Day 18.232: Saturday morning nature

Here are some of the things that caught our eye yesterday morning (apart from the birds).

Firstly, at the beach:

The sand was mostly covered with a deep band of seaweed - the results of the turmoil of Hurricane Erin's passing-by out in the Gulf of Maine last week

Some of it was coastal weed, but there were several kinds of kelp from much deeper waters

Someone spotted this sponge nestled in the weed

And then, as we returned through the new Fletcher's Neck Sanctuary:

This is called common sunburst lichen

Do you see the pea pods in this photo? We didn't notice them until we found out that the plant is partridge pea and then we realized how many there were.

This fungus reminded me of shaggy inkcap but I remembered that that is usually peaking nearer the end of October than the end of August. This was our best sighting of those ones.
This one is hare's foot inkcap.

We were able to see it in various stages of its development

Here are some after they've done their inky dissolving trick - a process I learned today is called deliquescence

Day 18.231: Saturday birding

Our nature group visited two nature preserves and a beach that we had never visited - despite being very close to places we've been many times. Our circuit started at Great Pond in Biddeford Pool, but then ventured through South Point Preserve, onto the beach and then back via the new Fletcher's Neck Sanctuary. Here are some of the birds we saw:

American black duck on Great Pond

Song sparrow

Killdeer

Mystery sparrow - yellow eye spot suggests white-throated, but streakiness is unexpected

Sleepy common eiders

American oystercatcher fly-by

Surf scoter

Laughing gull

We had some good size-comparison opportunities. Here we have a young great black-backed gull (center) with two young herring gulls and two adult ring-billed gulls

Common tern

This lone Bonaparte's gull was doing some very acrobatic flying among the other gulls

We got some nice views

And then it landed (is it called landed if it's not on land?!) for a while

Young common tern in the weed

Sanderling

Semipalmated sandpiper

Semipalmated plover

Semipalmated sandpiper

Ring-billed gulls

Another exciting spot was this Forster's tern. It was the second time I'd seen one in Maine (this was the first - perhaps even more surprising). I've also seen them in Florida.

house finches

Young ones still begging for food

Northern mockingbird

Greater yellowlegs fly-over

Day 18.230: Move-in

…and just like that, E5N1 is a college student. 

Day 18.229: Off to school

In American English, “school” can also be used for post-secondary educational establishments, so E5N1 will indeed be off to school tomorrow. Here is one of the piles of stuff ready to go with him. 

Day 18.228: Back to school?

It’s time for the school buses to be back on the streets. Google decided I wanted to be reminded of some photos of Exile #4 from this time of year, so here we are. 

As for this year - no back to school for us (at least not this kind). 

Day 18.227: Closer to heaven?

…in once sense at least. The sunflowers outside our church door tower over me - unlike our little against-the-odds survivor. 

Day 18.226: Erin and the causeway

The sea was still looking a bit roiled up with Hurricane Erin’s passing out into the Atlantic when we gathered on Saturday morning. It made for some exciting-looking waves. 

Our friends who live on one of the islands in Casco Bay tell us that the islands only accessible by ferry have a very different feel from the ones with road bridges. The small island near Hill’s Beach - Basket Island - is somewhere in between. It is accessed by a sand-bar causeway around low tide. We saw a vehicle making the trip while we were birding.

 

I’m not sure how I would feel about it myself. 

Day 18.225: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #536

Exile #2 writes...

After the danger of frost was past (which on average here in Maine isn’t until the middle of May!) I planted some sunflower seedlings that I’d started off indoors. A few of them went into the beds around our patio and one leftover one ended up in the fairly unpromising area of gritty soil next to the grill.

Inevitably, the ones in the garden beds didn’t even make it through the night thanks, presumably, to our local wildlife. The one in the grit, however, survived and has continued to grow to quite a height. All I can think is that our animal visitors couldn’t believe that anything could possibly grow in such a scrubby bit of ground and so they didn’t even bother to look. Well, today it flowered - not a big flower, but a flower nevertheless!

Day 18.224: Saturday birding

Our nature group had a morning outing - mostly focused on birds in the Hills Beach area. We walked from the parking area to visit the Park in the Pines and then continued further down Hills Beach Road to get a view out into the bay.

Near the parking:

Cedar waxwing

Great egret and herring gulls on the beach side

At Park in the Pines:

Semipalmated plover

Willets

Black-bellied plovers

Double-crested cormorants

American goldfinch

Young Cooper's hawk

Short-billed dowitchers

Short-billed dowitcher

Size comparisons: semipalmated sandpipers (left and right), semipalmated plover center, two black-bellied plovers

Whimbrels (distant)

Whimbrels (in flight)

Semipalmated sandpipers

Semipalmated sandpiper

At the bay overlook:

Common tern

American oystercatchers

Great blue heron

Laughing gull

Semipalmated plovers

Walking back:

White-breasted nuthatch. This bird was incredibly close to us and stayed still for a long time. It may have been spooked by...

...young Cooper's hawk. There were two birds hunting (fairly inexpertly) along the road (maybe siblings from this year's breeding season)