Day 19.169: Exile #2's Sunday Column #557

Exile #2 writes...

Norway turned out to be a fun little town, with a surprising number of artists’ studios on its Main Street, plus a number of nice cafes and restaurants. One was called Pizza XChange and something about the vibe of the town, or maybe because it was on the same block as the town’s cooperative market, it had us wondering what might be considered an acceptable exchange for pizza.

This building, however, intrigued us the most. The US is home to many societies: Freemasons, Shriners, Elks, Odd-fellows and more, I’m sure, but we’d never come across a Weary Club before. I couldn’t help wondering if their membership had increased lately...

Weary Club of Norway, Maine

Day 19.103: Pine siskin

Last year, we bought a BirdWeather PUC and installed it on our deck to listen to and identify the birds it hears. It uses the same technology as the Merlin App. One of the birds it heard was the pine siskin, but although we looked among the winter-plumage goldfinches for a siskin imposter, we never saw one through the year.

I did manage to see (and photograph) a Eurasian siskin during our UK trip in March.

For a variety of reasons, the PUC was decommissioned for a while but we recently got it going again. And, once again, it was regularly identifying pine siskin calls. Today, our persistence paid off and - as we suspected - there among the American goldfinches was one of their streaky cousins.

On the life-list it goes.

The Latin name of the Eurasian siskin is Spinus spinus and the pine siskin's is Spinus pinus. I see what they did there. It's probably for the best if you pronounce it with a long-i like "pine" though.

Day 19.097: No Smokin’

Spotted at the airport on our recent trip back from the UK:

Day 19.092: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #549

Exile #2 writes...

It’s been a fun having E5N1 around for the weekend. We got to spend a little extra time with him today and finish up his birthday leftovers.

It was also nice to go back to the high school yesterday and see a few old friends. The show was the musical version of 9 to 5 and, as ever, it was performed to a very high standard. For once, however, they had decided not to edit at all for language or content. This meant the Dad behind us had quite a busy time of it answering his children’s questions, my favorite being “Dad, what is blackmail?” 

Day 19.067: Ring...billed?

I took my camera when I went back to work after lunch yesterday and stopped to look at the small pond near my work which had - for the first time in a while - some ice-free water and as a result some ducks.

Most interesting was this one:

Immediately recognizable - thanks to the ring around its bill as a ring-necked duck. They do actually have a subtle ring around their neck when they straighten it out, but I've never observed it.

First sighting of this species for me this year.

Today, the pond is ice-covered again after a chilly night and all the ducks have gone somewhere else.

Day 19.048: It’s sugar of course

…but I wasn’t the only one who wondered for a moment what was in this bag of “Florida Crystals”. 

Day 19.033: Cemetery sights

A few more things that caught my eye and my camera lens at the cemetery on Sunday.

There's a river under that snow and ice somewhere

The dying light

Marcescent linden bracts and fruit

I would not have predicted that I'd be using the phrase "marcescent linden bracts"

Day 19.024: Cryptic

Dramatic unopened pine cones confused a hundred. (6)

There weren't a hundred of us, but we were a little puzzled by these half-open cones in this pitch pine on Saturday afternoon. If you solve the clue let me know!

Day 18.337: A cappella nella cattedrale

This evening we met some friends for dinner in Portland and then walked down the street to St Luke’s Cathedral for the Christmas concert by Renaissance Voices. It was a lovely evening. 

Day 18.301: Return of RBNU

The Institute for Bird Populations assigns four letter codes to each bird species based on their English names. Our naturalist friend J jokes that he is fluent in only two languages, English and these bird codes. From him we learned first ROPI for rock pigeon and then various other codes for birds we see fairly regularly. These codes are fairly commonly used by North American birdwatchers - primarily for easy data-entry using eBird. As far as I know they are much less known and used (if at all) in other places.

Today marks the first day of our second weekend of counting birds for Project FeederWatch for this season and we've been very happy to see a lot of one (possibly more than one) red-breasted nuthatch (or RBNU) visiting our feeders through the daylight hours. We used to see them fairly regularly, but much less so recently. In fact, they didn't make it onto our FeederWatch counts at all in the 24-25 or 23-24 seasons.  

