February 21: Merganser Trifecta

Because he had surgery recently, my birding buddy Brian wasn't up for any hardcore hiking today. So instead he suggested a drive down the St. George peninsula to Port Clyde, via Weskeag Marsh in South Thomaston, to see what we might see. Other than a lone bald eagle soaring over the marsh, our biggest excitement of the day was seeing all three merganser species: hooded, red-breasted, and common. You know you're a true bird nerd when this is a day's highlight. But this is probably one of the few times of the year when this is feat may be accomplished. The hooded mergansers we saw are probably early migrants or strays from just south of here--they don't normally hang out in this area through winter. And while the hooded and common "mergs" both nest in Maine during the summer, the red-breasted merganser breeds far north of here. So today was our lucky day in this in-between, cross-over season for these diving ducks.

First, we stopped at Weskeag Marsh, where Brian spotted three female hooded mergansers in the river in the company of three black ducks. Before the eagle flew over and spooked them, we got good looks at their pretty brown crests, which were raised like feathered fans. I couldn't help but think of coy maidens of the bygone era when the way a woman deployed her fan conveyed more than words to a would-be suitor. Unfortunately there were no males around flashing their big white crests in return, so Brian and I were their only admirers.

Male hooded merganser with hood raised. 

Photo from Wikipedia Commons, courtesy of Benutzer: BS Thurner Hof.

The red-breasted merganser was a lone male off Marshall Point in Port Clyde. The red-breasted merg is notable for the crazy punk hairdo of its shaggy crest, which looks downright unruly compared to the smoother, rounder head of the common merg. In both species the female has rusty reddish-brown head feathers, while the male's head is green. Our common merganser was a solitary female spotted near two common goldeneyes off Drift Inn Beach in Martinsville. This sighting, which completed our trifecta, was unusual because common mergs don't usually hang out in the ocean. But there she was. And we were happy.

Even the spring ducks
wave fans, rearrange their hair,
trying to attract.

February 20: Birthday

Both my feet are now firmly planted in middle-age: today I'm 43. My family has fortunately always been one to celebrate special days, rather than mourn getting a year older, so I'm OK with this. And I couldn't have asked for a nicer day on the anniversary of my birth--blue sky, the river sparkling in the sun, temps in the 40s, chickadees singing their love songs in the bare branches. My mother tells me I was born during a blizzard, so by comparison this is a virtual spring to commemorate what might perhaps be called the late summer of my life. I'll take it. Beats the alternative, in terms of both weather and life.

As you get older, people make much less of a big deal about your birthday unless it's a milestone year. My husband was working all day, so I had no real plans other than a visit with a friend recovering from recent surgery and dinner out tonight with my husband and parents at Lily Bistro. Future plans to connect with friends will drag out the celebration a bit, but I think it'll be another seven years before I'm getting a real party.

So I have to say, as much as people criticize electronic technology for depersonalizing our relationships, e-mail and Facebook have totally made my birthday a funny kind of virtual party. I received maybe half a dozen moving e-mails today from family and friends (including a wonderful horoscope telling me that, like Poland in 1918, the return of my sovereignty in imminent). And I've gotten a gazillion good wishes on Facebook--from family and friends all over the country, including one currently in the Galapagos Islands. Sure, Facebook is reminding them that today is my birthday. And OK, a couple of them I hardly know. But they didn't have to say anything. Most of my birthday wishes were sincere and heartfelt sentiments from friends from whom I would otherwise not have heard from in the normal course of events. I felt the positive vibes. This is a good thing. Thank you, everyone! (And for all of you who wished me good birds, I hope to take advantage of that tomorrow.)

Also, my mother called to sing "Happy Birthday" to me, which she does every year. It's not really my birthday till I get that morning call from Mom.

One year older now,
I'm still a child when Mom sings,
grateful to be here.

Update: Right after posting this, my sister and niece called to sing "Happy Birthday" to me too--another gift!

February 19: On the Cusp

Today is the last day of the astrological birth-sign Aquarius, the Water Bearer. Tomorrow, my birthday, is the first day of Pisces, the Fish. When you're born on the first or last day of a particular sign, you're considered "on the cusp," possessing traits of both signs. While I think for the most part I'm a typical Pisces--introverted, creative, sensitive--I can also be extroverted and very rational like an Aquarius. (On the Myers-Briggs personality test, I scored equally for I, introverted, and E, extroverted.) And although I take a lot of this astrology stuff with a grain of salt, I have always felt that dichotomy in myself of the creative vs. the intellectual, and the passionate, emotional person vs. the obsessive control freak. (Though, really, we probably all do!)

