Day 13.295: Halloween (pandemic edition)

Not the Halloween we ordered!

Our neighborhood is usually teeming with trick-or-treaters, it's not unusual for us to see 200 kids, sometimes 300. Tonight it was very quiet in the street:

We joined most of the neighbors in not attempting any kind of trick-or-treating activities.

E5N1 was supposed to be at a small outdoor party with two of his friends, but thanks to him being a close-contact of a confirmed case at his school, he is quarantined (since Thursday evening). Instead he dressed up in the costume he chose (and Exile #2 constructed) based on a mispronunciation - a pearodactyl (and his friends visited through the screen door to say hi:

Later, Exile #4 showed off their crafting and make-up skills with an appearance as another of  the Sanders Sides (last year was Roman, this year, Janus in a couple of different outfits):

Final count of trick-or-treaters: 0 - unless you count E5N1's demands for candy.

Day 13.294: At (and around) the bird feeder

It's been busy over the last few days:

Exile #2 took some of the pictures

Day 13.293: Limerick Tank 4

We spotted this on our walk - and this post became inevitable.

There once was a firehouse truck

Whose back-end was right out of luck

They removed the old pumper

And fitted a dumper

The result of this change didn't suck

Day 13.292: Fall walk

Some more pictures from our Sunday morning walk (to the shaggy ink caps and back!). Pictures are on the Eastern Trail by Thornton Academy and at the nearby railroad crossing.

What a beautiful morning it was.

Day 13.291: Last day before Halloween

...not in the traditional calendar-sense of course - but then we've never been bound by traditional calendar interpretations here.

Today was, however, the last in-person school day for E5N1 before Halloween and he took the opportunity to donate a dollar to go dressed like this:

It's not his actual Halloween costume - that is still in the works, but this loan from Exile #3 was deemed an acceptable alternative.

Day 13.290: Shaggy ink caps (season 4)

On Saturday night, as we were contemplating a Sunday morning walk before online church, I remembered that since it was just before Halloween, it was the right time to go in search of the shaggy ink caps on the Eastern Trail. I first spotted them three years ago and then have gone back to find them in each of the intervening years around this time.

At first, despite being several days earlier in the year, I thought we were too late when I found these all-inked-out ones:

But there was one late-bloomer still standing proud, so we'll call it a success:

Day 13.289: Exile #2's Sunday Column #319

Exile #2 writes...

Despite the more pressing issues at hand, the last six months have been somewhat dominated by the fact we live in a swing state. I couldn’t possibly estimate the number of phone calls we‘ve ignored. It’s been harder to ignore the tidal wave of targeted advertising online, or the doorstep visitors but on the whole we’ve been sending them away happy. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing has been the daily flotsam of attack ads arriving in the mail. I started saving them a week or so ago and they’ve become an impressive stack.

My favorite piece was a personal voting record review that Exile #1, Exile #3 and I received. We were evidently found wanting and given a “needs improvement” status.

Little do they know!

Day 13.288: More yardwork

Saturday morning was another family yardwork session. Exile #2 vacuumed acorns, E5N1 did some raking and I pushed the mower around and emptied bag after bag of shredded leaves and the odd bit of vigorous grass, then Exile #2 and Exile #4 went to take another couple of bags of acorns to the transfer station.

It was all pretty satisfying and will be until the next big fall of leaves comes - and come it will!

Day 13.287: Just passing through?

For a few days this week, bluebirds (including but maybe not just these two females) were fighting over the food on our feeder:

We haven't seen them for a couple of days, we think they may have been passing through on their southerly migration - hopefully we gave them some good fuel for the journey.

Day 13.286: Wildlife at Fuller Farm

This is some of what we saw in terms of wildlife at Fuller Farm. Several chipmunks including this one that was kind enough to pose in a low branch. We also saw one cross a stream Mission Impossible-style.

The bottom two pictures are my best photo and my most diagnostic photo of a yellow-rumped warbler.

The top right photo is the best of a series of not-very-good photos of two distant birds. Identifying them from their speckles, brown wings and black mask has been quite hard. Best guess right now is that they might be European starlings.

