Eastern Phoebe

Thanks to naturalist, Josh Fecteau, I now know the identity of this bird. It was flitting around at the edge of Caesar Pond, amongst the white pines and maple trees. I initially thought it was an Eastern Phoebe, but then thought it might be Eastern Wood Pewee. After looking at a comparison of features from this website, I looked at the bill of this bird. It is all dark, and is a characteristic of a phoebe.

It would fly out to capture insects, then come back to the branches at the edge of the pond to munch. 

I know that these aren't very good photos, but my boat was rocking a bit as I attempted to take the photos.  This one shows the tail. What I neglected to do was notice tail wagging behavior. It really is important to look at physical features, behaviors, and calls when trying to identify birds.

Drought Map for Maine

Click on the map for a larger view.

Here is the USGS drought map for Aug. 8, 2016. As you can see, we are currently on the line between extreme drought/severe drought conditions in our neck of the woods (the red / dark brown areas on the map.) We are almost 6" below normal for rainfall, and it is bone dry outside. Drew just returned back from a walk in the woods, and the first creek bed is dry. That is highly unusual. We are hoping for some rain this weekend, if we are lucky. I always get nervous when we enter into droughts as our well (really a cisterne) is only 16 feet deep. It would be very inconvenient if the well went dry and we'd have to lug all our water in.

Pond Prowling on an early summer's morning

 Neighbor Carla and I did a bit of pond prowling today. We were lucky to see some wildlife due to getting out on the pond early (by 6:45 am.)  

We saw lots of white pine trees with female pine cones hanging from the ends of the branches.  The pine cones are still immature and you can see bits of sap "sparkling" in the sunlight.

After investigating the pine trees, we spied mallards feeding at the north end of the pond.

They were so funny as they bobbed upside down searching for pond plants to feed on.

Then, we paddled into the boggier part of the pond and parked the boat in front of the little islands that support the old larch trees. We were in luck as we had hoped to find cedar waxwings here.

These trees provide good perches for the cedar waxwings as they survey their surroundings.

I love the waxwings and cheer them on as they feed on flying insects in the air over the pond. 

As we were watching the waxwings, we heard geese in the distance. The geese practically flew overhead. Their formation changed several times as they headed northward.

Drawing our eyes back to the pond surface, we found that we were surrounded by the purple flowers of pickerel weed, which attracted bumble bees. There was lots of buzzing all around us.

Finally, we paddled toward the south side of the pond in search of painted turtles, many of whom were sunning themselves on various logs.

It was getting too hot for us, but the turtles were lovin' it! All in all, we had a great pond prowl, and were out for a solid 3 hours!

Cloud Movement Time-lapse

It's been five years since we created a time-lapse of the clouds over Caesar Pond, and today we decided to give it a go again. I am fascinated by the changes that the clouds go through, over time, as illustrated by the clouds in the foreground, versus the clouds in the background, versus the clouds that were at a higher altitude. The clouds build up, break down, and have tendrils that evaporate, etc. The dynamics are incredibly intriguing, and I find that when we look at clouds, we usually just give them a quick glance. We miss the details that the camera picks up over time. (By the way...cloud dynamics are complex. I found this article on the amount of moisture in clouds to be rather dense with information. The last paragraph, "Cloud Cohesion and Dissolution", of this Wikipedia Cloud Physics article was illuminating as well;-)

We left the camera on for 1 hour and 50 minutes. Drew set the intervalometer to take a photo every 5 seconds as the clouds were moving extremely slowly. This video contains 1,331 jpeg photos. Interestingly, the camera only used 5 out of 16 gigs of the memory card, and the camera battery was at 1 bar when done. If we had done it in RAW, we would have used up our battery rather quickly.

There are several steps to take in setting up the camera. We used the Canon 50d camera with a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM wide angle lens. It was put into AV mode at F13, ISO 100, EV -0.33. First, Drew focused on the clouds across the pond, using auto focus to Infinity, then he switched the camera to Manual Focus to lock the focus in place. The shutter speed varied from 1/400, to 1/500, to 1/640 over the course of the shooting session. (We now think that this variability occurred due to uneven light through the eyepiece. Maybe taping over the eyepiece during the session will alleviate this problem.)

