Maine Nature News

Archive for the ‘Signs of Spring’ Category

by Fred Gralenski

A sign of the times.

Many years ago when I was a young student I was supposed to read that “April is the cruelest month” by some famous writer or something.  I don’t remember that it had to do about nature, so I guess I didn’t pay much attention.  Now that I’m an old geezer, I think that April, especially after tax time and here in the Quoddy region, is pretty neat.  I even read that April is National Frog Month.  Hard to beat that.

The frogs were in an amorous embrace, but still 100 yards from the pool. I was tempted to carry them down there in that i didn't feel it was fair for the guy to hitchhike all that way, but I left them alone. Maybe it was her idea.

The wood frogs, after the snow and ice have melted over the place where they individually overwintered, somehow head for the pool where they changed from tadpoles into frogs.  Now nature has, what I call, a 95% rule.  About 95% of the frogs head for their home pool, but the other 5% explore the area for new digs (or splashes).  This feature works for most returning spawners, including Spring Peepers, the mole salamanders and other critters like salmon and alewives. One can understand the usefulness of this characteristic for the species to survive in case something drastic happens to the original pool like a shopping mall or parking lot being built on it (more likely now than before), or conversely, to populate a vernal pool that some amphibian lover (like me) built for additional habitat.  From what I can gather our amphibians seem to be in good shape.  My casual checks of our critters look favorable and so far I’ve seen a good number even though the season is just starting.  It is interesting that the Chytrid fungus that is devastating many western and tropical frogs does not seem to be affecting our animals here in Maine, although the fungus is commonly found here especially in the Northern Leopard frogs.

Big Momma wood frog

Anyway, after watching the snow disappear during the day, take a little stroll in the evening along some boggy areas and look and listen for the critters.  The amphibians out now  are very relaxed at night so people can watch them.  There are other critters too. The other evening on one of my perambulations there were quite a few millipedes looking for something dead to scavenge.  Millipedes generally have two sets of legs for each body segment, and centipedes have one set of legs for each body segment.  My millipedes were pretty tolerant of examination (they didn’t bite me)and were probably of the family ‘Julidae’, and are an introduced species.

Spring Peeper

Millipede of the family Julidae

Other critters that are interested in romance besides frogs and salamanders here in South Pembroke are the Snowshoe rabbits.  They start changing color from white to brown in early April and are pretty tame by now.  I don’t know why.  We seldom see them all winter, and even their tracks in the snow are usually at a distance from the house.  With April they come out in the open areas near the house and graze on the emerging green shoots of grass and dandelions, in between romps of chasing each other around.  I guess they do this to endear themselves so that when the garden greens come up they can help themselves to those also.  Sometimes I feel like my middle name is ‘Elmer Fudd’, being outwitted by a ‘wascally wabbit’.
Of course we must not forget the birds of April.  My ravens have set up shop, and wait for me to drop kitchen scraps in the hollow stump by the bird feeders, although they are very cautious and timid.  The robins here are still all males, and I haven’t seen any nest building activity, and the colorful birds, the warblers, are still pretty scarce.  As of this writing I have seen only one warbler, a Palm warbler snacking on the flies in the washed up seaweed at Gleason’s Point.  Well, April showers bring May flowers and May warblers.

by Fred Gralenski

Spring is in the air!  Winter had hung on too long, and the snow and cold were getting dreary.  Old Man winter may still sneak in some punches, but the betting now is on Spring to win.  Of course one of the downsides of the snow melting is the bottles, cans and cigarette butts that are now appearing in abundance are proof of our slipshod regard of our planet. Here in Pembroke we won’t address that seriously until our roadside cleanup day, on May 7th.  You’re welcome to join.  But in the meantime, enjoy our world as it comes back. The Robins, Blackbirds, Song sparrows and other birds are here with many more to come, crocuses are blossoming and our daffodils are tentatively checking out South Pembroke, and skunks and raccoons are patrolling Leighton Point road nightly looking for food and romance.  Spring is a good time to study our world, and even the simplest of things can be puzzling.  For example, many Spruce and Cedar trees lost a lot of small twigs this past winter.  This seemed to occur randomly, as not all experienced the drop, and I did not notice any problems with any Balsam fir.  Even my sprouting onions are a puzzle.  I start my onions (Ailsa Craig for size and Copra for long keepers) down cellar near my wood boiler and after about a week or so they are up enough to move out into the sunspace.  Why is it, when they first come up, that they look like green staples?  I mean, why does the middle of the stalk come up first before they start growing like onions normally do?  These are some of the silly but fun things to contemplate about our world, but our world is not always a nice place, as we see in the devastation of parts of Japan.  It’s sobering to remember the land that we are living on, where I raise my onions and our deed says that we own, is moving around (terra firma NOT!) and running into other parts.  Scientists tell us that the reason this is happening is because way down deep in the earth there are layers of molten stuff burbling around a humongous nuclear reactor.  Under the influence of gravity forces generated by the sun and moon, the plates move.  A lot of this molten stuff is iron, and its mysterious motion generates a magnetic field.  This magnetic field not only lets compasses work so I can teach Boy Scouts about orienteering, but it also shields us from the harmful solar radiation.  This magnetic shield is a marvelous piece of celestial engineering, as it deflects the stream of lethal ionized particles from the sun, but lets the sunlight through so I can make vitamin D for my bones and my onions can work photosynthesis and make biomass for their bulbs.

