August 31: Rattle and Hum

Last day of August. The evening air throbs with the music of crickets and other insects. Slowly the sun sinks behind the trees, but heat lingers. The air is very still as if it, like me, is too hot for movement. As I refill the bird feeders (the birds, at least, were active today, draining the thistle sock of every last little seed), a kingfisher rattles not far off, above the river. The river flows through a shaded tunnel of trees, and I imagine how deliriously wonderful it must feel for the bird to dive into that cool water.

Joy is everywhere:
in kingfisher's noisy dive,
in twilight's soft hum.

August 30: Calm

As I look out the window at a perfect blue sky and feel the warm breeze on my bare arms, hear the rustle of leaves and the pulse of the crickets, it's difficult to imagine that a few thousand miles away down the coast, Hurricane Earl is gathering force. Declared a Category Three storm this morning, with sustained winds of up to 120 MPH, Earl is on track to hit the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in the next few days. Up to 12 inches of rain is predicted for some of the Caribbean islands, in addition to the storm surge caused by the high winds. By this coming holiday weekend, we could potentially be seeing waves and residual rain from Earl on our coast. But right now, on this beautiful summer afternoon, all that turmoil seems unfathomable. It feels more like tropical siesta time.

With a major storm like Earl brewing to the south, I think of the migrating birds. Many meteorologists predict that global climate change will bring more frequent tropical storms and extend the hurricane season. So these storms are going to overlap more and more with clouds of southbound birds headed right toward them. Birds have a good sense of air pressure and know enough not to fly into the face of a hurricane, but when a hurricane is heading toward you, staying perched doesn't help. So in addition to the obvious human impact, these weather patterns will affect migrating birds, bats, and butterflies, as well. As if they didn't have enough trouble on their journey negotiating the gauntlet of skyscrapers, cell towers, highways, cats, and oil spills...

Serene summer beach.
Yet in this same ocean brews
hurricane turmoil.

August 29: Spider

When the weekend days are steamy like today, the last thing on my "to do" list is anything that resembles a household chore. That includes sweeping up spider webs outside my front door, as much as they creep me out. I know, as a naturalist I shouldn't be bothered by any of nature's wild creatures, but a few things just get me: especially tent caterpillars, earwigs, and big spiders. So when I stepped out the front door this morning and noticed a medium-sized spider perched on a thick tangle of cobweb tucked between the door frame and the porch rail, right under the mailbox, my first inclination was to brush off the web. But as I brought my hand down, the motion scared a much larger spider, which I hadn't seen at first, into the back of the web. The smaller spider turned out to be trapped prey. The big one was in charge. That in itself startled me so much that I left the whole thing intact. And it's still there.

Coming back from a walk into town just now I checked out the web. Smaller, probably paralyzed spider still hangs in the middle of the web. (I can't help but think of Frodo caught by Shelob the spider monster in "Lord of the Rings"). And, well, Shelob herself is still hanging out in a sort of funnel-like cave in her web. The web's in a good spot--lots of flies and other insects are drawn to our porch light. But it's just a little too close to the front doorknob. Some cooler day when I have more energy, the web will have to go. Hopefully Shelob will easily relocate herself to some less obvious spot. And not feel the need to take any kind of revenge on me. 

Sorry, big spider.

You're not trying to frighten.

Webs are what you know.

August 28: Orange Moon

Although the moon has begun to wane, it is no less impressive when it rises, as I discovered last night on my drive back from dinner in Rockland. Tired, I was only thinking about getting home when I started up Powerhouse Hill on Route One in Glen Cove. For a few seconds you get a glimpse of the bay over Clam Cove, and there was the moon: huge, orange, slightly lopsided, still low, rising just above the water. I gasped and almost pulled over. But then I decided my one awestruck moment was enough and continued home with that image of the moon burned into my head.

A glimpse of the bay,
and--oh!--orange moon rising,
almost full, all mine.

Soundtrack: Erykah Badu, "Orange Moon"

August 27: Loon at Noon

Although it's not unusual to sometimes see loons on the river near my office, I don't usually hear them here. At high noon on this sunny late summer day, however, the repeated calls of a loon rode the breeze down the river and in through my office windows--a nice reminder for me that while I work away inside, water and birds are not too far away outside.

Of course I instantly began to play in my head with the words loon and noon... The loon calls at noon near the full moon. Too soon? The mouth loves making those long "oo" sounds. No wonder kids learning to talk like "Goodnight, Moon" so much. Or books about loons. Around here most children know what a loon is and can imitate for you what sound it makes as soon as they're old enough to talk.

But beyond the wordplay, I also enjoyed the fact that this timely loon served as my lunch bell today. I don't know what made me check the time when I heard its calls, but when I did, I was surprised to see that it was noon. I'd thought it was much earlier in the day. I was reminded how when the woolen mill was still operating in downtown Camden, its whistle for lunch breaks and shift changes set the schedule for the whole town. When you heard it go off in the afternoon, you knew it was 4:00, for example. Perhaps this loon is the same punctual bird that calls while flying upriver every morning at 7:30.

