, Maine

Common terns ignoring young pestering for food or maybe it was mooning me! The full moon often looks orange in summer rising through heat and haze on the earth's surface.

"E" is for ecstasy. "W" is for wild. Those words crown all that we do in these moments of summer. August is "high season" here in The Burg. We have had  a glorious summer weather-wise, which means that we've been unrelentingly busy. Weeds and lawns keep growing even though we'd like to quit. Everything around us seems full to the point of out of control. My garden is busting at the seams. The lilies are enormous and toppling over. All the fledged birds are bickering at the feeders along with their parents. The Ruby-throated hummingbirds are fighting each other over feeder territories. The raccoon youngsters are rifling the feeders at night rousting our dog, then us, from sleep. Acorns are falling from the oaks set into free fall by porcupine young lolling at the ends of the fresh growth in the tree tops. Totman Cove is teaming with mackerel, Striped bass and fry just right for the terns. We hear the Blue Fin tuna are running hard just off from Sequin and everyone is talking about it. The Common terns are chattering constantly not giving us a moments peace punctuated only by the pee-ooo pee-oo of ospreys. It feels like everyone on the eastern seaboard with a boat is here sailing, fishing and motoring. There aren't enough evenings for cocktails with all of our friends, days to boat, swim, eat, garden or even just breathe it all in fast enough. Because, suddenly, it will be over.

     For all of this nearly maddening plenitude, any moment now, it will all stop. This is the great crescendo when breeding, seeding, weeding and sunny days have reached their critical mass. Fall will be here feeling quite sudden, though I can see the signs. The Monarch butterflies have made a couple of appearances, lilting around the flowers. They are the first of the migraters to Mexico. One or two of the fall blooming anemones have opened. The first asters have opened intertwined with fading roses. With the summer terns, summer is turning. It's bittersweet. But, honestly, I can't keep up this pace. Truth be told, my old skin can't take any more sun nor salt. My back feels broken and my brain needs quiet time. A few more days on our little boat with my husband or afternoons naked in the swimming pool will be all I need. Then, I'll be looking for a jacket to wrap me against the next full, cool moon.  

Bye-Bye! Butchies! Bald Eaglets Depart

"Gosh, it looks like a long way down there. Are you guys sure this flying thing will work?"

He had a hard time maneuvering his big wings around.

"Moooooooooooom! Come get me! I want to go home!"

I did my final Butchie Check today. Hasn't this been like following a soap opera? "Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives," I can hear Macdonald Carey doing the intro. to Days Of Our Lives just like he did the first time, in 1965. My maternal grandmother, "Nanny," never missed an episode. When I was barely ten, she unfailingly stopped her days work to watch. It didn't matter what hadn't been done that should have been, laundry, lunches or watering her flowers. She stopped to watch Days Of Our Lives. We didn't watch T.V. as children, but we did when we spent summers with Nanny and Grampy. My father had an ahead of his time notion that T.V. would result in the destruction of the human race. He maintained that one day, beings of the future, unknown to us today would find televisions in our ruins and remark that is what must have killed us off. But, my grandmother didn't care about his Beatnik notions. Every day at lunch time, she pulled out a   metal T.V. tray for each of us, set our lunch upon them and commanded us to be quiet so that she could watch her show without interruption.     
     All winter long, she had saved the comics from the newspapers for me. My favorite was The Wizard Of Id. It still runs in the dwindling daily rags of today. She also saved McCall's paper dolls which I didn't like so much. I pretended that I did since she had cut them out all winter and saved them for me. Sometimes, while The Days Of Our Lives was droning on, I read The Wizard Of Id collection. I could not tell you one thing about the plots or characters of the episodes of Days Of Our Lives. I do remember though, that one day at least thirty years later, I stumbled on the show on T.V. and was gobsmacked (as the British say) that one of the main characters was still there. To my mind she must have been an actress of at least a hundred years of age. Alice something was her name. I can hear MacDonald Carey's introduction in my mind like it was yesterday.
    At the time, The Days Of Our Lives was ahead of the television programming curve in presenting family situations that were outrageous for T.V. It was very daring in its portrayal of real life American families. Most people like soap operas because they air problems that are so far reaching from most people's realities that they can let go of their own horrible lives, if only for an hour. Sometimes, it's easier to fall down the hole of some else's drama than it is to embrace your own. So, I'm all choked up and messed up and sad about the Butchies leaving home today.
     When I got there, one of them was gone from the nest and nowhere to be found. I searched in the trees all around and even on the ground thinking perhaps the worst had happened. Once when a baby robin fell out of the nest, I brought it into the house. I put it in a cardboard box and tried to keep it alive. It lasted long enough to recognize me as the food source (worms delivered with tweezers). Every time I came into the kitchen it started its "FEED ME, FEED ME!" cheeping racket. Then one morning, it was dead. I would never do this, but can you imagine a baby eagle in a box on your kitchen counter demanding to be fed? YIKES!
     I did find one of the Butchies sitting on a tree limb only 30 feet off the ground. He looked so forlorn and scared it was heartbreaking. Of course, who knows what it was feeling, but I had to wax anthropomorphous. After all, their progress over the past month or so has been my soap opera. I had a relationship with them and talked to them every time I visited. The remaining Butchie sat on the limb, hopped around to adjacent limbs and flapped its huge wings a few times. It looked to the ground repeatedly as is to ask "Hey! Is this flying thing you've all been talking about for real? It looks really scary to me!" One of the parents appeared on scene a few times. It swooped low in an arc and disappeared several times, barely a shadow, as if a ghost checking up on the living. There was no great whooshing of wings as I had heard other times, nor calling to its youngster. Madame Butchie was doing her version of peaking from behind the curtain of a kitchen window as junior masters the tricycle alone in the driveway. Butchie would look longingly in her direction and flap. He seemed all confused by the tree branches and too much wing to move around amongst the sticks. He issued a few, weak, thready "pee,oo-pee,oos"  Eventually, I left him. I struggled with the walk away. I said goodbye. "Have a great life, Little Butchie. I'll see you down the river."