Day 13.285: Fall at Fuller Farm

As Exile #2 mentioned, the two of us had a very nice walk at Fuller Farm on Sunday afternoon.

We found a new loop we knew existed but had somehow never found. We saw a few birds  - but as usual, I'll attempt to identify them and post them another day - probably tomorrow.

Day 13.284: A never-ending story?

Remember that nicely raked yard? This was the view as I was leaving (no pun intended) for work this morning:

Before lunch, Exile #2 raked again but the leaves kept falling. This particular tree is looking quite bare now so this part of the story (at least) must come to an end soon.

Day 13.283: After the storm (and the gig)

Saturday morning was windy and rainy, but we were happy that it cleared up for Fall Into Art in the afternoon. All that left us with a lot of downed leaves on Sunday morning, so E5N1 and I went out to tackle them (at least at the front where our maple tree has been an early donor).

It's quite satisfying - briefly at least - but of course, the leaves soon started falling again!

Day 13.282: Exile #2's Sunday Column #318

Exile #2 writes...

Exile #1 and I headed out this afternoon to enjoy the beautiful fall weather. It wasn’t a major hike - yesterday’s musical efforts left us feeling a wee bit tired - but it was a very enjoyable ramble around Fuller Farm, one of our favorite all season trails. There was still some lovely color in the trees, a perfect Maine blue sky, enough water in the stream to make the waterfall worthy of the name, and the fresh smell of balsam fir in the air.

I was struck by how tall a certain stand of aspen trees had grown. I was sure it had seemed more like an area of scrub in the past but then our first visit was 5 years ago, so they’ve had time to grow quite a bit. They’re not the only ones.

Picture of E5N1 on our first visit in August 2015

Day 13.281: Fall Into Art (Pandemic edition)

Fall Into Art went ahead today - albeit quite a different event from last year. We were the second of two musical acts followed by a dozen or so dance numbers by seven or eight different local troupes and studios. However, the whole event was outdoors - with dancers dancing in the parking lot and beyond - and masks were ubiquitous. Of course, the other big change for us was that Exile #3 is no longer dancing with her youth company (who did a great job without her!)

So nice to gather with people (to some extent anyway) and enjoy some performing arts together.

Day 13.280: A good sport

We don't have a lot of sports team regalia in the house - so the "support your favorite team" parts of spirit weeks (in this case a month-long spirit week at school) are always a challenge. However, taking it in their stride, Exile #4 managed to raid Exile #2's closet for this today:

I have mixed feelings.

Day 13.279: From the peak, the only way is down

I heard on the radio this morning that coastal Maine's foliage is considered at or close to "peak" right now. That's certainly believable looking out of our back windows:

They also said that many of these "peaking" leaves will come down over the next couple of days as a storm front comes through bringing heavy rain and strong winds.

And while color-changing leaves brings out the leaf-peepers (in normal years at least), what downed leaves bring out are the rakes. We've already started, but there is a lot more raking to come.

Day 13.278: Birds from the beach

We saw a lot of birds offshore as we walked on the beach - but most of them looked like this:

A few, however, like this cormorant were much closer:

We saw it surface a few minutes after this just as a wave was about to break in the same spot - it took a minute to collect itself after shaking off the results of that, much like I would have done.

Flying above the water is a safer option:

These cormorants were looking a bit shifty as the tide came in and overtook the rock they had chosen to stand on:

We couldn't help thinking that the one who had decided to share this rock with the gulls was looking a bit smug as it glanced in their direction:

Day 13.277: Birds on the beach

Birds seen on the beach on Saturday afternoon - this pink-legged gull (probably a herring gull):

This yellowy-green-legged gull (probably ring-billed):

and these two peeps that we didn't see until we were very close to them. Probably semipalmated sandpipers:

We also saw some birds from the beach but I'll save those for another day 

Day 13.276: Dangers of lawnmowing

With some grass in need of cutting, a reasonable number of maple leaves to collect and a lot of pine needles lying around, I decided to put the bag on the mower and run it around for one last cut for the season (it may or may not prove to be the last of course).

At some point I saw a leaf blowing and then realized it was not moving quite like a leaf. That's because it was a wood frog:

It escaped safely from the mower - probably - appropriately enough - into the woods.