June 30: The Poetry of Dragonflies

I've been told by a very reliable source that this handsome fellow is a male Celithemis elisa, or Calico Pennant. I came upon him today while tromping around the milkweed patch at my office trying to photograph butterflies. I saw my first monarchs, a red admiral, and a few things I couldn't identify, but this guy was the only thing that would hold still for my camera. The Calico Pennant first emerges in late May to early June and is apparently very common throughout the summer here along the Megunticook River. It's also easily recognizable, as its all-over red appearance is noticeable at a distance. Right now several of them proudly wave their red selves above the overgrown lawn. 

I know next to nothing about dragonflies, but several birder friends are also avid odophiles. (These same friends are also very good at identifying butterflies--I guess once you start paying attention to one set of flying things, you just start noticing the others.) I like to watch dragonflies flit and dart through the air, wings shimmering, iridescent bodies glistening like jewels. But my real interest in them is not as a naturalist or observer, but as a poet. Check out these common names of some dragonflies found in Maine: Ebony Jewelwing, Violet Dancer, Lilypad Forktail, Sedge Sprite, Sweetflag Spreadwing, Spatterdock Darner, Unicorn Clubtail, Riffle Snaketail, Stygian Shadowdragon, Ringed Boghaunter, Seaside Dragonlet, Cherry-faced Meadowhawk, and Black Saddlebags. They sound like creatures from a fantasy novel! Naming really doesn't get any better than this unless you're an elf or fairy.

Jewelwing, sedge sprite--

dragonfly or elf, your wild

Maine magic shimmers.

June 29: Death and Life

Driving to an errand in Rockport this afternoon, I saw a dead grey squirrel on the side of the road. Not an unusual sight, and it's not like there's a shortage of squirrels in the world, but I'm always saddened to see any road-killed animal. I gave some moments of thought to the short but probably lively life of the now-squished squirrel and made a silent wish that its body would at least now make a positive difference to the life of some crow, vulture, or fox. 

On my return to the office, I passed by a house with lots of bird feeders hanging in the yard. One tube feeder was completely obscured by the furry body of a grey squirrel curled around it, its tail waving like a plume. I had to laugh. This squirrel was very much alive, doing what squirrels do best. It was somehow reassuring to see. Life goes on, even as we are confronted with deaths large and small on a daily basis.

Draft of passing car

flips the dead squirrel's tail. Live

squirrel flicks his too.

June 28: Milkweed in Bloom

At my office we don't mow most of the lawn, instead allowing the native vegetation to take over in a sprawling but natural way. A good portion of it hosts a rather dense patch of milkweed, which has just begun to bloom. We tend to stop paying attention to what we see all the time, so I hadn't realized the milkweed was blooming until I walked from the office to my car this afternoon after a torrential rainstorm had passed through. The humid air was redolent with a sweet fragrance that literally stopped me in my tracks. What was it? I looked around the thicket of plants I had just walked past, and the only flowering plant nearby was milkweed. Ordinary milkweed. I sniffed a cluster of the unprepossessing pink blossoms... and that was it! I had no idea milkweed could smell so wonderful.

What I do know about milkweed is that monarch butterflies lay their eggs on the plants, and the resulting larvae feed entirely on milkweed. Milkweed sap is toxic to what might eat a caterpillar; by eating milkweed leaves, the caterpillars become toxic too. I've seen a merlin catch a monarch and spit it out--clearly, the butterflies don't taste good either. So monarch and milkweed have a close relationship, with the aromatic plant being essential to the early life stages of the butterfly, as well as increasing the insect's chances for survival against predators. And I'm sure the monarch plays a role in pollinating the milkweed in turn.

After the rainstorm
milkweed sends perfumed love notes
to the butterflies.

June 27: Repetition

The red-eyed vireo may repeat his song 20,000 times during the course of a summer day. I was thinking of that as I heard one singing off in the trees, as I picked what felt like my 20,000th strawberry in my friend's garden today. We've had perfect strawberry weather this June, and my friend's patch was overflowing. She needed help. After enjoying a breakfast of Belgian waffles with strawberries, the two of us picked 23 quarts over several hours--punctuated, of course, by a lunch of yogurt, honey, and... yes, strawberries.

