Maine Nature News

Vol. 8, no. 28  Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Quick jumps:  | This week's report | Wild Blueberry Report | From the Press | Home page | Editor's Column |

Sunday, June 29.  Isle au Haut (Map 9)  In recent weeks the emergence of fledgling birds has been notable. While on Isle au Haut for a three day camping trip, baby Eider ducks were on the move in rafts with adult females only. These birds were noted along the western shoreline while a hike to the eastern side of the island revealed huge rafts of male Eider ducks. The baby Eider chicks could swim and dive but lacked adult flight feathers. To me they resembled a brown version of a baby chicken. Each was a handful of fluffy brown down with stubby wings that uttered short, soft, high-pitched cheeping sounds
    The protection and rearing of the chicks seemed to be a group effort by the female Eider ducks. I became accustomed to the sound of contented murmuring quacks of the adult females mixed with the peeping chicks. However, occasionally I heard the adult females make a distressed sound that resembled a growl more than a quack. Whenever I heard this distress call I would look up and see the source of the threat to the vulnerable baby chicks. Usually it was a Black Backed Gull that was too close to the ducks but at one time I saw a pair of immature Bald Eagles flying over a raft of ducks. When the Bald Eagles flew low to the surface of the water there was a panicked mass dive as adult females and chicks dove for cover under the water.
    The weather was exceptionally hot that weekend even for an island off the coast of Maine. Finding a place in the shade with a breeze was my daily goal.  The baby birds are everywhere now.  If the Eider ducks weren't foraging the shoreline and dodging predators they were holed out in the rock weed, which camouflaged them perfectly.   M.M.L.

Wednesday, July 9.  Medway (Map 43) While walking with my dog in the interval along the East Branch of the Penobscot River I spied this rather handsome specimen, which I believe is a Virginia Ctenuchid moth on dogbane. On the right is another look, at the moth.  Handsome in his cloak, isn't he?   
    Black flies were nowhere to be seen today.  D.W.

Thursday, July 10.  Caratunk (Map 30) The black flies were not bad this year. There are only a few strays left. Haven't seen any signs of blueberries yet. S.H.

Thursday, July 10. Edgecomb (Map 7) Black flies are gone. There are plenty of deer flies and mosquitoes. And every year seems to bring an increase in the dog tick population -- lots and lots -- they seem to be worst in the spring. Also plenty of deer ticks.
    Had my first blueberry yesterday up on Morse Mountain in Phippsburg. Here in Edgecomb I have yet to see a ripe blueberry. A few are getting a little color. Milk weed is just starting to flower, as is wild parsnip. Hope you are having a good summer. A.G.

Saturday, July 12.  Fort Kent (Map 67) The Black flies are gone for another year, that is the larger swarms are over. There are always some lingering pesky critters.
I have not looked for Blueberries yet. The wild ones come after our raspberries. I did check the raspberries and there is another two weeks before they are ready. In northern Maine, the traditional holiday for blueberries is "August 10". All the local families would head out on that day to pick blueberries. D.R.

Sunday, July 13. Orono (Map 23) Along the Veazie Train Line, I saw these butterflies: Monarch, Viceroy, Great Spangled Fritillary, Northern Crescent, Northern Pearly Eye. Also, wild raspberries were starting to ripen. J.K.M.

Monday, July 14.  Skowhegan (Map 21) We took a walk in the woods Sunday. During the walk I saw 1 black fly, which I killed, so I guess the black flies are done here! We came out on a power line that has blueberries growing along it and saw that the berries have not ripened at all yet. Since this area is sprayed by the power company on an irregular basis, the development of the berries may not be typical. 
    On the walk we heard:  wood thrush and hermit thrush, veery, white-throated sparrows, and ovenbirds -- among others. The thrush population here seems to be in good shape. On a drive on I-95 we saw a lone turkey feeding.  My daughter later saw a hen turkey, with a large brood of chicks at her heel.  Barred owls are calling nightly and Japanese beetles are increasing daily. J.F. 

