Year in Review
Phenology – “a branch of science concerned with the relationship between climate and periodic biological phenomena (as the migration of birds or the flowering and fruiting of plants).”
Approaching the End of the Year
A couple of weeks ago, a dozen robins ranged over the lawn, not to be seen since. Last week, a pair of adults and two juvenile hooded mergansers spent a few days in the pond, perhaps the same ones who were here for most of May and June. Two days ago, when the sun was still shining and the temperature reached 50 degrees, four blue birds, inspected the Front Bird House and poked around the bird bath and the patio. Today, as I’m working on this essay, the sun is no longer shining, the summer birds are far away, and the snow is falling. It’s perilously close to winter.
This is a good time to the think about the year’s highlights before we’re overwhelmed with preparations for the approaching holidays. And that is exactly what I’m doing with this essay. After looking back at this year’s PPPs, I’ve selected a favorite photo and a few descriptive lines from each one of them.
I’ve also selected the above photo of an evening grosbeak that was part of my first PPP back in January 2021. As I wrote back then, “What an extraordinary bird! Like Jimmy Durante, this bird shows no embarrassment regarding the size of his beak.”
January 16, 2021. A small group of evening grosbeaks flew up as I approached the kitchen window. One returned, sat atop the pole holding the feeder, and posed for a photo before flying off to join his pals.
January: A Virtual Caribbean Vacation
For many years, Nancy and I escaped the winter doldrums by spending a week in a unique campground located by Maho Bay on St. John in the Virgin Islands. One day, a pelican was hunting right next to the outcropping that we had to cross on our way to Francis Bay, and I managed to capture the instant when it struck the water with the tip of its beak.
February: Washington’s Bird Day
I always require a good photo and a guidebook to figure out whether I’ve seen a male house finch or a male purple finch, both of which have pretty much the same wonderful shade of – what? More pink or scarlet than purple. Whatever name we use, the colors extend to pale stripes on the breast of the purple finch, whereas the more prominent breast stripes of the house finch are brownish.
Purple Finch, February 5, 2022.
March: Enough Already?
Relatively mild weather may bring more birds to our feeder. Last March, after four days with highs near 40, we not only had a excellent showing from the regulars, a small flock of pine grosbeaks came to the feeder. I have only seen pine grosbeaks once before in Sugar Hill, and that was more than twenty years ago. This was my first sighting confirmed with a good photo and a close look at the bird book.
March 5, 2023, 30 degrees, cloudy, 1145. Great day for the feeder. First, the usual suspects:
· Eight chickadees
· Seven starlings
·Two male and a female cardinal
· A white-breasted nuthatch, a hairy woodpecker, and a titmouse
But then about seven pine grosbeaks stopped by, staying long enough for a photo session.
April: Spring Break
Last April, we spent most of a week on the Maine coast near York Harbor and Ogunquit. Most of the sea birds that wintered along the rocky coast were still there, while the song birds heading back to North Country were, like us, taking a few days to enjoy the sounds of the surf and their favorite shore dinners. Eiders, scoters, and sea gulls all contribute to a pleasant walk along the coast, but those of us from the North Country hope to see one of our own in its winter setting. So, when we saw a couple of loons this year, we got very excited, even though they were too far away for a photo like the one I took back in 2018.
February 15, 2018. A juvenile loon spreads its wings just off York Harbor. It probably can’t wait to get back to Pearl Lake in Lisbon or perhaps to one of the Connecticut Lakes.
May: Turtle Life
We seldom think about the social life or family values of turtles. After all, when we see them, they’re usually just sitting motionless on a rock or a log at the edge of a pond. However, I have noticed that youngsters do like to stay close to the larger turtles, and this photo suggests that there may in fact be some sort of family attachment among turtles.
July 2, 2022. Two pairs of painted turtles occupied the only dry spots on Quahog Rock. Each pair included a mature adult and a tiny youngster.
June: Summer Solstice
Even with a digital camera, I find it difficult to get photos showing enough detail to distinguish among the many look-alike species pf butterflies. Often, a good photo of the underside of the wings is required to see the key identifying marks, which is a problem for the many species that seldom land at all or land with their wings spread. However, this is not a problem for Harris Checkerspots, since they proudly display the underside of their wings while posing on a branch or a leaf with their wings folded.
Harris Checkerspot, June 21, 2022
July: The Usual Suspects
When I go out to the pond in mid-summer, I always hope to see something spectacular, such as a pair of otters or a great blue heron stalking frogs along the shore. Though I approach slowly, camera at the ready, I am well aware that there most likely will be no otters and no heron to be seen. But that’s OK, because I am sure to find the usual suspects: the mid-summer dragonflies defending their territories in the openings amid the reeds and patrolling the shoreline along the dam.