There's something lulling about repeating a gesture over and over, even as your back and legs ache. It was warm but not overly sunny, either, which made it a pleasure to be out doing something productive in the garden. And of course, knowing I was going to take home some of these luscious fruits was added incentive. I lost myself in the activity, only occasionally (because I'm a birder and can't help it) becoming aware of birdsong in the surrounding woods. The red-eyed vireo, for example. Or the robins nesting nearby. Or a bluebird. Once I looked up and saw a hawk circling overhead. The setting was bucolic--peas in bloom, corn almost knee-high, terraced perennial beds in full bloom, butterflies fluttering over fields spangled with wildflowers. Who could call this work, this crawling over strawberry runners, squatting in the dirt, plucking ripe berries from amidst the foliage and dropping them with a plunk in a pail?

The real work started when I got all those berries home. I dropped off a bowlful at my parents' house, and gave away as many as I could to my neighbor with many children--those growing bodies need the vitamin C. But even after putting some aside for my cereal over the next couple of days, I still had a heap. These I rinsed, spread out on a towel, hulled one by one--the repetition less enjoyable than the picking but meditative nonetheless--and bagged for the freezer. Two quarts that will undoubtedly form the base of some wicked good smoothies later this summer.

For each berry picked,
vireo sings one more phrase
in praise of summer.

June 26: Backyard Birds

After mowing the lawn today, I did something unusual for me. I sat on the back step in the sun and... well, that's it. I just sat on the back step. For about ten minutes I did nothing but just sit there and live in the moment. My cat, who is strictly an indoor cat occasionally allowed supervised visits onto the porch, came over and, instead of trying to make her usual escape attempt, curled up in my lap. Apparently she wanted to live in the moment too. She purred and dozed, while I looked around and thought about how much I love my back yard.

Back yard, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love the ever-present rushing music of the river that passes over your feet. I love the canopy of oak, beech, ash, and maple leaves that surround you, leaving just the right-sized opening for sky and sunlight. I love the frilly fans of ferns that border your edges and the tall goldenrod along the porch steps. I love your view of my neighbor's orange day lilies. I love how you keep my flowers healthy, even the wild ones. And I love how the combination of water and tree cover brings birds into your sheltered embrace.

If you don't go looking for birds, sometimes they have a way of finding you. While I sat there enjoying my yard in all its early summer greenery, I heard the following:
cardinal whistling up a storm in the neighbor's yard
squalling group of crows upriver
broad-winged hawk high overhead
pileated woodpecker cackling somewhere downriver
loon calling in flight
warbling vireo moving through the trees above the river
several robins singing throughout the neighborhood
song sparrow across the street
hummingbird squealing through the yard, hopefully on its way to my bee balm

I've found fewer birds than that while out actually looking for them! And my cat was oblivious to it all.

Sometimes sitting still
turns out to be the best way
to hear birds, here, now.

June 25: Return of the Merlin

For the fourth time in a week I heard a merlin calling outside my office. The first couple of times I heard that fast, high-pitched call, I thought it was a blue jay pretending to be a merlin. The third time, I saw the bird flying. It was indeed the small falcon, not a cheap imitation (or a jay). And today, when I proclaimed that I could hear the merlin again, my co-workers rushed to the door and we all got to watch the bird, which had very conveniently perched in plain view atop a snag at the end of our parking lot.

Despite all his yelling, he sat quite calmly in the dead tree, preening and looking around a bit before flying off. He seems to make a ruckus when dogs are around, I've noticed. But then again, it doesn't take much to rile up a merlin. They're very vocal birds on territory, which makes me wonder if this bird has a nest somewhere nearby. They're also very fierce, diving at just about anything that annoys them--even a much larger bird like a crow, gull, or peregrine. If this bird has a nest in the neighborhood, it's not too near though, because I've never seen him actually chasing another bird. I think he just shows up to yell a bit, let everyone know who's boss, and push the limits of his controlled air space.