Monday, July 14.  Lewiston (Map 12) Went for a evening kayak paddle on No Name Pond and heard the wonderful cry of the loon. There were 2 of them, both adults. They would dive for about 40 seconds then surface for about 20 seconds, then take another dive. I watched them do this for close to 15 minutes before going on my way. Also, as sunset approached, what I think were swallows came out in great numbers and were diving to the pond surface to pickup bugs sitting on top of the water. Many different song birds were singing in the trees along the shore. S.Y

Maine Wild Blueberry Report for July 9-15, 2003

Unripe fruiting stage:  Aroostook, Lincoln, Somerset, Coastal Washington County
Early ripe fruiting stage:  Hancock County, Sagadahoc, Southern Penobscot County
Middle ripe fruiting stage:  
Late ripe fruiting stage and fruit gone by:
No reports: other Maine counties

From the Press

Puffin restoration marks 30 years;
Innovative means have added terns to sanctuary
Bangor Daily News, Friday, July 11, 2003, pages A1, A4
Misty Edgecomb; of the News staff 

It's a perfect sunny day, 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. A small boat full of people clad in long sleeves, knit hats and rain slickers makes its way toward Eastern Egg Rock, home to the world's first restored Atlantic puffin colony, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month. The rock is just a blister on the watery horizon, eight miles off Bremen, with hundreds of birds swarming above - overlapping and interweaving their flight paths like planes at O'Hare International Airport. No trees grow in this harsh environment and no summer homes balance on the granite cliffs. 

While the long-sleeved shirts and rain slickers help protect the visitors from bird droppings, Stephen Kress, founder of Project Puffin, hands out squares of sturdy cardboard.  "They'll peck your head. Sometimes they draw blood," he says, almost apologetically. "Be prepared for a lot of screaming, dirty birds."  

Project Puffin
If any human is at home on Eastern Egg Rock, it's Kress. He's the man who in 1969 imagined restoring Atlantic puffins to the coast of Maine. By the 20th century, the seabird's numbers, once abundant, had dwindled to a tiny colony on Matinicus Rock. Decades of puffin hunting and egg stealing combined with an explosion in the gull population to drive the birds out of Maine.  The state's rocky islands were once nurseries for a half-dozen different seabirds. Now, most harbor only the herring gulls and great black-backed gulls that plague tourists at lobster pounds on the mainland.  In 1969, Kress decided to do something about it.  "We have to intervene. Otherwise, we're just documenting the loss of life on Earth," he said.

By 1973, Kress had obtained funding from the national Audubon Society and other sources. Over the next few years he shipped more than 900 puffin chicks to Eastern Egg Rock from Great Island, off Newfoundland. No one had ever restored seabirds to lost habitat before.   "We didn't even know if they could make it through an airplane flight," Kress said.  Other ornithologists hypothesized that the chicks would die, or that they would return to their birthplace as soon as they could fly.  But Kress thought, "If we took the puffins before they knew where 'home' was, they'd come back [to Egg Rock]."  Eight years later - success. The first native pufflings were born in 1981. Last summer, scientists counted 52 nesting pairs on Eastern Egg Rock.

On a warm, late June day, Kress told his story while perched on an overturned bucket inside a bird blind that looks out over square shaped boulders. He likened them to fallen dominoes and said the rare geological feature created perfect burrows for the puffins to raise their young.  A single puffin landed on the rocky outcropping in front of the blind. Soon another, then five, then twenty, were huddled close together. Kress said puffins are the sheep of the seabird world. 

"They need lots of each other to feel safe," Kress said.  Two puffins started rubbing their striped parrot beaks against one another, a nuzzling courtship dance that is called "billing." These are young puffins, 4 or 5 years old, seeking a mate that they likely will keep for the rest of their lives. Puffins live 25 to 30 years. "This is a singles club," Kress said. "Nesting puffins are all business this time of year."