For example, I often see a mid-sized dragonfly with bright green eyes and a bulge at the tip of its abdomen. While I know that it’s an emerald, because of its wonderful eyes and its club tail, I don’t know whether it’s a racket-tailed emerald or an American emerald. Both species look pretty much the same, and they seem to spend their daylight hours flying in and out, hovering for several seconds, and then flying to another spot. Do I care that I can only record seeing an “emerald”? Not much, but I am quite happy when one lands and stays still long enough for a photo.
The Racket-Tailed Emerald, which is 1.6 inches long, has a very large club that is only clearly visible on the rare occasions when it lands. (July 24, 2020)
August: Skippers – Hiding in Plain Sight
The skipper family of butterflies includes nearly 300 species in the U.S., but nearly all the common species in the North Country are too small and too drab to notice. Some have bright orange patches that, if they ever pose for more than a few seconds, will be seen to be beautiful. If you look closely, you will also notice that their forewings are spread out like those of other butterflies, but their hindwings are held straight up.”
July 2, 2019. I was sitting at Rufus’s Cabin on Bronson Hill when I noticed a couple of skippers just beyond the mown area in front of my bench. Withing a few minutes, I had taken several photos, and I realized that there were multiple species of skippers flitting all around the edge of this field.
August 27, 2019. A Least Skipper on a stalk of grass on our dam. Only with a close-up photo like this is it possible to identify one of these small, orange/brown skippers.
September: The Quick and the Dead
Canada darners almost never land anywhere, and they are even less likely to land anywhere near the pond. Since they are unwilling to pose, if I want a photo, I focus on an area where one has hovered and wait it to return. Well, last August, while I was trying unsuccessfully to focus on one hovering at our end of the pond, another Canada darner flew in, a member of the opposite sex. Apparently, this is what they both had been searching for. Because they immediately paired up, prepared to form a wheel, and dropped down to a romantic spot at the edge of the cattails.
Unluckily for them, they did not see the frog sitting there, and they landed almost on the lucky frog’s nose. The frog immediately grabbed one of the dragonflies, while the other one escaped. Luckily for me, I already had my camera in hand, ready to document what happened next in a series of photos and videos. The best photo showed the frog grabbing the abdomen of the dragon fly and positioning it so it would be easier to swallow. In all my hours of watching frogs by the side of our pond, I had only seen a frog catch a dragonfly or a damselfly a couple of times, and I had never seen, let alone photographed, a frog using its hand to do anything!
August 23, 2024, 4:50. The frog pulls the darner out a bit in order to line it up better. Once the darner was lined up properly, the frog sucked it in slowly, and the tip of the darner’s abdomen eventually disappeared into the frog’s mouth.
October: Goldenrods
My October essay provided photos designed to help you (and me) figure out how to identify the dozen or more species of goldenrod that are commonly found in the North Country. Now, barely two months later, I find that I am more comfortable with my assessment at the beginning of that essay:
By this time of the year, goldenrod and asters have overwhelmed our roadsides and meadows with their massed legions of colorful plants. Goldenrods are easily recognized from a distance, because the hundreds of tiny yellow flowers bunched together along the ends of the tall stems of dozens of individual plants create a blur of color similar to what might be found in an impressionist painting.
Since you are even less likely than me to remember or care about the quirks of different kinds of goldenrods, I’ll show a more interesting photo from my archives. Photos of flowers are almost always enhanced by insects, but this photo is quite special!
September 9, 2019. A very, very young and beautiful grasshopper perches on some goldenrod on the dam.
November: Lake District Colors
If you have ever spent a few days in the countryside of Merry Old England, you will certainly have witnessed scenes of hillsides, stone buildings, and little streams such as we enjoyed last month in the Lake District. Unless you were extremely lucky, you would also have noticed the clouds, fog, drizzle, light rain and downpours that make the countryside so perfect for gardeners, so colorful for tourists, and so nutritional for sheep. Thus, in my essay about Lake District colors, it would have been remiss to neglect mentioning that portions of many and perhaps most days are too cloudy and wet for optimal viewing of autumnal colors. That doesn’t necessarily diminish the beauty of the landscape, however, as cloudy, moist conditions can bring a brooding majesty to the hills seen dimly across one of the lakes or fields, as shown in this photo of the view across Derwent Water toward the Jaws of Borrowdale. A poet once described this as “the third best view in Europe.” I’m not sure about such high praise, but the view is certainly magnificent, especially in the mood created by glowering clouds and distant mists.
October 22, 2024. Across Derwent Water toward the Jaws of Borrowdale
First Snow
I’ll finish this essay with another photo from my first PPP back in January 2021. The red berries in this photo were about to be covered by the snow that was just starting to fall, and this was perhaps the last flash of color before the snow piled up and whitened the landscape. By coincidence, while finishing off this essay, I once again noticed wrinkled berries providing a splash of color at the meadow’s edge as the first snows started to fall.
December 12, 2017.
