More Moose in the Yard

Moose are more-or-less a way of life up here. While they don't come through the yard every day, it's not an uncommon occurrence.  Here's our most recent encounter- you'll have to forgive me for the cheesy captions.  (Everyone enjoys cheese now and then, don't they?) 

Ron: holy cow- moose!  Moose: holy cow- humans!

Mama: eat your vegetables. Calf: do I have to??

The shortest distance between two points is apparently straight over the dock.

Don't mind us.  Just passing through.  'Scuze us.  Pardon us.

Oh!  Did I get in the way of your duck picture?  Terribly sorry.

What do you mean there's something wrong with my ear?

Really, it adds character, don't you think?

Did you order the duck?  I don't remember ordering the duck...

*giggle*  *whisper whisper*  *giggle*

Hey- I heard that!

Every now and then, it strikes me how very lucky I am.  I'm currently sitting on my deck listening to loons call back and forth between Island Pond and Pushineer while posting photos of moose walking across that same deck last week. I hope you enjoy them- kudos to Suzanne for getting the first half.

Absent Again, but Back with Amusing News

This just in from Saro, Sweden: a moose was found stuck in an apple tree, apparently drunk from eating fermented apples.  CNN has the whole story.

Once rescuers freed the moose from the tree, the moose laid right down to sleep off his bender for the rest of the night and most of the next day.  I can only imagine what a moose-sized hangover must feel like.

Growing up Goldeneye

Once again this summer, time has slipped away from me.  Is it because I'm growing older, or is it true that time flies when you're doing something you love?

At any rate, there hasn't been an awful lot interesting going on in our neck of the woods.  The Togue renovations continue; we replaced all of the cabin's interior doors with newly-built doors this weekend.  I've done a couple of little landscaping things that I've been needing to do all summer.  Other than that, though, it's been quiet as we gear up for a big few days this coming week.  (We're feeding 36 on Tuesday and 27 on Wednesday!  For us, that's pretty intense.)

So what better way to apologize for my long absence than by posting pictures?  We're lucky enough to replace television with reality up here, so we've been watching the docu-drama "Growing up Goldeneye" all summer.  In this week's episode, the Gang of Four has left the nest, and we haven't seen mama around for at least a week or so.  (Apologies to all of our Facebook fans who have seen these photos already!)

And just to recap where the Goldeneyes started, here they were a little under a month ago:

The Neighbors Upstairs...

I've been learning an awful lot about bats over the past couple of weeks.  I have a sneaking suspicion that my attic has turned into a maternal roost this year, and I have to admit that I'm not too excited to have neighbors upstairs.  I'd like to encourage them to leave on good terms, though, for two reasons. The first is simply that bats are pretty darn cool and are incredibly beneficial to the ecosystem.  The second is more serious- little brown bats may soon be added to the Federal endangered species list due to concern about white-nose syndrome, a fungus which has killed over a million bats in the eastern United States over the past four or five years.  (White-nose syndrome was confirmed in Maine earlier this year; previously, the state appeared to be fending it off better than other New England states.)  The little guys need as much help as they can get.

So I did a little research and purchased a bat house from the Organization for Bat Conservation. The house is basically a box that's open on the bottom and has two baffles inside to create three vertical nesting chambers.  This particular house claims to handle 300 bats, which is hopefully enough.  (BCI also makes a 500-bat version, which we may look at next year.)  They're pretty easy to make, but with all of the activity we have going on this year, I figured it would be easier to purchase a finished house instead.

Once we stain it a dark walnut or black (to keep things warm the weather turns cold), we'll mount it on the south-facing wall of the workshop.  Then comes the fun part: we somehow have to convince the bats to move out of our house and into their house.  That's when we add some caulk, PVC pipe, duct tape, and clear plastic to the equation.

Getting bats to move out of your house is (apparently) most easily done by excluding them from the house altogether. That means sealing off any entrance bats could use.  That means sealing off any hole or crack greater than 3/8ths of an inch. Bring on the caulk.

