Lobster Roll - Snowy Egret Catches Lobster

Yesterday, I saw eight Snowy Egrets at Lobster Cove on Rt 216 in Phippsburg. They were fishing in the shallows along with a few Double Crested Cormorants. Two Herring gulls were taking advantage of prey being kicked and hauled up by the other birds. The egrets were fishing for baby lobsters, which can be seen in these photos. 'Snowies' use several methods for fishing. Today, they were using the 'kick the mud around' method to get the little lobsterettes to rise from the bottom. These birds, like so many when they are in breeding plumage, look magnificent and at the same time preposterous, cartoon characatures of themselves.

Do you see the little lobster in the egret's beak?

 "Hey, buddy, you gonna share some of that?" 

"I like a bit more mayonnaise with mine and maybe a dusting of paprika. Okay?"

Sleepless In The Burg

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

                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Domestic Geese, Phippsburg

Shadblow And Alewives

 
     Amelanchier canadensis
The Service Berries are in bloom. The diaphanous shrubs almost look like puffs of smoke across the marshes and meadows. Indigenous to North America, the small trees are not only lovely, but important to wildlife for the fruit they bear. I just planted one for a gardening customer at the bottom of their serene meadow. It’s in a perfect setting where the soil is consistently moist and the flowers will be back lit by the evening’s setting sun. It has plenty of space to send out suckers and make a clump which it prefers to do. Maybe I’ll talk to them about putting in some ferns around it’s legs. It’s also fiddlehead season, so it seems like an appropriate combination; they like the same conditions. The tight fisted crosiers of Ostrich ferns are a traditional Maine spring food. Like the flowers of the Service Berries, they are only around briefly before they unfurl and aren’t edible any longer. It has been a record breaking warm spring making us tend to forget that often at this time of year, there is still frost in the ground in the deep woods and in Aroostook County - “The Crown” of Maine. ‘Service Berries’ were given the name because their bloom coincides with when the ground has thawed and can reliably be dug to inter those who died when it was still frozen. When the Service Berries bloom, winter is over. They are also called Shadbush and Shadblow because they bloom when the shad or Alewives run. ‘Blow’ is an old fashioned word meaning full bloom. The Alewives have just started to run. When I was young, my father took me up the coast from here to Damariscotta Mills to see them. Alewives are a type of herring that lives out at sea, but travels up freshwater rivers to breed and spawn. Damariscotta Mills is narrow so thousands of the fish can be seen clearly from the shore. The Osprey, gulls and eagles go crazy feeding. At night, the raccoons come around for the dead ones that line the shore. For many of us, like eating fiddleheads, it’s a spring ritual to go there to see the fish and birds. I remember kneeling down and putting my hands in the water to feel them when I was a kid. The water was so thick with them you could literally grab them with nothing more than your hand. So many people go there now that there is a parking lot and traffic jams. When I was a kid, though, my father and I had to climb down the banking through the bushes risking poison ivy and a slip and fall on wet rocks. We could hear the water and feel the cool mist from the little falls above the pools of fish before we came through the bushes. It was thrilling!  Alewives are caught en masse by netting. Today they are used mostly as bait fish for lobster trapping. When eaten, they are usually smoked, though I’m told they have a very mild flavor. Traditionally, a little vinegar is served with them which is true of fiddleheads, too. I can only imagine, back in the days of our settlers in the late 1600s and early 1700s, how thankful folks must have been after surviving winter to have fresh fiddleheads, bountiful fishes and to be able to bury their dead. They must have wept when the Shadbush bloomed.


                                                                    

Technorati Tags: Robin Robinson photography, Maine, fiddleheads, Ostrich ferns ,alewives, shad, shadblow, Service berry

Fish Fight - Osprey And Eagle

Last evening, I was standing on my deck with a glass of wine when this Bald eagle came zooming out of the trees after this Osprey with it's evening supper. I don't know what kind of fish it had and my subjects were slightly far away for fantastic photos, but they'll do. This series of shots clearly captures the fish food fight. The Osprey won, by the way. It took for the cover of the trees with it's supper, and the eagle gave up. It went across the cove and landed in the top of a spruce tree to rest and I'm sure, to pout. I don't know what the numbers are, but my personal observations are that the eagles are not often successful with this approach to food acquisition. It takes an enormous amount of energy for them to zoom around acrobatically after the more agile osprey. Their best bet is to get the osprey to drop the fish where the eagle can get it, for example, on the rocks versus into the water. Usually, in my experience, the eagles don't keep after and osprey as this one did. They usually only try once and the Ospreys rocket straight for cover. It's a fascinating and magnificent event to witness. 