Pisces the Fish is a water sign, of course, governed by the planet Neptune (Neptune being the classical Roman god of the sea), and I've always felt an alignment with water and the ocean. (Growing up on the coast of Maine plays no small part in that, as well.) Interestingly, though, the Water Carrier Aquarius is a "fixed" air sign. I guess it makes sense that you would want something fixed to hold something flowing.

My being born "on the cusp" of these two different but somehow congruent signs might explain in part why I collect pitchers. I learned on Wikipedia that in Hindu astrology, Aquarius is kumbha or pitcher. I have no idea what attracts me to pitchers--perhaps the fact that they can be beautiful, works of art sometimes, but are also vessels with practical value as holders of liquids. The act of pouring from a pitcher is a lovely, graceful gesture. Being part Water Bearer and part water sign, perhaps it seems only natural that I would be drawn to pitchers in this way. I think in general that I connect strongly with things that are both aesthetically pleasing and useful--frivolous tchotchkes don't do much for me unless they have some personal meaning in and of themselves.

While of course several of my pitchers feature birds, one of my other favorites is the fish one in the center.

In a graceful arc

water flows from a pitcher;

words pour from my mouth.

February 18: Stained Glass

I attended a reception today for my friend, glass artist Janet Redfield, at the University of Maine's Hutchinson Center in Belfast, to celebrate the recent installation of her 49-foot stained and fused glass piece in the Center's lobby. The back wall of the lobby--what you see across the room when you enter the building--is all windows. Janet's piece, which took her six months to complete, borders the top of that entire section. The two interwoven wavy blue lines represent the two main rivers of Belfast: the Passagassawakeag and Little Rivers. The Passy opens into Belfast Harbor, while Janet tells me that the Little River was the City of Belfast's first drinking water supply. The circles within are abstract. Janet likes to play with color and shape, and wanted to create visual joy within the dynamic, organic lines of the waters that literally brought the city to life. Now, students coming into the Center for classes can't help but notice this incredible panorama of light and color and glass stretching in front of them. They're confronted by art, by something beautiful to brighten their day, perhaps even inspire them, whether they want it or not--you've got to love that.

Intertwined rivers

of glass, interplay of light--

vivid stuff of life.

February 17: Mob Scene, Part Two

A tree full of crows caught my eye this morning. While driving through Rockport on Route One, I noticed a big bunch of crows--technically, a murder of crows--scattered through the roadside woods. So I could see what all the fuss was about without causing an accident, I quickly and prudently pulled over for a closer look. I was able to walk a short way off the road into the trees, where I soon realized that there were more crows than I had originally thought. As best as I could count, 40 or more crows had gathered in this one little area, some flying from tree to tree, some "barking," as crows do, others just hunkered down on a branch waiting for something to happen. None of them seemed frantic or alarmed. A large building blocked my full view of the woods, so short of climbing a tree for a crow's eye view, I can only imagine what they were all up to. All I know is that crows are always up to something. Which is why I love observing their comings and goings in my back yard and around my office. Well, that, and the fact that some days they are the only birds I see.

Owl courtship season has begun. These crows were not far from Merryspring Nature Park, where barred owls are often seen. So perhaps a few crows had found a hapless sleeping owl, sounded the alarm, and now they were all hanging out waiting to see who was going to make the first move. Or maybe they'd already harangued the owl enough to make it fly away, and now they were just rehashing yet one more cool victory over an evil raptor. Only the crows knew what was going on there, and they weren't telling in a language I could understand. O to fathom the mysteries of another species!

Of course, we can't even fathom the mysteries of our own species. But that's another story altogether.

An owl's daytime dreams
must be full of caws, black wings--
but does it notice?

February 16: Calm Before the Storm

As I look out the window at the crisp cornflower blue sky, sun still shining, it seems hard to imagine that the next couple of days will be punctuated by a new spate of snowfall. Depending on what report you read, we're due to get anywhere from 3 to 8 inches. Other than a sudden flurry of chickadee activity at my bird feeder this morning, I've had no presentiment of bad weather on the way. The few clouds beginning to accumulate in the west seem fluffy and insubstantial as yet. If it weren't for TV or the Internet, the snow flurries that are supposed to begin later this afternoon would be taking me completely by surprise. If I had an outside job that required me to be more in tune with the elements--as a fisherman, for example--I'm sure I'd be noticing signs now that would be tipping me off to the impending storm. But most of us are out of touch with that knowledge these days. Most days my innate weather sense is limited to what I'm actually experiencing first-hand (and, also, if my arthritic thumb aches, it's probably cold outside). So tucked away safely in my office with no travel plans to get anxious about or frantic supermarket crowds to contend with, I can calmly enjoy these final hours of sunshine and blue sky--as well as look forward to soon seeing the winter landscape renewed.

Photo by Shannon Thompson

Placid, perfect sky
gives no hint of coming snow,
gives nothing away.