We've got a lot more learning to do before we perfect the process. We also found that our sensor is dirty again, and Drew is going to clean it before we attempt this again. (Note to self: Clean the camera sensor before photographing the sky;-)

Alpaca Envy

We are in love with Alpacas! I want some, I want, I want, I want...

But, we'd have to clear the rest of our acre, trade in the dogs for a couple of alpacas, and spread into the neighbor's yard;-) Not going to happen...so we'll just visit with these guys on a weekly basis.

Powerline Trail Walk - Topsham

Drew has found us a trail to walk that is easy on my knees. It is an ATV trail in Topsham, and it begins at a church parking lot on Roman Rd., off of Foreside Rd. It has a few steep sections, and I successfully navigated one of them without too much knee pain. 

We walked 2 miles (which I know is not much, but we had our two Greyhounds with us and they are glacially slow;-) by walking the main trail and an offshoot of the main trail, through the woods over toward Rt. 24. It was so nice to walk a trail that we've never accessed before.

Wild Blueberries

The trail was mowed, and we did not get any ticks on us, which was a nice change from all our other walks this summer. I was happily surprised to see fields of wild blueberries and blackberries. This trail will be so colorful in autumn as the blueberry leaves turn red.

Wood Lily (Lilium philadelphicum)

Note the mixture of blueberries and other plants
which I cannot identify.

There were also a smattering of Wood Lilies scattered here and there in the dry open fields/thickets.

Meadowsweet (in the rose family)

We also found Meadowsweet (Spirea alba) along the edge with lots of other plants common to open fields.

Just a few garden delights

I was messing around with one of my lenses, and took a few photos of some of my flowers. As I was photographing parts of the front stump garden, a clearwing hummingbird moth made an appearance. This isn't the sharpest of photos as I was in still-photo-taking-mind-mode;-)

These moths sound like hummingbirds and move like them as well. Just after photographing it, a real hummingbird flew in to sip nectar from the bee balm. But, he flew away before I could capture a photo of him.

This Fire King Crocosmia plant is one of my favorite bulbs. This is the first of its flowers to open. I love the color of the flower and of the stem and buds. Gorgeous!

I have also left a number of poppy seed heads to mature. They provide quite a contrast with all the brightly colored flowers.

And, lastly, one of our high bush blueberry plants is happily producing quite a few blueberries for the first time. Of course, we've only picked a few berries, whereas a bluejay has eaten most of the others as they have ripened. How do I know? By the feather he left behind after one of his forays into the plant;-)

City Pickers Planters Patio Garden

Our patio garden is very happy this summer, and the plants seem to enjoy the heat so long as we water them regularly.

The first tomatoes are ripening.

We actually picked a couple of tomatoes last week and found the skin to be thick and chewy. I have a feeling this species of tomato is bred for beauty over taste and skin thickness. So, we are allowing these to ripen well into maturity in hopes that the skin is more tender. 

I am a fan of growing pickling cucumbers. We put 6 cucumber plants into our grow box. The cukes have been growing by leaps and bounds. Note: For maximum crunchiness, refrigerate a freshly picked cucumber for a few hours before eating.

And, I had arugula in my dinner salad. Yummmm! Even though the first arugula plants are bolting, I have a secondary set of plants already growing behind the ones you see here.

Weather Update

Ugh...I was not meant to live in a place where the daytime temperature rises into the 80's or above. In fact, as soon as the temperature rises above around 73F, I start to feel overly warm. Today, the outdoor temperature reached 87F, and tomorrow won't be any different.

I remember when we moved to Maine 16 years ago. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there were very few days that reached up into the 80s, and you could count, on one hand, the number of thunderstorms that hit all summer long. Boy, have times changed... as has the weather! Now, most of our summer days are in the 80's and thunderstorms are common.

July's weather from the 10th to the end of this week.
Click on the chart for a larger view.

Today, I went onto the front porch to water the tomatoes, cucumbers, and arugula, at around 3pm, and felt like I was in an oven. We put a thermometer on the porch and it read 113.7F. As we weren't sure of the maximum temperature the thermometer could handle, we took it inside at that point. Suffice it to say, our front deck was hotter than 114F. No wonder we are absolutely miserable and don't have much energy to work outdoors! I keep dreaming of moving to Iceland...go figure;-)

Cucumber Tendril Time-lapse

60 minute time-lapse (1 photo per minute) of a cucumber tendril grasping a wire trellis.