Unfortunately, if you seal off every entrance point, you'll probably seal some bats in instead of out.  Cue the PVC, duct tape, and plastic.  Bats initiate flight by dropping from a height and swooping.  When they come home to roost, they swoop below the opening and crawl inside.  What we need, then, is a one-way door that they can swoop out of but can't crawl back into.  (A bat check-valve, if you would.)  A PVC elbow plus a short length of pipe aimed downward works great for this because bats can drop from it as they're used to, but it's slick enough that they can't find any purchase for crawling back inside again.  Extending the PVC with a tube of clear plastic makes the door even more effective.

So that's my bat story for today.  It'll be interesting to see how all of this research actually works in practice.  I do know that it's nearly impossible to seal all of the cracks in a house in the woods, so hopefully the bat house is enticing!

More bat information can be found at Bat Conservation International.

It's Just a Duckling Time of Year

I had another post written for today, but I'm in the mood to post some duckling pictures instead.  (They grow up so fast.  Other news can wait.)

Here's our resident mallard, which I mistakenly identified as a black duck the other day.  (At least, I think it was a mistake.  The two species interbreed quite a bit, resulting in very dark mallards, but I think these chicks have too much yellow in them to be black duck chicks.  Anyone who knows the species better than I do can feel free to correct me in the comments!)  If you click on the photo, it'll take you to a much larger version, as well.

I also found out today that Pushineer has a mama merganser with four chicks.  I apologize for the bad photo; she was all the way across the pond, and even my amazing new telephoto lens couldn't zoom in that far.

We also had our gang of three loons hanging around the pond today.  I'm not sure where they come from, but we see them around now and then.  They're always three, and we know they're always the same gang because they do a crazy dance wherein they tightly circle each other in a clockwise direction for about ten minutes.  Jack and Lily are nowhere to be found when these three are around.

I guess that's enough duckling and loon news for now! I'll put all these photos up on Red River's Flickr page, along with a few others we've taken recently. Enjoy!

Surprise! Even More Ducklings!

Apparently, Mama Goldeneye isn't the only busy duck on the pond.  One of the black ducks must have been jealous that they made it onto the blog yesterday, because she paraded her nine-duckling brood in front of the lodge this afternoon:

I don't know where these ones came from- there haven't been any black ducks hanging around the pond this year.  These ones must have walked up from Pushineer.  (Hard to believe, but they do it.)  I still think both broods are young for this time of year, though.  This picture was from June a few years ago:

And this was from the first week of July a few years ago:

I don't know if the black duck will raise her ducklings here on Island Pond, or if they're just passing through. With no loon chick this year, though, it's nice to have some ducklings to ooh and aah over, even if it's just for a while.

Ducklings!

Here they are- Mama Goldeneye and her brood:

We're wondering if she lost her first clutch, since these ducklings look awfully small for the second week of July.  The mallards, at least, are usually twice this size by now.  She has had them diving already, though, so I assume she knows what she's doing.

Otherwise, it was a quiet day up here in the woods.  It was so quiet, in fact, that my alter ego actually got a couple of hours of overtime, which takes some of the pressure off the rest of the week.  I rarely get to say that on a Monday- it feels good!

The Hummingbird Whisperer

It seems like everyone is a whisperer of something nowadays.  There are dog whisperers, horse whisperers, ghost whisperers...  I'd like to introduce you to Gloria, our Hummingbird Whisperer.

We have a lot of the little guys this year, and for some reason, the feeder right outside our door is the happening spot in hummingbird world.  Our feeder has ten perches, and it's rare that they're not all taken up, with other birds waiting to get in.  There are typically 20 or 30 hovering around the doorway. It's actually a little dangerous stepping outside sometimes; with no Air Traffic Controller, the birds buzz the tower pretty close.

As a case in point, I filled the feeder at about 6:00 PM this evening (about as full as you see in the picture here).  It's now 8:30, and the feeder is nearly empty.  Strangely enough, we have two other feeders in direct sight of the house feeder, and we only have to fill those once every day or two.

I was up at the top of the hill two nights ago trying to figure out if I was listening to a car drive up the driveway or a boat over on Pushineer.  As I walked down the hill, I realized that it was neither; I was listening to the hummingbirds swarm that one feeder.  The sound has pretty much become a constant in our life when we're in the house.