Ms. Manors - Bald Eagle Washing Up

Each time the Bald eagle was done chewing from her carcass cache on the coast, she would have a few drinks of salt water to wash it all down. I'm surprised that the bird was drinking salt water.

  Madame Butchie continues to visit. I have not seen her working the jerky-like remains of the seal carcass, but she has been soaring around and loitering in the trees. The carcass has been roasting in the sun for a week now. Even the flies have died down. Maybe she is oppossed to processed foods; the seal does look like an over-grown Slim Jim now. Of note is that the Common terns, Herring gulls and Osprey have been giving Madame a very hard time, though they aren't interested in the carrion (ya, even the gulls won't touch it!). The raucuous "peeeeent, peeeeent," of the osprey and the shouting and carrying on of the terns and gulls alerts me that they are coming in my direction in hot pursuit of herself. I've tried to get photos of this event, but they have not been very satasfying. I get a lot of bird butt shots - hers and theirs.  The birds are nervey enough to actually make contact with the big eagle in mid air, bitch slapping her into ungainly mid air manuevering. So, the question remains - what is she doing here? The Totman Cove Take-Out menu appears to have become tired and The Welome Wagon ladies have turned on her like a pack of hyenas. Maybe she's here simply to escape the the Butchie Brats back at the hacienda. They've got to leave any day and then, she'll have the place to herself. Ahhhh, a nice long soak in the tub with candles, a glass of wine and a Norah Jones CD.

The Magnificent Acre - Butchie Update & Common Yellowthroat

These Common Yellowthroats were on The Magnificent Acre July 24, 2010. The male and female were together in the alder scrub. There is a strip of shrubs on the west side of the vast salt marsh. It seems to be almost a giant net 'catching' birds when they cross the marsh. The strip of alders, honeysuckle and choke cherries is backed by the road. After crossing the marsh, the birds land in the small trees before crossing the road. I can sit in my car listening to the radio and just wait for them. But, why do that when I can sneak around trying to find them while suffering mosquitoes and walking amongst the Poison Ivy? That's how I roll!

    I visited "The Magnificent Acre" yesterday to check up on The Butchie Boys. When I arrived at the nest, my hear sank. "Oh no! They've flown away and I missed the send off!" I lamented aloud to no one,  my words trailing off into the woods. I wondered how I could have been so dense as to miss a huge cue that they were taking off. Since their parents had been spending so much time enjoying the Totman Cove Take-Out, they were not taking fresh meat to the boys. That meant that the boys would be hungry, thus provoked to try to fly.
     But, then, I saw them. They were sitting up in the tree away from the nest. They looked like big, chocolate lumps hidden in the White pine boughs. It was difficult to photograph them, or even get a clear view due to the pine needles.They had each moved far enough out onto the limbs that if a good wind comes up, they'll plummet to the ground onto their fat cans. The two of them are bigger now than their Mom, Madame Butchie. Eaglets surpass their parents' size just before they fledge. They've been sitting around not moving while getting fatter and fatter gorging on fish and chips delivered.
     When I watch T.V. shows on obesity in children, I'm appalled by the co-dependencies of the parents. After all, an obese child is being supplied with lousy, pork-butt producing food by its parents. They don't get there on their own, at least not to start with most of the time (there are some disorders where children are obese unrelated to consumption). Watching these eagles balloon over the past month has made me realize that this may be more of a natural phenomenon than I have realized. We are humans. One thing that separates us from the animal kingdom is that we ascribe values to end results, like socially unacceptable,fat children.
     Eagles fatten up because when they leave the nest, they don't have hunting skills, yet. The fat has to carry them until they get good at catching food or spotting, say a dead seal carcass. So, maybe there is some valuable outcome for rotund children leaving home barely able to walk. Hopefully, the Butchie Boys will be chubby enough to one day fly down the Kennebec River for dinner at the Totman Cove Take-Out. I'll be open and learning to be less judgemental.

  This is The Butchie Boys' junk food diet remains. Think of it like fast food wrappers lying around a sofa. Under the nest were these uneaten parts of a Herring gull. The gull would have been caught and brought to the boys by the parents. The bone was the leg (I think). Birds have hollow bones to lighten them for flying. There were other bits of bone around and loads of feathers.

