Day 13.264: Misty; windy

We've had some very clear days at the beach this summer. Saturday was not one of those. It was quite murky out to sea.

Since then it's been unusually warm - more than one person has commented on wishing they'd been slower to remove their air-conditioning units. Last night an impressive weather front came through and it was very windy.

So far there has been little sign of the cold air mass behind the front, but I guess more autumnal temperatures will be along soon.

Day 13.263: Sandpipers, gulls and a cormorant

...and a very heavy, but not quite too heavy surf clam.

From our trip to Bayview Beach on Saturday afternoon.

Day 13.262: Lunchtime sighting

I don't often have any interesting bird sightings on work days, but today as I was arriving back at the office after lunch, I saw this fly by and land in a bare tree. I stopped to take a few photos:

It seems to be an immature accipiter - possibly a northern goshawk (the white line above its eye suggests this - although they are rarer than their cousins Cooper's hawk and sharp-shinned hawk both of which look quite similar in their immature plumage). A nice sight in any case. 

Day 13.261: Exile #2's Sunday Column #315

Exile #2 writes...

Sunday night has traditionally been the time when the young Exiles make sure everything is ready for the school week. The new normal has changed this routine a little. E5N1 still goes to school on Mondays and Tuesdays, so he packs his things, with the additional task of making sure he has a mask ready to go (and a spare in his bag in case a change is needed). Exile #4 , however, can take it a little easier, knowing class will be online in the morning.

On Thursday and Friday, the roles are reversed, and Exile #4 goes into school. Online days are a little less interactive for E5N1. He is set work to do from home but doesn’t have to tune in to classes. It’s probably just as well because he’s usually in his pajamas.

The one thing they both have to do on their in-school days is to take their temperature, to ensure they don’t have a fever, before leaving the house. Strange habits to be in but hopefully it will make a difference. I sometimes catch sight of the bus going by soon after with it’s reduced number of students. They sit as far apart as possible and are masked at all times. They seem to be doing a great job of following the rules but it’s a slightly sad sight. The bus driver probably appreciates the peace and quiet though!

Day 13.260: Getting it done

I took Exile #4 for us to get our flu vaccines (the others have had theirs), Exile #2 and I recorded a song for church tomorrow and completed our UK tax return. Not bad for a day where we also fitted in a low-tide walk on the beach:

Day 13.259: Animal

Exile #4 went off to school and I left for work as normal. Soon after that however, the power went off leaving things a bit uncertain as to how E5N1's remote school day would go. He was probably a whole lot less distressed than his sibling would have been if it had been one of their days to be doing distance-learning.

Exile #2 managed to get E5N1 some internet on her phone and the power came on a little before lunchtime.

Some time later we discovered (to some extent at least) what had caused the power to go off:

Day 13.258: Peekaboo with the birds at Two Lights State Park

To be fair, a few of the birds (like the gull on the rock) at Two Lights on Sunday posed quite nicely, and I can't really fault the ducks (a large gathering of common eider in a variety of plumage I think) or the passing cormorants for being a long way away.

The red-breasted nuthatch (top row) was certainly messing with me - hiding behind the trees until it decided to give me a perfect Maine pose with a pinecone (albeit with less than ideal lighting). What I assume is a female yellowthroat barely stayed still for long enough to get the camera pointed in the right direction - and never long enough for a second try.

The bottom left picture may be a black and white warbler but again, it didn't want to cooperate with my attempts to get a reliable identification photo.

Day 13.257: Invader and some natives

We were quite taken with these seed pods (top two pictures) we saw at Two Lights on Sunday morning - but a bit disappointed that this plant with a taste for the dramatic are probably the invasive black swallowwort - also called "dog-strangling vine" apparently - delightful!

The bottom two are more welcome - if less showy - sights: some asters and goldenrod - and bees (we saw several).

Day 13.256: Two Lights, plotting a miss

As Exile #2 mentioned, we had a Sunday morning visit at Two Lights State Park. We usually go there when we want to watch the waves from a safe distance, but this time we went to explore the relatively modest network of trails. We found our way through the woods to the observation tower - a rather brutalist concrete structure dating from late in WW2, when the plan was to us this tower and a lighthouse down the coast to triangulate the position of ships for the guns (never installed) at what is now Two Lights State Park to fire upon. The calculations were to be done in the wonderfully-named "Plotting Room".

As well as enjoying the tower from several angles, we were amused by the diagram showing how the triangulation would work - not quite well enough apparently (you may need to click on the image to see what I mean)!

Day 13.255: Smooth (we've been adulting)

I was going to tell you about our trip to Two Lights State Park, but that really needs photos and Blogger is misbehaving with that at the moment, so instead I'll say that not only is our garage door now moving up and down with a hitherto-unknown smoothness, but outside the door, the freshly sealed driveway is also similarly smooth.

We did the door ourselves (lithium grease is the secret apparently) but - unlike our neighbors - were happy to pay someone to do the seal-coating of the driveway.

Day 13.254: Exile #2's Sunday Column #314

Exile #2 writes...

