Vol. 1, no. 40 Tuesday, December 3, 1996
Quick jumps: | This week's reports | Downeast Birdline -- discontinuation announcement | Meeting of new group: Greater Portland Naturalists Forum | Publication announcement: Biological Diversity in Maine: An Assessment of Status and Trends in the Terrestrial and Freshwater Landscape |
You are invited to participate. Your reports are always welcomed!
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
Tuesday, November 26. E. Orland (Map 23) The snow and sleet added up to about an inch overnight. This hard cover of the plants by the ice, snow, and water may be responsible for about a dozen goldfinches that found their ways to our feeders all morning. The entire daytime was rainy, even with temps down to 27 degrees. W.D.
Friday, November 29. E. Orland (Map 23) Toddy Pond near the dam: A 5-degree night brought the fall's first complete ice-over on this end of the pond. It thawed slowly at the center today. The upstream, wider portion was not frozen. This is the reverse of many midwinter weeks when our narrows, which is just before the dam, is thawed and the remainder well-frozen. The wind appears to have been approximately out of the NW, that is, from the direction of the dam and headed toward the larger expanse of water. This then would mimic a summer situation where the water is much colder to swim in when the wind is out of the NW, regardless of air temperature and wind speed. In either summer or winter, I think that the NW wind driving upstream (toward the SE) and away from these narrows carries the warmer, top water. W.D.
Saturday, November 30. E. Orland (Map 23) Toddy Pond near the dam: Waking this still morning with a temperature of 7 degrees and with the sun just coming over the trees at the other end of the pond, we saw a dense, mile-wide, beautifully-colored-in-grays-and-blues fog bank in an otherwise clear sky and horizon. The mile plus of the pond to the SE is still open water. Its moisture apparently provided this large, still bank; it grew in height but became less dense and defined within an hour. W.D.
Sunday, December 1. E. Orland (Map 23) Toddy Pond near the dam: Most of the Pond's ice melted back today. By 3 p.m., there is only about an acre of inch and a half thick ice left downwind, at Route. 1. Adding evidence to what I noted about warm surface water on November 29, the ice here is being hit by a brisk southerly wind. It is not sloshing out of the pond. Rather, it is melting back at the rate of about 100' per hour. I conjecture that it would require warm top water lapping at it to melt this fast and that just the wind with the coolness of the water that had been under the ice wouldn't have melted it this quickly. The wind appears to circulate the water in the Pond; whether this is horizontal and/or vertical remains a guess to me. W.D.
Monday, December 2. T5 R8 WELS (Map 51) On a walk in the woods in T5R8WELS I saw tracks of moose, deer, Coyote, Fisher, Snowshoe Hare, mice of the genus Peromyscus (White-footed or deer mice), voles (most likely Boreal Redback Vole), shrews (most likely masked shrews), and a weasel (Tracks looked large, likely long-tailed weasel). I saw 2 Ruffed Grouse and 2 moose. J.K.M.
Downeast Birdline has ceased -- discontinuation announcement
Downeast Birdline -- transcript of current telephone message
Return to top of this page.