Even from afar
we can see hooked bill, fierce gaze--
merlin on patrol.

June 24: Young Woodpecker

Yesterday I heard a red-bellied woodpecker calling outside the office. This afternoon I happened to spot one hanging out on a tree about 20 yards away from the window. Except for its black and white checked back and wings, this bird was dull brown all over, with just the faintest wash of red on the back of its dusky head--obviously a juvenile, probably a female. This is a species that only made a serious incursion into Maine five years ago, so it was exciting to see living proof that at least one breeding pair nests in my neighborhood. And here she was, on her own, a youngster loosed into her first summer.

I sat and observed as she loafed on the tree trunk in one place for about 20 minutes, a typical lazy teenager. For a while she seemed to contemplate the tree trunk, looking at it from various angles. Then she wiped her bill on the bark for a minute or so. She picked a few bugs off the trunk. Then she spent about 15 minutes casually preening. Chickadees hopped around her, and a flock of waxwings passed through the trees. A catbird sang a few odd phrases, mewed, then flew into the woods. But the young woodpecker clung to the side of the tree, her stiff tail feathers bracing her against the trunk as she pecked and smoothed her feathers. What does it feel like to have real feathers for the first time?

Eventually she flew a few trees closer, to a shad bush laden with berries. She began acrobatically eating some of the berries, looking a lot like a waxwing as she twisted among the branches, craning her neck to nab the plump red little fruits. Duty called, so I left off watching at that point, but I felt privileged to have been witness to half an hour in the life of this young bird.

Woodpecker pauses;
I pause to watch--a young bird
preening new feathers.

June 23: Bee Balm

This summer the bee balm has become King of the Garden. A self-propagating perennial, each year it pops up in different places and in varying density. This year, however, it's outdone itself. Usually the tallest stalks are just visible at kitchen windowsill level. Today I noticed that the tallest plant is gaining on the top of the window, and its red buds haven't even fully opened yet. It's sort of like an out of control, seven-foot tall adolescent boy. And there aren't just a few plants scattered here and there--there are dozens. This is one patch of happy, dominating flowers.

The bee balm was given to us as a house-warming gift five years ago, and I was thrilled to receive it because I know it's a favorite of hummingbirds. My grandmother always had a patch, along with a yearly mass of nasturtiums, half a dozen hanging fuchsias, and about as many hummingbird feeders. Dozens of ruby-throated hummingbirds screamed around my grandparents' house all day long. Things are a bit less dramatic at our house. When the bright red bee balm blooms, I occasionally watch one hummer at a time visit the flowers while I'm eating at the kitchen table. A small excitement, but one I look forward to nonetheless, especially that moment when the male hovers in front of the window, flashing his ruby-colored gorget. (That's his throat, lest you think I'm being obscene.)

With this year's plants stretching more than halfway up the window, we should have a pretty good view when the hummers arrive at our one good nectar station. I've heard them buzzing around the neighborhood, but the only other flower blooming that might have attracted them thus far is a lobelia that's not visible from inside the house. So we have high hopes for our super-tall, super tempting, majestic bee balm.

Allure of ruby
flower draws the ruby-throat,
living gem itself.

June 22: I Can See My House from Here

Today I flew a plane! A friend of my husband flew into Owls Head from Portland this morning and took us each up in his rented Cessna. Hugh served three tours in Iraq with the Marines, flying "anything that flies," as he put it, and is also a flying instructor, so I felt like I was in good hands. I wasn't nervous, but when you grip the steering handles to turn, and the plane responds, it's quite a feeling.

I love to fly, love to see a landscape that is so familiar on the ground from that new, lofty perspective, trying to guess what's what from the new angle. A hawk's eye view. We flew over Beech Hill so I could take some photos, turned inland to fly over Ragged and Bald Mountains, followed the Megunticook River to Camden Harbor, then followed the coast over Rockport and Rockland Harbors so we could check out the giant drill ship moored and awaiting repairs out beyond the Breakwater. I felt a surge of love toward the beautiful patchwork of green forests and fields bordered by the blues of the bay spreading out below us: this is my home. And I literally picked out my home (and my office) as we flew along the river. Funny how we always need to find ourselves in that way. It was like playing with Google Earth only in real life.