There are lots of different hobbies in this world.  Some people scrapbook.  Some people fly fish.  We feed hummingbirds.

@Hungry_Birds

I don't use Twitter myself. I think our shrinking attention span is a sign that we need to get outside more, not an indication we should stop using more than 140 letters at a time.  But @hungry_birds is just too funny not to share.

A Latvian magazine titled "Ir" also thinks Twitter is for birdbrains, and I mean that in the most literal sense possible.  Ir set up the @hungry_birds Twitter account, smeared a standard computer keyboard (still attached to the computer) with salted bacon fat, and left the rest to history.  In the winter, between about 5AM and 4PM GMT each day, birds flock to their very own internet cafe for a snack and a quick tweet.  (I just love how this post comes with its own built-in puns.  It makes my job so easy!) 

You can see the birds typing their thoughtful messages on Ir's webcam or join over 2,600 people following @hungry_birds on Twitter.  Unfortunately, now that spring is here, Ir has taken down the bacon-covered keyboard, but it wouldn't surprise me if they replaced it with a more summery variant.

Say what you want, but I bet the birds' messages make more sense than some tweets from real people.

Wildlife Cams

A friend posted this link to the Hampton Roads Eagle Cam in Virginia the other day.  It looks like she has three chicks this year, which you can't see in this picture.

It reminded me of some nice cams we have in Maine, as well.  Take a gander at the eagle cam and the peregrine falcon cam at the Biodiversity Research Institute, collaborations between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. BRI also had a loon cam, but it appears that it's not online this year. They did leave up a high-resolution video from 2008 for folks to watch.

Another one I like, not because it's wildlife related but because it keeps the me from getting homesick when I'm away, is the Katahdin Cam. I saw that view every day in the winter when I was growing up and still feel a great sense of place when I look at it. (That reminds me, I need to climb Katahdin again one of these years; it's been too long.)

I've considered putting a webcam of some sort at Camp, but the logistics are a nightmare, so that idea will be at least a few years in the making. Until then, if you know of any other webcams we might enjoy, please leave me a comment.

Managing Maine's Declining Deer Herd

Last Thursday (March 17), the state unveiled its Game Plan for Deer, a road map that will hopefully lead to the stabilization of the declining deer herd in northern, eastern and western Maine.  The plan is broken up into five elements:

1.  Wintering areas and winter severity;
2.  Deer population management;
3.  Predation;
4.  Deer planning and public involvement; and
5.  Information and outreach.

These five elements are intended to address the largest factors causing the decline: severe winters; few, low-quality deer wintering areas; predation; and human influences such as illegal hunting, improper winter feeding, vehicle collisions, etc.  There's a lot of information packed into the document's 40 pages, from outlining each problem to describing what has been done thus far to what needs to be done in the future. For instance, I'll take a look at the first element: Deer Wintering Areas and Winter Severity.

Northern Maine has pretty severe winters, even now, which drastically affects deer populations.  (The report notes that three of the most severe winters in the past 60 years occurred in 2001, 2008, and 2009.)  Deer wintering areas, where the snow is shallower and conifers provide cover, are essential to the survival of the species and once covered 900,000 acres in northern, western, and eastern Maine.  The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife has been conducting surveys of deer wintering areas by both air and ground to determine their current extent.  The Department also conducts "winter severity" surveys, which include snow depths, deer sinking depths, snow characteristics, and temperature.

The report lays out the state's strategies to manage the deer wintering areas, including a set of published management guidelines, zoning by the Land Use Regulation Commission (which, if you'll remember from a previous post, some lawmakers want to abolish), cooperative management agreements, State acquisition of important deer wintering areas, and management programs and workshops.  A few of the specific proposals include:

1.  Ensure adequate wintering area habitat by working with cooperating landowners to implement the Guidelines for Wildlife documents or other management agreements (50% of acreage by 201 and 100% by 2013), and by implementing the Guidelines on all lands owned by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and by the Bureau of Parks and Lands.
2.  Conduct aerial surveys of all lands that have not been surveyed in the past three years where landowners have indicated a desire to cooperatively manage deer; coordinate efforts among private pilots to provide deer observations to the Department; coordinate the Warden Service to report known concentrations of wintering deer; and utilize GIS technology to assist in pulling the information together.
3.  Purchase easements or titles to lands containing deer wintering areas as needed.
4.  Determine which deer concentration areas are simply the result of winter feeding programs, and work with landowners to minimize feeding near roadways or other hazards.