Like many seabirds, puffins only spend a few months on land, breeding and raising a single chick. After their pufflings have fledged, they go to sea, and that's where scientists' knowledge ends, said Scott Hall, research coordinator for Audubon's Seabird Restoration Program and a resident of Belfast.  "They could be anywhere in the North Atlantic - that's a big sphere," he said. 

But every spring, the puffins return to Eastern Egg Rock, often to the same burrow, to raise chicks with the same mate year after year.  "They're charismatic. The more you know about them, the more appealing they are," Kress said.

Tern's Turn 
Once the puffins became established, Kress, now director of the Audubon Seabird Restoration Program, turned to terns, another integral part of a historic seabird nesting colony. But terns weren't so easy to fool. The aggressive birds lay their eggs on open rocks, with no burrows to disguise their birthplace.  So Kress and his fellow scientists tested a new approach. They peppered the rocks with tern decoys and mirrors, then set out recordings of tern calls to fool birds flying over into thinking the island was full of their kind.  "It's trial and error based on biology," he said. "You try to think like birds, which, of course, you can't ever really do." 

Today, Eastern Egg Rock is a rookery for more than 500 terns of three different species: the common tern, the state-threatened arctic tern and the federally endangered roseate tern. The approach is now used throughout the world, including 9 other islands off the coast of Maine, to rebuild struggling seabird populations. 

Every summer, Audubon staff create a tiny community - a wooden shack surrounded by tents in the middle of Eastern Egg Rock - to research the new ecosystem. Interns and volunteers rotate shifts. Every day someone is on the roof of the shack at 6 a.m. for a headcount of any and all birds that fly overhead during the early morning.  In the afternoons, they go out on the rocks, stepping gingerly to avoid stepping on the splotchy gray and brown eggs lying in the sun. When a tentative footstep goes "crunch," staffers' hearts jump into their throats, though more often than not, it's an urchin or a mussel shell underfoot, said Ellen Peterson, Egg Rock island supervisor. 

For the first 15 days of their lives, the chicks live hidden in the grasses that grow between the rocks, totally dependent on their parents for food and protection. The whole colony defends the chicks from predators, be they human researchers weighing and banding the chicks or carnivorous gulls.  "Last year, there was a bald eagle miles away, and an army of 100 or so terns took off to make sure it was redirected," Peterson said.  Individual chicks are numbered, but never named, out of superstition.  "It's easy to become attached to particular tern families at that intimate, personal level," Hall said.  Staffers also destroy the eggs laid by gulls to protect the puffins and terns from a recolonization.

As many as 20 nests are destroyed every year. The alternative is visible just a few miles away on Western Egg Rock, an Audubon property where no restoration work has been done.  "[Large] gulls can change the balance really quickly," Hall said.  The daily machinations of the tern families and the romancing puffins, the laughing gulls chasing lobster boats to snatch bait, and the great black-back gulls stealing an occasional egg, are endlessly entertaining for Peterson and her fellow researchers, stationed on the rock all summer long.  "There's this crazy soap opera going on," Peterson said.  

Maine's Backyard
A slow-moving puffin cruise rounds the island and dozens of binoculars are raised in unison, just in time to see Kress draw a flock of scolding terns as he picks his way over to a bird blind. 

More than 4,000 people took boat tours around Eastern Egg Rock last year and every one has a better understanding of seabirds, Kress said.  "It's important for people who are living in Maine to know that this is part of their backyard," he said. "If you just see [puffins] on T-shirts, how do you really know what they do, or look like?

The puffins are ambassadors for their kind, irresistibly cute birds that capture the public's attention. Kress wants to use that goodwill to build interest in seabird restoration and protection.  Audubon has a live bird camera on the island which is linked to a Web site where visitors can hear tern calls or see puffins billing.  Also, Kress hopes to open by next summer a Maine Seabird Center on Route 1, where tourists can learn about nesting colonies and the effort required to protect them.