Here in the Quoddy region we historically don’t have much of a problem with big earthquakes.  I do have a Geologic Map of the Passamaquoddy Bay Area that shows the named faults like the Oak Bay fault and the Fundian fault and lots of offshoots.  We even have an offshoot going by our house.  But what about tsunamis?  Well, there have been warnings of the possible collapse of Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma, in the Canary Islands.  A study of this site was done in 2001, and if the collapse does occur the study predicted a tsunami of about 10-12 meters at our Northeast coast.  Would the shape of the Gulf of Maine/ Fundy Bay augment the wave like it does a normal tide and inflict on the Quoddy Region a more punishing tsunami?  The study didn’t indicate, but I’m too busy to worry about it.  It’s Spring.  Any day now the Fox sparrows will show up on their migration north.  Handsome, reddish colored critters and a little bigger than a Song sparrow, they vigorously rustle around looking for snacks by kicking up the dead leaves and grass using both feet at once.

by Fred Gralenski
In case you haven’t noticed, spring has come to the Quoddy region. I like spring. After I get over being in an April 15th funk, I like to rake the gravel off the grass, smooth the dirt on my driveway and get to play with my tractor, pick up the rocks that have popped up, and work in my woods collecting and processing next winter’s firewood and sawlogs. I usually do most of the latter in the winter, but it is a yearly job since the weather dictates what trees get blown over. This past winter was mild, and the ground didn’t freeze very hard with the one big snowstorm that we had. Looking over my journal for 2009, the last pile of snow in the yard melted on May 5th; over a month later than this year.

Most of the flowers are a couple of weeks ahead of last year, as they are largely dependent on temperature. The Mayflowers, or Trailing arbutus, are already past their peak even though it’s only the beginning of May. Other flowers, like Shadbush, Hobblebush, cherry, violets and Rhodora seem to be similarly ahead of a normal schedule, and the ubiquitous dandelion really likes the Quoddy region this year. Insects also like the warmer temperatures, and the bees are common in the flowers. Most of the bees now are the small solitary bees, probably of the genus Andrena. These are our earliest bees and are frequently seen buttered up with pollen from the flowers like dandelion and Forsythia. The Andrena spp. are also called mining bees because they generally live in the ground. Among these many bees on the early flowers can be noticed an odd looking, fuzzy, long legged thing that likes to hover close to the flowers while sipping nectar. This is the Bee fly Bombylius major. They like to eat nectar like a real bee but don’t like to set up housekeeping to raise a family. They lay an egg at the entrance of a solitary bee’s tunnel and the hatched Bee fly larva crawls inside and sets up shop on the skin of the solitary bee larva. The Bee fly proceeds to suck the innards out of the Solitary bee larva without making a visible wound. The insect version of drastic liposuction.
Butterflies are also coming onstage. Some butterflies like the Mourning Cloak and Commas overwinter as adults and may make a real early appearance. Some, like the pesty Cabbage White (see picture), may overwinter as a pupae and emerge by the middle of April to be our commonest butterfly around here, and some, like the Red Admiral, are appearing now on their migrations from further south. This season is much different from last year, when the cold, wet spring delayed or eliminated many butterflies in our area.
Critters that are not so dependent on temperature are the snowshoe hares. The varying ratio of sunlight to darkness triggers their color change from white to brown, and the majority have mostly changed. There doesn’t seem to be a fixed ratio for all individuals, as Mother Nature apparently is always adjusting, and during the color transition period a pretty dark brown rabbit may be seen alongside a white one.
And, of course, the birds. Back in April 29th I saw my first momma Timberdoodle with four ‘doodlets. Our Ravens are back and this year and are using the same nest as they did last year. At 50 yards from the house they couldn’t get much closer, but after three years they still aren’t trusting enough for me to get a good picture. Our ravens must have young by now, but the nest is 50 feet up in a slender spruce and way beyond my ability to peek. Some Black ducks in one of our ponds seemed interested in setting up housekeeping, but they also are not trusting. The most colorful birds, the warblers and their ilk, are just starting to arrive, and some of us will spy on their arrival on May 22nd at Moosehorn. If you can make it for 6:30AM you are all welcome to come and join us.

Saco, Map 4, today, 0545

Walked out of the house to leave for work this morning and heard cardinals singing away…  Got to work and went outside at about 0900 to hear and see redwing blackbirds serenading and preening in the swamp next door… Then the SUN came out!

I found my first pussy willows in Pembroke on 7 March. FG