(I'll have to apologize at this point because I haven't had time to write a synopsis of each element of the plan; until I get a chance to, I've provided links to the documents that you can peruse.)

The estimated cost to implement the plan appears to be about $660,000 per year.  Definitely not cheap, but well worth it when you consider that deer hunting alone generated over $200 million in Maine in the late 1990s (page 4 of the Plan).

When it comes down to it, white-tailed deer are at the very northern end of their range up here in Northern Maine.  Anything that upsets the balance is going to have a drastic effect on the population, and we have elements in at least four distinct sectors upsetting that balance.  Even if the plan gets everything right, and even if every plan element is implemented tomorrow, it will take a good amount of time for the population to rebound.

A few other notable documents related to this topic:
The 2007 Resolution to Create an Effective Deer Habitat Enhancement and Coyote Control Program
The 2009 Resolution to Create a Deer Predation Working Group

An Oldie but a Goodie

And now, for your Friday distraction-from-work pleasure, I give you a bear with phenomenal rhythm.

Check out the USGS for more information on the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project out in Montana.

Sorry for the slow posting recently. Life has been full, but not of things related to Camp. (February is always slow in that arena.) Like I said earlier in the week, I'll be taking a little bit of time away from the computer starting tomorrow. I'm really looking forward to my trip to check on Camp; it's always nice to get back to the Real World to recharge the batteries.

Jack and Lily, Part VI

(Also see Parts: I, II, III, IV, and V.)

Right around the end of September, Lily and Emma were in the cove next to the dock.  Lily was teaching Emma to run across the water while flapping her wings furiously: a precursor to flight. (Jack had been absent for several days; I assume he was getting ready to head south.) Lily showed Emma a full takeoff and headed down toward Pushineer.

That was the last we saw of her for over a week.

Nature is pretty cool. With migration-time coming soon, Lily left Emma to learn to sink or swim, if you'll pardon the pun.  Here's Emma on her own.  Notice how big she's gotten!  She'll keep her grayish coloring for two to three years until she fully matures.

Lily did come back for a few days but left again soon after that.  We never did see Emma take off, but we last heard her on October 10 and didn't see her on the pond after that, so she either flew away or walked away. (If you've ever seen a loon walk on land, you know there's a reason they don't, if they can help it!)

I did see her over on Denny Pond on October 16th, so I assume that she did learn to fly and that she's enjoying her winter down on the coast.  She'll probably spend the next few years down there while she matures, but we're looking forward to seeing her again when she comes back home!

Squirrel Control

Living so far out in the woods, we tend to share and share alike with the local wildlife.  Most of the time, it's not a problem.  We do, however, have problems with red squirrels getting into the cabins and stealing our bedding for their own.  We once had the blankets and bedspreads folded up nicely in one of the cabins, and one of the little guys chewed all the way down through the stack.  We ended up with blankets that had eight holes each.  Not amusing.

One of our guests forwarded this to me, though, and I think it might solve our problem.  We'll simply train the squirrels and keep them so busy that they won't have time to go after the bedding! 

I think we're on to something.

Jack and Lily, Part V

(Also see: Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.)

Here's a fun fact that you never thought about before- loons actually make great parents. Just the day after my embarrassing paparazzi episode (that nobody knew about until I shared it with the world), Jack and Lily brought Emma out to eat at the rock pile. I think Jack could just sense my presence at that point, because I again couldn't get near them even from shore. (The rock pile isn't that far from the point behind the Little Cabins.)

The fact that Jack hates me notwithstanding, watching the three of them was pretty neat. Jack and Lily would swim as a unit, sometimes close, sometimes fifteen feet apart, and always with Emma between them:

Sorry for the black-dot photos.  Trust me, the little black dot between the two larger black dots is Emma.  =)

More later!

