Maine Nature News
Vol. 11, no. 2 Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Quick jumps: This week's report | Editor's Column | From the Press | Home page
Monday, January 2. Caribou (Map 65) Early in the afternoon, the bird feeders in our backyard were being swarmed by redpolls, pine siskins, goldfinches, and mourning doves. Then as we watched, a northern shrike suddenly appeared in the evergreens and seemed to be searching for a thorn or sharp twig on which to impale a dead siskin in its beak. At that moment every single one of the birds at the feeders vanished and didn't return for the rest of the afternoon. C.B.K.
Wednesday, January 4. Buckfield (Map 11) This Porcupine Tree (an old Sugar Maple) stands at the margin of a large fen (Jersey Bog) and our woods. We've lived here 22 years, and porcupines have lived in this tree at least that long. Some years, two at once are sunning in the high branches (this one is on the lowest branch, maybe 30 feet high). The large hole in the tree is full of droppings, and a well-trod path leads off in each direction along the edge of the bog. When there's fresh snow, the trail reflects their waddle, with the distinctive feathery trace of the porkie's tail in "S" waves, between the footprints on each side. We never see them in the tree in the summer time. But when one is sunning in the winter, it will usually give me The Look, as this one is, before turning back to gaze across the bog, unconcerned with me (and my dog) tromping around beneath its feet. G.R.
Sunday, January 8.
Jackman (Map 40) I used to get excited every time I
saw a robin in the middle of winter, but I guess they are quite a regular sight
down here in the Scarborough/Old Orchard Beach area. Last year I would see small
flocks of them every once in a while, picking off the winter berries or dried-up
ornamental crabapples off of the tress around the schools and libraries,
etc. But I have since learned not to tell everyone I know, that, "I
just saw robins!"
This morning, there was a flock of 25-30 robins outside my
door! I guess they find enough to eat, because they sure aren't motivated
to migrate! I s this new, or has it always been this way? E.A.C.
A new page, Maine Nature News Meteor
Showers Calendar 2006, is available. (It's just a little late this
year.)
You might ask: "A whole calendar of them? I
thought they only appeared in August." As you'll see in the calendar
table there are meteor events almost all year. Three good reasons to watch
meteors:
It's fun!
You will be able to correct people who confuse comets (move slowly day to day in the sky) with meteors (fast)!
Maybe get a direct sense of the motion of Earth!
A word about the last reason.
There are very few opportunities for us Earthbound people to experience that we
are on "Spaceship Earth" moving through space. Every meteor you
see represents an encounter of the moving Earth with a tiny body also moving in
space. You might get a nice cosmic thrill!
Meteors are a phenomenon of Nature. And when you see them,
they really are traveling over Maine, about 50 or 60 miles up in the air over
us. If you have a good experience, send in a report .
Thank you,
Frank Wihbey
Editor and founder, Maine Nature News
menature@maine.edu
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - The Gulf of Maine is the home to more than 3,300 marine species, or roughly 1,300 more than scientists thought less than a decade ago, according to a new study.
The Gulf of Maine Register of Marine Species, a census of marine life across the body of water that stretches from southern New England to Nova Scotia, lists 3,317 marine species. The study, released this week, identifies 733 microscopic plants, 652 kinds of fish, 184 bird species, 32 species of mammals and 14 types of deepwater coral. The overall count is 65 per cent higher than previous estimates. The species range from microscopic algae to whales living in waters from intertidal zones to the deep sea.
The census, which was compiled by researchers from Canada and the University of Southern Maine, aims to document the biodiversity of the Gulf of Maine to better understand the effects of environmental change. Scientists will use the census to conduct studies on how species interact and gauge changes that are occurring from climate change or other events.
"We regard this as a step toward being able to manage the Gulf of Maine on an ecosystem basis. Each increment of knowledge will enable policy makers to make better decisions," said Evan Richert, director of the USM's Gulf of Maine Area Program.
The grant-funded census is a collaboration between USM and the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in New Brunswick. It is part of the international Census of Marine Life, which has brought together researchers from 70 countries to study ocean life. Curators at the marine science center dug through research dating back 100 years to compile the list of species.
Scientists as recently as six years ago thought there were around 2,000 species in the Gulf of Maine, said Lewis Incze, senior scientist with the gulf program. The number is likely to increase as the research continues. "These include small worms and other organisms living in the soft sediments that cover much of the sea floor and microscopic bacteria and viruses that live throughout the ecosystem," he said. "While most are invisible to the human eye, they are collectively major players in the web of ocean life."
The Gulf of Maine comprises an area that ranges from subpolar to temperate conditions, meaning shifts in marine life could serve as harbingers of climate change, Incze said. "We're used to assessing impacts on only a part of an ecosystem, like a right whale or deepwater coral, without understanding how the system works as a whole," he said.
©2006 Bangor
Daily News. All rights reserved. Bangor Publishing Company
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner
Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
American folklore tells us to check the forest for certain signs of a harsh winter ahead, one of these being that trees grow more acorns, berries and pine cones than usual if the winter months are going to be brutal ones. What weather prophesies don't explain is what it means if there are no - absolutely no - cones on the conifers.
"It's a phenomenon," says a reader from farther Down East who has perused the coastline from Schoodic to Canada and found coneless trees. The pine cones lying on the ground, which Maine wreath makers used for decorations, were from two years ago, he suggests, and the trees themselves are bare of new cones. He asked if I had noticed, after posing the question to many others, including Acadia National Park and University of Maine representatives who, like me, apparently had not.
Since our conversation, however, I have been checking the evergreens in our patch of woods as well as peering out the car window on every winding road, hoping to find bunches of cones in the tops of trees. Where cones normally cling on a towering spruce outside the front door, there is nothing but naked boughs. Cedars show no seeds, nor do our few fir trees.
No doubt, it is cyclical for trees to bear cones as is evidenced from year to year along our Down East coastline abundant with white and red spruce, white cedar and hemlock, tamarack and black spruce. Then we have white, red, pitch and jack pines growing in among the hardwoods. Normally, the astute reader explained, some conifers will be without cones while others will be laden with them.
Not so this year, he theorizes, which may explain why there was a migration of chickadees seen flying from the Schoodic area in late fall - and why there are so few red squirrels scurrying up and down the evergreen trunks this winter. Our lone squirrel exists on sunflower seeds, stale crackers and leftover Christmas cookies. The chickadees are scarce on the bird feeders, and we haven't spotted a finch in months.
The brief telephone conversation regarding the cones and my subsequent search of our woods, for some reason, prompted me to reread Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Country of the Pointed Firs." One particular segment jumped out: "Some premonition of what great power stirred and swayed these young foresters who traversed the solemn woodlands with soft-footed silent care. They stopped to listen to a bird's song; they pressed forward again eagerly, parting the branches, speaking to each other rarely and in whispers."
"It sounds ominous. What does it mean, this lack of cones?" I had asked the caller, who modestly said it was merely his "theory," one he hoped would be falsified. A phenomenon, he repeated. The phenomenon is that so many of us who live in the country of the pointed firs haven't even noticed.
©2006 Bangor
Daily News. All rights reserved. Bangor Publishing Company
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner
Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.