Last night was cold enough to require the covering up of our last few ripening tomatoes but it soon warmed up, so we jumped in the car and headed for Two Lights State Park. We have gone there in the past during high surf events because the view of the waves is spectacular. Today, it was calm but still lovely., the kind of weather that our local forecasters describe as “delightful”. We found some previously unexplored bits of coastal path plus some trails through the woods. It was just what we needed, and totally deserved after three days of prepping and painting.

Day 13.253: All decked out

When  I joined the project yesterday afternoon, Exile #2 had already started the preparation work. We spent all afternoon sanding and scraping and then I did another shift this morning to get it to the before picture below left. It took less than an hour to do each of two coats of stain to transform it to the after picture below right:

and here it is in all its glory - hopefully ready to withstand a Maine winter (maybe even two!):

Day 13.252: Things I wish I had a photo of...

If I had picture of our newly sealed driveway, or our afternoon spent sanding the deck or even Exile #2's RBG mug (RIP) I could probably spin a blog post around it, but all I have is this rock:

Day 13.251: So many crickets

There have been so many crickets and katydids and the like* around this summer. This one seems to have been hanging around the deck for quite a while but it's not one of the one that I evicted from the basement - those were stripy legged too but a different kind of weird jumping insect altogether:

* there are a load of different families of this kind of creature and I don't care enough to try to get my head around bush crickets and true crickets and that's not cricket and whatever Katy did.

Day 13.250: A katydid from the bush...

...is worth two pictures on the blog (perhaps).

I'm not sure exactly, but this - spotted in our work parking lot appears to be a bush katydid of some kind. I was very taken with the leaf-like wings.

Day 13.249: Too much, too swallow

Perhaps you'll forgive the bad pun after this show-and-tell?

Back on Day 13.242, as we were driving back from East Point, we saw the most amazing swarm of swallows. Maybe "swarm" isn't the official name for a large group of swallows, but here is the "show" part (thanks to Exile #2's hasty camerawork out of the car window and Google Photos animation services) - maybe you'll see what I mean:

Day 13.248: First day of 8th Grade

Unlike Exile #4, E5N1's first day of school was in-person (he is going in Mondays and Tuesdays).
Here he is ready to roll:

The day seems to have gone fine - all the strangeness of the times notwithstanding.

Day 13.247: Exile #2's Sunday Column #313

Exile #2 writes...

Tomorrow, E5N1 finally gets his chance to go back to school, so today has been the usual scramble to ensure school supplies are loaded up into his backpack, and that his computer is fully charged. This year of course, we have also been busy packing masks and watching the last few instructional videos from school on how to board and use the buses, and how to enter and move around the school. I’m sure it will all be second nature very soon but today it’s been a round of drills on sanitizing and safety.

E5N1 will be part of a class of around 10 students, with a further 10 tuning in from home. The in-person students will be spread out around the classroom, sitting at single desks with plexiglass screens fixed in front. There will be a gazebo outside where they can go to take mask breaks. It’s so extraordinary, but so have been the efforts of all those involved in getting the school ready. We hope, despite everything, that the year is a good one.

Day 13.246: You can't take the sky from me!

After we finished watching Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist, we chose Firefly for our next family (minus Exile #3) viewing experience. We finished in about two weeks with the final episode on Thursday night followed by the Serenity movie yesterday evening.

Today, after lunch we started a game of the Firefly board game - as expected it got quite intense (not sure why Exile #4 is wearing their hood:

By dinner time we were still playing and wondering what to do about the dinner table looking like this:

So naturally, we brought a table in from the garage and squeezed it into a corner so we could eat like this:

and continue (but not complete) the game after dinner. Maybe we'll finish tomorrow!

Day 13.245: Sometimes when it rains...

...it pours. And sometimes when it pours, there is washing on the line. And sometimes you decide to try to rescue the washing and end up like this:

Day 13.244: Third day of 11th Grade

Exile #4 went into school for the first time in 11th Grade today, although they started classes remotely on Tuesday. Here are the with-and-without-mask looks:

They were running a bit early for the bus this morning, so we had a photo session on the deck and then I headed off to work, but I understand that all went fairly well with all the new protocols.

Day 13.243: East Point Audubon Sanctuary

Our Labor Day morning outing didn't go quite as planned when we were turned back from our first destination by an onslaught of biting insects. This is pretty common for woodland walks at this time of year, but our trail walks this summer have been surprisingly low-bug-count affairs and it had made us rather complacent.

In the end we went to East Point Sanctuary - which was a lovely place to visit on a beautiful sunny late summer morning (not sure about the jellyfish cloud though!):

Day 13.242: Birds at the beach (evening edition)

Some of what we saw on our walk on Friday evening were the usual suspects (although it seems a shame to refer to an osprey as if it is a humdrum sight, here with a cormorant and a family group of gulls:

It's always a surprise to see non-coastal birds at the water's edge. Previously crows have surprised us - this time some mallards:

but the most interesting (to me) were these birds seen swooping acrobatically overhead. There were quite a few of them and we suspected that the white patches on the wing would make them identifiable even if my photos (of fast moving birds in low light) were not that great. We were correct on all accounts! They are - appropriately enough - common nighthawks.