Jack and Lily, Part IV

(Also see: Part I, Part II, and Part III.)

Before I start, I'll just note that I decided to call the chick Emma.  There's no particular story behind the name, and I don't know if the chick is a boy or a girl, but Emma is what stuck.

Anyway, three days after Emma hatched, I hoped to get a couple of pictures of  "the new family next door."  I paddled out around the left side of the Island, nice and slow, near the shore where I wouldn't be in the way or be a threat.

Jack was having none of that.  He popped up ten feet from my kayak and gave his now-famous "Get off my porch" call.  He dove and came up just on the other side of me.  Dive, call.  Dive, call.  Repeat as necessary.  Lily and Emma made for the other side of the cove.

I know when I'm not wanted, but I also know that I'm stubborn.  As reassuringly as I could (and, of course, without knowing what might actually be reassuring to a loon), I paddled back around to the front of the Island.  Jack seemed satisfied; proud of himself, really.

I kept going around the Island, thinking I'd try to catch up with Lily and Emma in the larger part of the cove (again, where I wouldn't be in the way).  I didn't make it far; I heard a splash right behind my stern.  When I looked back, Jack was diving and crisscrossing in my wake.  The yelling started soon thereafter.

Defeated, I headed back to the dock.  On the way, I had my most brilliant idea of the day.  Since Lily and Emma were in the cove, I'd simply walk the loop around the pond and play paparazzi from the shore.

The first part of the walk was uneventful.  I stopped at the outlet to take a couple of pictures of dragonflies:

 

And then I made my mistake.  I walked over to the water.

(I'll note right now that this story is 100% true.  I am not exaggerating in any way.)  Jack saw me on the shore, and he came right over.  He started sassing me and stuck within about 20 feet of the shore. 

"Crazy loon," I thought, and I headed into the woods where the trail splits from the road.  The trail swings away from the water for a while and then comes back to the shore.  When I got back to the shore, Jack was looking for me.  As soon as he saw me again, he swam to 20 feet in front of where I stood and called.

"Creepy loon," I thought this time, and I kept walking.  Sure enough, Jack kept pace with me.  He stopped calling, but he kept one eye on me the whole time.  (Lily and Emma were, at this point, well out of danger's way on the other side of the cove.)  He followed me all the way around to the back side of the Island.

This is the embarrassing part of the story.  Somehow, I had to outwit a loon.  (There, I said it.)  So when I had the chance, right after a small stand of trees that shielded me from the water, I stopped.  I not only stopped, I ducked down so I was sure he wouldn't see me.  I actually played a deranged game of hide-and-seek with wildlife a tenth my size on the side of a trail in the middle of the woods.  Thank goodness we don't have neighbors.

In my mind, Jack then went from crazy to creepy to downright psychotic.  When he realized that I should have re-emerged from the trees but didn't, he called.  He then went 30 yards down the shore, turned around, came back, and went 30 yards back the way we'd come.  He then did the entire circuit again, down 30 yards, turn around, back up 30 yards, even more slowly, watching the shore the entire time.  Never let it be said that a loon isn't thorough in its investigations.

Satisfied that I'd either given up on the hunt or I'd been eaten by something bigger myself, he left me alone.  I realized this would be just about my only chance of the day to get any pictures, so I ever-so-slowly made my way closer to shore.  Unfortunately, even after half an hour, Lily and Emma never did come back over to where I sat, and this is the best picture I was able to get:

 

(Note that Emma is swimming in this picture.  This is 3 days after hatching, from what we can tell.  The shadow on the right-hand side is me still trying to hide behind a tree.)

All in all, it was a good day with our new neighbors.  More to come later.

Jack and Lily, Part III

(Also see: Part I and Part II.)

By now, you're probably wondering why I keep calling this story "Jack and Lily."  

If you've seen the movie Legend, you know that it's a classically-cheesy Tom Cruise flick from the mid-80's; it's one of my favorite movies to watch around Halloween.  (It also has a great soundtrack.)  Legend starred Mia Sara as a sweet and innocent free-spirited princess named Lily who befriends a sweet and innocent forest-dwelling boy named Jack.  In the usual fashion, Lily and Jack fall in love; Lily inadvertently plunges the world into darkness; Jack saves the world (from Tim Curry, no less); and everyone lives happily ever after. 