Red breasted nuthatch [a.k.a. RBNU or Sitta canadensis] (R) with black-capped chickadee (L) for a convenient size-comparison 

Day 18.300: Profanity not intended

Exile #2, Exile #3 and I have been watching the Great British Sewing Bee which we’ve been thoroughly enjoying. The subtitles have been - to say the least bemusing. From weird errors like “sowing” instead of “sewing” - it’s literally the name of the show, to inventing words - “pintux” instead of “pin tucks”, to this amazing moment. The judges were coming in to judge the transformation challenge and Esme Young made a small exclamation, “I say!”

This is how it played out with the subtitles:

Close enough. 

Day 18.257: Philip be doing what?

We saw this commemorative plaque on a bench in the West Quoddy Head park. We hoped that in life Mr Hoppin leaned into both his last name and his middle initial. 

Always be hoppin’

Day 18.234: More easternmost

There are lots of places in this area labeled "the easternmost", today we saw the easternmost gift store. I sent this picture to Exile #3 and let her know it was the easternmost picnic table in the US.

It's not so labeled, but I am pretty confident due to this context:

It's beside West Quoddy Head Lighthouse which is - all but a few rocks offshore - at the actual easternmost point*. We wondered at why with all its eastern superlatives, it's called "West" Quoddy Head - the reason is a lighthouse across the channel on Campobello Island (across the Canadian border) which is called East Quoddy Lighthouse.

We had been talking about visiting it for some time as it is the last of the lighthouses on a painting in our living room that we had yet to visit. Now we have seen the whole set with our own eyes.

We also walked the trails in the state park here and visited several other places today and saw many things - altogether too many to write about tonight. Here is one more picture of the lighthouse from off on the trails in the woods south of the point.

* I am aware of, and ignoring, the technical exception of any possible picnic tables etc. on Semisopochnoi in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands.

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 18.209: What’s in a name?

This visitor our new deck door bug screen has the wonderful common name American carrion beetle:

But its Latin name is Necrophila americana which is much worse. 

Day 18.205: Kennebunk Plains insects

Here are some interesting insect sightings (try saying that three times fast) from our visit to Kennebunk Plains on Saturday. 

False bee killer (I'm not sure why they are called "false" as they actually do kill bees)

Eastern cicada-killer wasp - check out those front legs retracted (possibly in case something comes out of that hole?)

Carolina grasshopper - many of these were dry earth colored and nearly invisible when they landed...

...but some were a rich brown - almost an exact match for the odd dead leaf  that was also around

This small plant yielded this collection of aphids with some ants feeding on the honeydew...

...and this. The insect that made these trails has the wonderful and descriptive name:
aspen serpentine leafminer moth

Common wood nymph

Spongy oak apple gall wasp (I assume it's the oak apple gall that's spongy rather than the wasp)

Day 18.204: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #533

Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels

Exile #2 writes…

There have been a number of sightings lately of great white sharks. Those with trackers can been observed moving all over the Atlantic during the course of the year but they are attracted by shoals of fish and seals, so it’s not surprising some of them come close to shore sometimes.

Many beaches have flags that can be flown, if necessary, and local fisherman help keep an eye out for any that are around. One of our local news sites ran an article today about their presence and what that said about the health of Maine waters but I was amused by this sentence:

White sharks have always been here. They predate colonization by Europeans.

They do what?! Oh, wait, you mean predate...

Day 18.190: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #531

Exile #2 writes…

We recruited Exile #4 and headed for the hills to do one of our favorite hikes. Although we would often complete a full circuit of the mountain before climbing to the top, we decided to beat the heat and humidity and take a more direct route. It was a good decision as, even though the top of the hill is fairly open, it was also pleasantly breezy.

We saw so many things and had fun challenging ourselves with the tree identification quiz boards that were dotted around. I also enjoyed this quote (John Greenleaf  Whittier Margaret Smith's Journal, 1889), embedded in a viewing platform:

Although I did incorrectly punctuate it at first. It turns out that Agamenticus is not a

Fair stately hill rising up, as it were, from the water

But in slightly archaic language, a

Fair stately hill rising up, as it were from the water

The first one still makes me smile though.