February 15: Snowshoe Hare

Around here, when we talk about wild rabbits--as in, "I'm going rabbit hunting with my beagles this weekend"--we aren't really talking about true rabbits. The only native Maine rabbit is the Eastern cottontail, which doesn't live this far north in the state. And even in southern Maine its numbers are severely declining. What we do have are snowshoe hares. Hares are not rabbits. Many of the differences are subtle, but basically the hare is larger, with bigger feet and longer legs, and its young are precocial--that is, they're born with fur and open eyes, unlike the more helpless rabbit kits. (Interesting side note: baby hares are called "leverets." Probably less interesting side note: this factoid once helped me pick up a cute Harvard guy at a party way back in my college days; he lived in Leverett House and was impressed that I knew what the word meant.)

The snowshoe hare also possesses the neat trick of growing in a new coat each fall, so that by winter it is all white (except for black ear tips) and can easily camouflage itself in the snow. As the snow starts to melt in spring, the grey fur grows back in patches so that the creature still blends in with the mottled ground cover. The cottontail doesn't do this, though its tail does look exactly like a white ball of cotton.

All that aside, old habits are hard to break. So for the rest of this post, every time I say "rabbit," know that I really mean "snowshoe hare."

Winter morph snowshoe hare. Photo courtesy of US Forest Service.

Rabbit tracks are the first animal track I ever learned. I distinctly remember my father pointing out to me the pattern of their tracks in the snow behind our house: two little indentations from the front feet and then prints of the longer, bigger hind-feet ahead of them in the snow. I was only about four, but I've never forgotten this lesson, in part because we see so many rabbit tracks criss-crossing the woods around here. And droppings, and nibbled young trees. By all accounts, we should see as many or more rabbits than we do deer. Yet I've only seen the occasional rabbit in the woods or dashing across a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

That's why I was so excited yesterday afternoon to see a rabbit bounding through the woods right across the trail in front of my friend Brian and me on Beech Hill. We had seen plenty of tracks in the snow. One day a few weeks ago we had even heard rabbit-hunting hounds in baying pursuit of their quarry, and a little later, gunshots. Between the two of us we've probably seen close to a hundred bird species on the hill. But neither of us had seen a rabbit there. And this one was almost entirely white, in prime winter pelage. If it hadn't run right in front of us, we'd never have seen it in the snowy woods. So it was a particularly gratifying sighting of this very common but elusive species: the "rabbit" / snowshoe hare.

Startled white rabbit,
the snow keeps all your secrets
except your flight path.

February 14: Love Is in the Air

Today you might well ask, Who is St. Valentine and why has "his" day become a romantic holiday? Valentine's Day, drily described by Wikipedia as: "traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards," doesn't really seem like a holiday that would receive traditional Christian support. No one seems really sure exactly who Valentine was beyond his being a Roman Christian who may or may not have performed what were then illegal Christian marriages. There's the tenuous connection, I guess. Apparently Geoffrey Chaucer was the first one to reference St. Valentine's Day in English in his poem Parlement of Foules, which I mentioned yesterday. An excellent prose translation of this poem by Gerald NeCastro of the University of Maine footnotes this fact. So perhaps we have Chaucer to thank for the romantic tradition, which later bloomed more fully with the exchange of greeting cards in the Victorian era and has now become an excuse for couples to go out to dinner and buy each other sweets and florid cards with messages made up by a bunch of people in cubicles in Kansas City. (For sweets, I highly recommend Maine-made chocolates by Black Dinah Chocolatiers.)


In his poem, Chaucer defined Valentine's Day as the day when birds choose their mates. The poem itself is an entertaining discourse on love, in which the narrator falls asleep and is taken in a dream to the halls of Venus, where all the birds are gathered around waiting to pair up. You can imagine the noise level and sexual tension. The day's proceedings get off to a bad start when three eagles get into an argument over who gets to choose the comely female eagle perched on Venus's arm. The day drags on as other birds, anxious to find their mates, debate in parliamentary fashion how this decision should be made. The goose thinks the female should only go with a mate she really loves; the dove believes in being true to his mate until he dies, etc. Finally the female eagle asks if she can wait till next year to decide. All that debating apparently gave her a headache. I'm not sure if I would recommend this as a romantic poem to share with your lover today (Pablo Neruda and e.e. cummings, for example, have better love offerings), but it's a fun read--keeping in mind that I was an English major and "fun" might be a relative term.


Chaucer or not, just looking out my window I see signs that love is in the air. Squirrels spiral after each other around trunks, bushy tails waving enticements. The insistent "peter, peter" song of the titmice rings out through the trees. The male downy woodpecker knocks on the old birch tree, an early territorial announcement. And owl courtship season is fully underway--friends report that they've been hearing great horned owls this week in the woods around their house, and others have been seeing barred owls on the move. That restlessness that leads us slowly and agonizingly into spring has begun to stir in the woods as surely as the still-chilly breeze. Brace yourselves, everyone. This isn't an easy season.