Fast-forward to 2010 after the loon chick is born: every time I go near the Island, the male decides that I'm a threat and gives a series of "Hey you kids, get off my porch!" calls.  The female responds with calls that I can only imagine mean, "Who's at the door, dear?" or something similar.  At any rate, they're loon calls that I haven't heard on the pond before, but their pitch and volume are uncannily similar to Lily calling for Jack the first time she visits him in the forest in Legend.

And just like that, our loons have become Jack and Lily.

Here's Jack giving me the evil eye:

 

More still to come.

Jack and Lily, Part II

(Jack and Lily, Part I)

It seems like we waited forever, watching for signs that the loon eggs would hatch.  Being new to baby loons ourselves, none of us knew exactly when that was supposed to happen.  The internet told us that loon chicks usually hatch in mid- to late-June, unless the pair lost their first nest or bred later for some other reason.  The latest date I could find for successful hatches (and subsequent migration in the fall) was early July.

When July came with no sign of a hatch, we started to resign ourselves to the fact that the eggs were no longer viable.  I was bummed- I know that some folks don't like loons because they compete with the fishermen (sometimes literally, but that's another story), but in my opinion, the loons just keep the trout on their toes.  I don't think any of our guests come here with the burning desire to catch fat, lazy fish; they can do that at a fish farm.  Folks come here because it's real.

Stepping off my soapbox and returning to July, though, after the first couple of weeks came and went, we were pretty sure that our hopes of having Island Pond's first loon chicks were dashed.  Lucky for us, we were wrong.

On July 14, exactly one month after I took the picture in Part I of this story, the loon pair started acting crazy and calling in a manner I hadn't heard before, and two of our guests came in off the water after basically being attacked by the male.  That was good enough for me- I grabbed my camera and a kayak, and I went to see what I could see.

Out by the island, the male was calling up a storm and generally making a nuisance of himself.  I didn't get close enough to see the eggs, but the female wasn't on the nest.  I swung back around the Island, and the guests who had been attacked earlier pointed me to where she was swimming over by the shore on the other side of the rock pile.

Thank goodness for a decent zoom lens on my camera, because this is what I didn't quite see with my own eyes:

If you look close, you can see the little black fuzzball riding on mama's back.  Call me sentimental, but it was a good day for Red River.

I'll pick this story up again in a later post.

Jack and Lily, Part I

Alright kids, gather around for story time.  I should have told this one as it was happening, but since I didn't, you get the re-telling now.

It was a sunny day last June, right around the 12th if I remember correctly, that one of our guests came in to tell us that they'd spotted two loon eggs on the back side of Matt's Island.  (Matt's Island, named after my brother when we were both kids, is the little island right behind the big one.)  I thought it was a pretty momentous occasion; we'd never had loons nest or raise young on Island Pond before.

Unfortunately for our loons, though, we'd had a group of youngsters at Camp the weekend before the eggs were spotted.  The kids were a great group, but the best part about being in the woods is that you can make all sorts of noise and commotion without getting into trouble.

We didn't know if the nesting loons were new and inexperienced parents, or if they were old hands.  (By all accounts, loons are easily spooked from their nests- they prefer to nest on lakes with little human activity, which is probably why they've steered away from Island Pond.)  We had no idea if they'd stayed with the eggs through the unexpected ruckus.  If they'd been abandoned, the temperature could have easily dropped low enough for the eggs to lose vitality. 

I paddled around Matt's Island one or twice and saw the eggs but never saw the parents.  I didn't have high hopes for their success, but the only thing to do was watch and wait.

Which is exactly what you'll have to do now, because today's part of Jack and Lily's story is only the introduction.  More to come in future posts.

More bears!

I'm going to caveat this post by saying that I received this slideshow in an e-mail, and I haven't done any research into it at all. I don't know the folks, where the photos were taken, or if they weren't all Photoshopped.

That being said, enjoy!
A Bear's Den

~Jen