I took this a few years ago on the rocks in front of our house on Totman Cove. I have never understood why the Osprey had seaweed in it's talons. Did it think it could slap the eagle senseless with it and take back it's Striped bass dinner?

Broad-winged - Hopefully

Broad-winged Hawk in Phippsburg. Broad-wings are a type of buteo. They are birds of prey and hunt small animals from a perch like this. Shy birds, they usually prefer the woods. They are migratory and spend the winters in tropical forests of South America. They migrate in huge flocks or 'kettles' of hundreds to thousands of birds. At about 15" they are a stocky little hawk.

I'm going to go with Broad-winged Hawk on this identification. After my last hawk fiasco, I'm hopeful that I'm correct this time. I'm going with Broad-winged because of the the thick barring of the breast and the relatively short tail. It also hollered several times, "Look, you! Get it right this time; I'm a Broad-winged. Got that?" I could hear it plainly from my open car window. I had been whizzing my way homeward from a long day of Weeding For Dollars when I spied it sitting on a power line on Rt. 209 in Phippsburg. For those of you who know the area, the hawk was sitting just south of the elelmentary school. I saw the  bird on the wire, but it was actually too close for my long lens. I continued then doubled back around so that when I came back I was across the road. I never got out of the car. While I sat there shooting, lots of people drove by. Many of them slowed down to see what I was looking at, including one of my neighbors. They thought my lens, or "that thing," was protruding too far out of the window into the traffic lane and called to tell me so. I always look to see where my car is in situations like that. I do not want to cause any accidents or even inconveniences for other people. My car was four feet from the painted line on the side of the road, well out of the way. The school bus stopped not too far from me to let out some kids. I thought it would be nice if the bus driver had said to the kids "Look! There's a hawk on the power line and that's a National Geographic photographer right here in your home town!" I would like to think of myself as inspirational to those children even if I'm not a Nat. Geo. photographer. Maybe one day, one of them will be a famous photographer and perhaps I will have helped them on their way one fine day when they were coming home from school.

Thanks to David Allen Sibley's The Sibley Guide To Birds and allaboutbirds.org for the information.

 

What's For Dinner? - Flounder Fluke!

Osprey with Flounder, May 2009 Totman Cove

The osprey are busy fishing in Totman Cove when the tide is low. Unlike most of the Maine coastal inlets which are rock and mud, our cove bottom is sand. From our house, I can see seven sandy beaches. Try that ten times fast: She surely sees seven sandy shores. We have millions of Sand Dollars here. One of the beaches is suitably called "Sand Dollar Beach." We also have lots of flounder. This makes for great fishing for the osprey and for eagles. They can see the fish moving against the sand. The Eagles fish and they also steal from the osprey. Many of the osprey are immature and not the most adept at catching then holding onto their catch. Sometimes they catch fish that are simply too big to handle and then they drop them. Two mornings ago, an osprey caught this 16" Flounder and then did just that: dropped in the rocks in front of our house. Immediately behind it was a mature Bald eagle. The eagle dove for the purloined fish but was intimidated by the proximity of the pier pilings. It's escape would have been hampered. Then, two Herring gulls that reside on our pier made a run for the Flounder. The fish just flapped helplessly much too far from the water to get back. Still in my morning bathrobe, I scurried down the steps and across the rocks with my camera. The fish had taken a 100' fall, and was bleeding from its mouth, but other than that had nary a scratch. So, this swift scavenger snatched it up and scampered back to the kitchen! David quickly filleted it. I dusted it with a combination of corn starch and cornmeal then into the skillet it went for a quick seer. Uuhhhhhmm, a drizzle of lemon and a salad and lunch was served! Food always tastes better when it's unexpected and fresh, a fluke, as it were.