Husband who chose me,
may our bond be as solid
as that of ravens.

February 13: Mob Scene

As soon as I stepped out the door for my run this morning, I heard them: the yelling mob. Raising my eyes to the curve of Mount Battie--the profile of which seems to echo the arc of the earth's horizon--I saw them: a scattered pattern of darting crows. Just as I was thinking to myself, The red-tailed hawk must be up there, a red-tailed hawk soared up out of the swirl of black forms. As I watched, feeling a smug satisfaction at having so quickly figured out what was going on, another red-tail separated itself from the flock. I hadn't known there were two! For a moment I could see both hawks circling the squalling horde of crows, and then they all dipped behind the rim of the mountain.

I could still hear the crows as I began my run. My rather labored outing was punctuated by birds: cardinal's pip, chickadees, several singing house finches making it seem like spring, downy woodpecker, flock of doves, a herring gull carrying a chunk of bread, black duck flushed on the river, goldfinches, beeping chorus of nuthatches. As I warmed up from the exertion and sun, I allowed myself to feel really excited about spring for the first time and to imagine how I'll soon be hearing more and more birds on my run.

But I was also thinking about the hawks. A pair of hawks. I've been seeing a hawk regularly along the river from my office up the street. But I hadn't realized there was a pair. Two hawks wouldn't be hanging out together unless they were a couple. (I just remembered that Valentine's Day, tomorrow, is the traditional day when birds find their mates, according to Chaucer's Parlement of Foules. The red-tails apparently got a jump start on ritual.) A pair of hawks in the vicinity of Mount Battie has some interesting implications for other resident raptors--including the pair of peregrine falcons that have nested  on Mount Megunticook for the past three years. They should be back in early spring, by April. And I think they'll have something to say about having red-tails as neighbors. Red-tailed hawks might be bigger, bulkier birds, but I'd bet on that avian torpedo, the peregrine, against just about any other raptor out there. So things could get interesting in the 'hood come spring. And the ever-vigilant crows will have even more to get worked up about.

Two hawks mobbed by crows--
the things one has to endure
as a mated pair.

February 12: Friday

It's been a long work week, and while I don't usually pull the "TGIF" thing, for some reason I'm particularly happy that this week is over. Not that I don't enjoy my job. To the contrary, I accomplished some satisfying things since Monday: I attended a valuable, day-long seminar, submitted a grant proposal, edited the Land Trust's Spring newsletter, and had a few great one-on-one meetings with board members. All stuff I find gratifying, but adding up to a full schedule. In addition, my husband has been sick with a bad cold that has caused him to hack loudly all night long, so my sleep hasn't been uninterrupted. To add to the week's excitement, I got a glimpse of a beautiful little poetry anthology that includes one of my poems: Maine in Four Seasons (Down East Books, June 2010). And to top it off, I went out after work three nights out of five this week--incredibly social for me. And the Winter Olympics start tonight! So between the busy-ness, various excitements, and spotty sleep patterns, it's been a full week, and I'm relieved to know I can sleep in tomorrow morning...

This isn't really the stuff of poetry in itself, but that ephemeral feeling of gratifying relief--combined with the simple pleasure of being able to sit down now and lose myself in Olympic fervor--is one to savor:

End of the work week,
start of Winter Olympics--
torches lit in snow.

February 11: Oysters

Tonight we went out to a raw bar with friends, and the four of us got at least a half-dozen each. I love oysters. There's the obvious sensual appeal of slurping the salty fleshy scrap of mollusk off the gritty half-shell. And there's also something deliciously elemental about eating this fruit of the sea--it tastes like the very ocean made tangible. We were enjoying Pemaquid oysters, grown locally not far from the very waters outside the restaurant windows. A medium-sized tasty oyster, made in Maine, they're one of my favorites. Confronted with an open oyster bar, I have been known to consume several dozen Pemaquid oysters in a minutes. I've never found myself too full of oysters.

I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to visit several times an amazing private collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings, which includes such classics as a Brueghel winter village tableau, an Averkamp skating scene, and a van Ruisdael landscape with windmill. But the one I really enjoy looking at up close is a beautifully detailed still-life of food on a table by 17th century Flemish painter Osias Beert. I can't tell you what other food items make up this tableau--a peeled lemon, maybe?--because front and center is a plate of oysters on the half-shell that look so real you want to just reach out and grab one. Now that's a work of art!

Oyster: sea made flesh
slides easily down the throat,
mouthful of ocean.