Please e-mail
Frank Wihbey, Editor: menature@maine.maine.edu
Vol. 2, no. 43, Tuesday, October 28, 1997
Quick jumps: | This week's reports | Prior weekly Nature reports | Prior Black fly reports |
You are invited to report on any aspect of Nature in Maine
Please e-mail
Frank Wihbey, Editor: menature@maine.maine.edu
This week's reports
Report format = Day, date, [time]. Location (Maine Atlas Map number) Report text. Initials of correspondent.
Thursday, October 23. E. Orland (Map 23) Craig Brook
National Fish Hatchery. I saw our first flock of American tree sparrows, along with some
song sparrows, and common grackles visited the feeder. Great blue herons are still
skulking about the display pool. Juvenile alewives are still returning to sea from the
upper reaches of their spawning grounds, and thousands have become trapped by beaver dams
and low water between Toddy Pond and Alamoosook Lake.
We had our first frost here on Alamoosook Tuesday night (Oct. 21). C.P.D
Sunday, October 26. E. Orland (Map 23) Craig Brook
National Fish Hatchery. The Fish Warden has been sending water surges through the Toddy
Pond dam to flush the alewives out of the stream. Hooray! What good is improved passage
upstream for adults, if the young can't get downstream?
Awoke this morning to robin song in the rain -- they must have been confused! C.P.D
Sunday, October 26. Holden (Map 23) 10 Common Mergansers (a kind of fish-eating duck) chased Banded Killifish in the cove at Fields Pond, near Maine Audubon's new Nature Center. (Mergansers are incredibly fast underwater swimmers, and so are killifish!) J.K.M.
Sunday, October 26. E. Orland (Map 23) Toddy Pond near the dam. We canoed to the north side of Great Pond Mtn., to Hot Hole Pond, to take a look at logging operations near there. Unexpectedly, immediately after Dead River, Hell Bottom Swamp's stream was iced over. Canoeing upstream like a noisy icebreaker, through water stilled by successive beaver dams, we pierced the ice with our paddles and pried hard to keep up momentum. By the time we reached the last of the ice at the top beaver dam, the ice had thickened so that our paddles sometimes bounced off. An hour and a half of sun later, and having already broken a passage, the way downstream was smooth. A blue heron accompanied us the entire return trip downstream, leaping ahead a few rods to fish. (We saw only a little incautious logging: like that of a logging road made right through the Dead River, or a nearby logging yard left partially in bare, exposed soil, or a few unharvested trees with trunk damage from current work). W.D.
Sunday, October 26. Tremont (Map 16) Bernard Mountain.
Although the mountainside was clearly in its late fall aspect, and the temperature was in
the forty's, the sunlight and calm air seemed to encourage some signs of life.
Grasshoppers, houseflies, a yellow jacket and insects that looked like large sand flies
(about 1/2" in length) were in evidence.
Ravens soared over the slopes. I observed three birds feeding in the grasses among the
stones on the ground, not very wary of my slow approach. They looked like a large species
of sparrow, mainly cocoa brown, with black and white alternating stripes on their wing
tips and tail feathers, faint striping of white on their backs, and a narrow white ring
around their eyes. Their call (or song?) was something like "pibbit-bzzzz." I
guessed they were field sparrows, but neither the vocalization nor the range listed in the
Audubon guide seemed to match them (or they are much farther North than is usual.) F.W.
Monday, October 27. E. Orland (Map 23) Toddy Pond near the dam. It's been several days since we have seen the loon parent and adolescent here. Perhaps this rain storm's turbulent effect at the coast sent the young loon back to our calmer lake. It is fishing here this morning. (We have yet to hear of Tuft's Veterinary School's autopsy of our other loon parent.) Leaves are mostly gone, though we still have delicate strokes of subtle color highlighting winter twig and branch patterns. Larch needles began to fade to chartreuse, finally, this last week. W.D.
Tuesday, October 28. South Sangerville (Map 34) About 2 inches [of snow yesterday] most of which is gone. I do not remember a storm of such intensity at this early date before. Mostly sleet and freezing rain. L.C.
Tuesday, October 28. Presque Isle (Map 65) According to the weather folks in Caribou, 8.3" this time but it is still snowing here this morning (though not accumulating since the temps have risen a bit and it is wet underneath). We've had snow showers over the last couple of weeks that lasted into the next morning but nothing that had to be plowed until now. My earliest recollection of snow that stuck was about 5-6 years ago on September 29th (remember the date since it was my oldest daughter's birthday) and she was amazing someone who called with details) - it piled up fast that night and was still around the next day but eventually melted away. V.F.