THE END.

(No, I mean it, literally the end of the Herring Gull)

What'll It Be - Carrion Or Mink? Bald Eagle & Mink

"Wow! I love Totman Cove Take-Out! It's better than Red's Eats in Wiscasset!"

This is as close to a critter cam as you could get, I'm sure of it. I took these shots less than an hour ago. I was sitting in my underwear at my computer reading e mail. Suddenly, a dark shadow loomed over swinging around from my left shoulder. "EAGLE!" I screamed to my husband and out the door I ran. The Butchie Boys mom was back! As you can see, the seal carcass is still there, boding well for my planned skull recovery. It's wedged tightly into the rocks. Madame Butchie has to use the full force of her wings and neck muscles to pull morsels from it. She yarns out  hunks then nibbles away quite daintily at the tidbits on the rocks. Before I crept across the deck and down the stairs for closer shots, my loving and attentive husband whispered from the door, "Would you like your bathrobe?" I whispered back, "Ya, and another camera battery, please." He had already brought coffee and breakfast to me in bed. What a guy. Other women's husbands hate it when I tell stuff like this because they look like marital slouches by comparison. And, unless they are obliging their own queens in these ways, they are. Tighten up your acts, boys!
     While I was watching Madame Butchie gnarling away, an American Mink showed up. I had recently been thinking about them as it was this time last year that I had last seen them. The eagle heard the mink first, then saw it. Twice, the mink scampered by, not fifty feet from her. I could tell she could hear it as she stopped yanking yuk and turned to it. She hesitated, glared at the mink, then fondly eyed the carcass. She looked at the mink again. But, in the end, the bird in the hand, or carcass in the claw as it were, won out over the possibility of fresh meat. We like to think of the majestic eagle as a hunter first and carrion scavenger second, but in this case, that was not true.
    Now, gentlemen, I suggest you all turn to your own bird in the hand, that dear old carcass you have at home, and go buy her flowers.

These eagle photographs were taken with a Canon 50D, Canon Zoom lens EF 100-400mm IS, L series at about 40 feet distance. Nice back yard I've got! 

 

American Mink scampering across the rocks and seaweed

Each time I've watched this eagle eating here at the Totman Cove Take-Out, she waddles away to the grass where she can dip her beak into the water and tidy up. I can anticipate when she'll take off based on this sequence of behaviors.

A Face Only A Mother Could Love - Turkey Vulture & Bald Eagles

The Bald eagles have been very busy with the seal pup carcass. They have been soaring about and sitting vigil in the trees. There have been two adults, definitely a male and a female based on side by side size comparisons. I think the one sitting on the pier is the male as it looks more slender and slightly smaller than the one ravaging the carrion. There is also a juvenile. I'm guessing second to third year. The juvie looks as if it is double banded. It is probably the offspring of the pair who I'm sure are the parents of The Butchie Boys. That would make Junior here a sibling to The Butchies, though not a nest mate. There have also been ravens and crows and of course, gulls interested in the pup remains.
     I have had a reader wish for me a Moon tide to take it away and another suggestion that I dump lime on the carcass. I'll put up with the wafting of rotten meat, thank you. Although, last night while I was sitting on my deck having a glass of wine and chatting with my husband, the stench was pretty intense. I had to keep shooing flies from the rim of my glass. I guess I should have been drinking faster to keep them away. Nonetheless, I would not alter the carcass. It's a naturally occurring event in a natural place. I'm fascinated by the birds and beasts that are drawn to it, not to mention the millions of insects and organisms that I can't even see! Plus, I'm hoping that eventually, I'll be able to get the seal skull. Cool!

The majestic and pretty animals aren't the only ones that cotton to the carrion. This lone Turkey vulture tilted around a few times before landing on our roof deck. David and I were married on the very spot where it stood. I consider myself very lucky to wake up each morning to David's smiling face. Can you imagine waking up to this face every day?

"Honey, have you thought about a nose job?"

 

Did you know that the Greek tragedy, Prometheus Bound took place on our pier? Prometheus intercepted Zeus' plans to wipe out the human race right here in Phippsburg, Maine.

    Turkey vultures are wide spread around the world. In Maine, they are migratory. Some of them go as far as South America. Their enormous, six foot wing span casts an ominous shadow when they pass. 'Buzzards,' as they are sometimes called, find their food mostly by sight. They can actually see the gasses that arise from decomp. (They always say that in crime shows, one cop to another at crime scenes, "Lue! Smell the holy decomp.!"). Birds have the sensory devices to detect smell, but for most it's not highly developed. Odors dissipate quickly in tree tops and the sky where birds usually hang out, so they don't have much use for smell. Vultures are an exception with a highly developed sense of smell. They have a nasal septum which is hollow so you can see through to the other side.  I've seen kids with ear lobe expanders that look like that. To me, they both beg the question "Why?"

Thanks to Wikipedia for information on Turkey Vultures.
For more information on avian sense of smell, click here.