Hugh let me take the "wheel" for a few more minutes as he lowered the flaps and flipped switches to prepare for landing. It was kind of like driving a car, only different. An uplifting experience (pun intended), and even more so, I think, for my husband. I was trying to photograph everything I could see, but he was intent on really experiencing what it was like to fly a plane. Judging from his ecstatic expression as he stepped back to the ground, I think I'm thankful that there's no way he has the time for flying lessons.

Is this what hawks feel
as they soar over forests,
spying that one tree?

June 21: Summer Solstice

This afternoon as I was driving home from a meeting, the car thermometer read 90 and the sun was high in a deep blue sky. Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. After this, as one friend put it, it's all downhill till the Winter Solstice. I reveled in the lush steaminess of the day.

Besides being significant on the world's seasonal calendar, this day is also important as my niece Nola's first birthday. What a powerful day on which to be born, the day when the sun god is in his prime, when the sun has reached its apex. Surely she will go through life fired by an inner solar power.

I was musing on the luxurious heat and light of late afternoon, the richness of the foliage on this humid Midsummer's Day, when I noticed an odd-shaped cloud scrawled on the sky's blue screen stretching over Mount Battie. The cloud looked like a big, white C. Immediately I thought of certain mountains I've seen in Arizona desert country (and in other places out west) upon which proud locals have painted the first letter of their town's name. A mountain right outside Parker, Arizona bears a large white P, for example. This seems to be a common practice, and rather than defacing the mountain, it serves in its way as a link between landscape and community.

So even though Mount Battie bears no resemblance to the arid, patchy hills of the west, today the weather  shaped a fluffy C to perch on its craggy, pine-covered summit, just for Camden, just for a moment. I looked up later and it was scattered. (I guess it was too much to ask for an N for Nola--nature's sky-writers would have a real challenge with that one.) Ephemeral as it was, however, that special Solstice cloud bridged a gap in my memory between two places I love: Maine and the Sonoran desert of Arizona. And today both of them were hot and sunny for the first day of Summer.

Strange how even on
a humid Maine summer day
I think of desert.

June 20: Dove

It's Father's Day, but my dad's away today and I haven't come across any inspiring paternal images to write about in his honor--except for the pileated woodpecker (a bird my dad always enjoys seeing), which has been insistently calling up and down the river today for some unknown masculine purpose. If he were home, my dad would probably be hearing it too, as my parents and I live about a mile apart on the same river.

The report called for rain this afternoon, so I spent this sunny morning working in my garden, trying to create a bit of order in the chaos of the flourishing beds. While I clipped and deadheaded and weeded, I could hear a neighbor's chicken clucking and cackling, apparently having just laid her morning egg. I love that we voted to allow people in town to have up to nine chickens--it just makes so much sense in this age of sustainability and trying to eat locally. And I love that several of my neighbors have chickens, even though we don't directly benefit. When I was growing up, my grandparents kept chickens, so I have fond memories of caring for Henrietta, Betty, Harcourt et al. and collecting their eggs. The clucks and cackles of chickens are soothing noises. I'm currently reading Sy Montgomery's new book Birdology, which begins with an excellent chapter on chicken culture. You'll never look at a chicken the same way again.

All my co-workers except one (who's building a coop next summer) have chickens now, but I have no desire to own any myself, so enjoying the clucking of the neighbors' birds a block away will have to do. But then I noticed a pert brown mourning dove pecking away in the gravel of our driveway. There's my chicken, I thought. Doves are like miniature chickens, soft and gentle, always hanging around the yard or on the driveway. This one even flew to the sidewalk behind me for a while as I was puttering in the garden just a few yards away. Granted, we aren't eating any dove's eggs for breakfast, but their presence, like that of a flock of smooth little chickens, is a small comfort.

Not tame, but the dove
on my lawn brings as much joy
as a flock of hens.