 Perhaps a bird blind could be constructed, where projected images and recorded sound would give visitors a sense of the manic life on Eastern Egg.  "My favorite view in the world is right in the middle of all this teeming life," Kress said. The center would be "a way to share this energy."  Experiencing a world that wouldn't exist if not for seabird restoration just might cut through the prevailing cynicism about the state of the natural world, he said.  "It's not just seeing a cute little puffin, but knowing that people can make a difference," he said. "There's hope there." 

Copyright 2003 Bangor Daily News
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. 

Canada lynx survey finds large litters 
Bangor Daily News, July 15, 2003, pages B1, B4
Misty Edgecomb; of the News staff 

A June survey of Canada lynx dens in northwestern Maine has revealed the state's largest-yet generation of lynx kittens - six dens with 26 total kittens, state and federal scientists announced Monday.  "These are the largest litters we've ever seen in Maine," John Organ of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said in a statement released Monday. 

A mother lynx can bear between one and seven kittens, but in Maine, only small litters had been seen during the four previous years of the study. This year, however, five of the six mother cats had five kittens each.  Beginning in 1999, state and federal scientists have tracked lynx on large tracts of commercial forestland west of the town of Allagash. Just after the first of the year and during the late summer, biologists seek out the cats to outfit them with radio collars. 

Every June, they follow the electronic signals on the females' collars to find the dens. Lynx kittens are typically born during the second week of May. Photographs on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Web site show the 6-week-old kittens clustered beneath a tree, tawny balls of fur with blue eyes and giant paws.  Six of the eight radio-collared females in the study bore kittens this spring. Biologists weighed and measured each of the 12 female and 14 male kittens, then marked them with ear tags. Hair samples for future genetic studies were also collected. 

Canada lynx have enjoyed federal threatened status since 2000, but biologists don't believe this year's fertility has anything to do with protection. Lynx hunting has been outlawed in Maine since 1968, said wildlife biologist Jennifer Vashon of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.  Rather, Vashon believes that the sudden boom may be evidence that Maine's lynx have a cyclical population pattern. In Canada, scientists have proven that lynx populations rise and fall in 10- year cycles, following the population of their favorite prey, snowshoe hare. More food results in larger litters and better kitten survival. 

Scientists weren't sure if the animals would behave the same way in Maine, at the southern edge of the cats' range, and didn't have enough years of data to see any pattern in the lynx and hare populations. Scientists also hoped to determine whether timber harvesting affected population cycles.  Hare have begun their decline over the past two years, and if the pattern holds, lynx numbers should fall soon. A year or two response time between prey and predator populations is typical, Vashon said. 

"We may be seeing our lynx reaching a peak right now," she said Monday.  The next few years' data will be "essential" in proving the population cycling theory, she said.  But the study is in jeopardy. With half a decade completed, scientists are currently seeking funding to continue their work for another five years, Vashon said. 

This same study first discovered breeding lynx in Maine in 1999, which led to Maine's being included in the 2000 federal threatened listing in 14 states. The study has been funded by a mishmash of state and federal funds, local and national conservation groups as well as the paper industry.  Over the past five years, biologists have studied 63 kittens and radio-collared 32 adults. Maine is believed to have the sole remaining lynx population in the Northeast.  For more information, see http://northeast.fws.gov/lynxmain.html 

Copyright 2003 Bangor Daily News
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission. 

Editor's Column

Wild Blueberry Reports Begin

   The Maine Wild Blueberry Reports will be a weekly feature for the next several weeks.   Please participate in this natural history project that is interesting and fun! 
   Rate the stage of ripeness of wild blueberries at locations wherever you were in Maine this week. 
E-mail me your report, including location and rating of the stage of ripeness on the four-level scale:
    unripe berries
    early  (a few ripe berries)
    middle (many ripe berries)
    late (berries all or mostly gone by). 
Reports are needed weekly during July and August in order to follow the change. 

Thank you for your help!
Frank Wihbey
Maine Nature News