Flounder are members of the Flatfish family which includes lots of species common to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and European waters. You may have heard of Dover Sole which comes from England. The flounder family is made up of many species of fish. In the United States, East Coast varieties include gray sole or 'Witch Flounder,' winter flounder (also called blackback), American plaice (also called dab or sand dab), yellowtail flounder (also called dab or rusty flounder), summer flounder (also called fluke), and southern flounder. Other members of the Flatfish family include common sole, lemon or English sole, black sole, white sole, halibut, turbot, and brill. Though it's been very warm here lately, I'm not sure if my prize would be a summer flounder or not. I don't know 'witch' flounder it was, but it was delicious.
You can see that the flounder is flat. They lie on the bottom nestling down in the sand or mud so that they can ambush their prey. The top of them is dark gray so they are hard to see from above, unless they are contrasted against sand. Their undersides are pure white. I neglected to photograph that side because I was pre-occupied thinking about recipes and getting dressed. When flounder hatch, they have one eye on each side of the head. As they mature and start lying flat on the bottom, one eye migrates across so that both eyes are on the top. Creepy, huh? They have a tiny mouth with sharp teeth for biting the little fish they like. They can be caught here by rod and reel. You've got to have a sinker so that your live bait is tugged gently along the bottom, hopefully across the path of a flounder. Or, you can wait for one to fall from the sky into your lap. My advice to you is if you catch one, don't kiss it and don't overcook it. It has a very delicate flavor. The Ospreys and I give it a solid ten.

Thanks to Wikipedia for some of this information. Click here for More About Flounder.

Was That A Funky Towhee? Eastern Towhee and Funkia

I took this photograph today of an Eastern Towhee. It's a male. It is not the greatest photograph I've ever taken, but it's the best of a Towhee I've ever shot. Ideally, the bird would have been turned toward me and there would have been more 'eye light,' or highlight in the eye. There wouldn't have been so much background clutter and the bird's exposure would have been lighter. It turns out though, that this bird is hard to capture. It's a rustler in the bushes and underbrush, more often heard than seen and rareley seen without this exsact same type of small twigs and sticks in its midst. So, I should count my blessings and that's why I'm sharing this shot with you at all. I don't usually post photographs unless they are perfect. It's too vulnerable a place for me to be, especially since I know what makes a great photograph versus a snapshot. It would be better to just keep it to myself that I took lousy photographs as to reveal them. I have not seen a Towhee at ALL for at least twenty years. In my exsuberance, I posted this sighting to the Maine Audubon List Serve right away. I hollered in the e mail, "I saw a Rufous Sided Towhee!" The minute I had done it,  I had poster's remorse. I thought, "Oh God! What if it was really an American Redstart?"  That would have been much more likely and I would really have sounded like an idiot, a birding rookie, especially since I pulled the trigger on the 'Perigrine That Wasn't,' per my last post. My credibility is really waning here. As a birder, there's not much worse than egg on the face with an identification. In the eyes of birders, it's hideous to be wrong! So, I carefully examined the two photographs I had and listened over and over to allaboutbirds.com song recordings. I was sure it was an Eastern Towhee. But, I had said "Rufous Sided Towhee," and there is no such thing. It's an Eastern Towhee. Clearly in my mind though, I could hear someone saying, "Rufous Sided Towhee."  Who? Who would have said that? Oh, God -it was my mother! My mother knew nothing about birds but presumed to know and boasted of sightings accordingly. Having repeated her words without thinking, I sounded like her, which made me really queasy. She was always making statements of fact when she didn't know what she was talking about. One of the things she used to say was that hosta plants were called "Funkia." I don't know where she got that. As a professional gardener, I'm into botanical exsactitude; I don't throw plant names and identifications around recklessly any more than I do that of birds. "Funkia" is an old fashioned inexact term, used by Victorian ladies. However, it is what hosta were once upon a time called. And Eastern Towhee were once upon a time called Rufous Sided Towhee.  I guess what really matters is not who's right or exsactly what they call a thing. It doesn't matter who is perfect or who is the best. What matters is the love and larger appreciation that they pass on to another, especially children. Even when they are wrong.

Hosta sieboldiana "Sum And Substance."