Flute-song of the loon
celebrates the sun at noon.
And wind, and crickets.

August 26: Hypnotic Hummingbird

As I stood on the outside deck of a friend's mountainside home today, hummingbirds swarmed and screeched below me. Ten or more of these feisty little birds zipped around the feeders, chasing each other, perching nearby, feeding on the sugar water, and otherwise buzzing in and out of sight within the leaves of the surrounding oak trees. I haven't seen this many in one place in a long time. My friend says they have to refill their four feeders every two days now. Activity around the feeders has picked up in the past couple of weeks, and he and his wife think the birds must be fattening up to get ready for migration. We all marveled over how amazing it is that such little creatures can travel so far--although if you watch them in action, they certainly don't seem fragile in any way other than size. They can hold their own.

A chipping sparrow flew onto a branch below me. As I watched, a hummingbird hovered in front of it and dipped back and forth, tracing an arc in the air like a pendulum, over and over. I've seen hummingbirds perform territorial displays like that with each other, especially species out west, but I don't recall seeing one pull that on a bird of another species altogether. Perhaps it was simply checking out the sparrow, but it seemed more deliberate than that--like the hummer was trying to make a point with its ritualistic repetition. It swung in front of the sparrow a dozen times or more, but the larger bird didn't even seem to notice, and it certainly wasn't scared away by the hummingbird's display. Perhaps, as I was, it was simply fascinated.

Swinging a green gem,
your body, you hypnotize
a watching sparrow.

August 25: Field in the Rain

In the middle of a torrential rainstorm, I await my co-worker (who has the key) at the Tranquility Grange in Lincolnville. I'm sitting in my car, listening to music and admiring the raindrop-distorted view out my windows.

I could sit here for hours, I think, contemplating the wild beauty of these fields and the old, shingled grange hall, inside of which, I know, all is dry, warm, and a little musty. We will sit on long, numbered pews with horsehair cushions within walls featuring historic plates and old letters, while outside the rain will continue to fall. This is the rural Maine I love. 

Fields in a downpour--

lush, wet, beautiful tangle.

Me, dry in my car.

August 24: Woodpile

My neighbors have finished stacking their wood. Across the street several cords are neatly piled about eight feet high on a wooden platform. There's another tight stack on pallets alongside their porch. And yet another one next to their shed. By virtue of many hours of splitting and stacking by our energetic neighbor, minimally assisted by the older of his five kids, the heap of loose logs that was dumped in their driveway in midsummer has been transformed into these ideal symbols of a traditional New England lifestyle. And our neighbors probably feel pretty good when they look out the window, too. They're ready for winter before summer's even passed. (And they're relying on a renewable resource to heat their home.)

We heated with wood when I was growing up, and I have many memories of my dad splitting four-foot lengths into logs that would fit into our wood stove while my sister and I stacked. I can't say these are especially fond memories, though we were able to appreciate the tangible results of our work at day's end: a neat woodpile. I was even less fond of the chore of filling the woodbox. Bark would scrape off on my arms or my clothes, spiders would crawl off the logs, or I'd get an awkward load and drop everything in the snow. I didn't realize it at the time, but it turns out the wood smoke also exacerbated my asthma. So fortunately for my arms and my lungs, my husband and I heat our house with propane. But somehow I don't get the same satisfaction looking at the two white tanks out back as I do when I look across at my neighbor's woodpiles.

Neatly stacked woodpiles
surround the house, awaiting
winter's arrival.

August 23: Crow Neighborhood

A family group of five crows lives in my neighborhood. Every morning when I wake up I hear them conversing along the river, cawing back and forth. They seem to have a lot to say first thing in the morning, and it involves a bit of whining from the young crows. During the day they periodically get worked up about something outside my office and make a big racket that, like today, often gets the blue jays involved, but I haven't been able to see what they're all yelling about. Sometimes I'll drive by a lawn and see five black crows scattered across the mown green grass, calmly grazing. One big happy family. I tried to leave some over-ripe peaches out on the office lawn for them, but of course they all flew off as soon as I opened the door.

Aware of the crows,
I listen for them all day,
offer them peaches.

August 22: Scarborough Marsh

Change is in the air at Scarborough Marsh. Along Eastern Road trail, the leaves of some of the wild cherry bushes were already turning red. At high tide with little of the mud flats exposed, shorebirds weren't easy to see. They flew overhead, moving from one low patch to another, their high-pitched calls drifting across the marsh on the warm air.

Above the marsh grass, the white heads of egrets catch the eye. From Eastern Road the view is wide enough that we could see a harrier dipping above a field of goldenrod on the far side of the marsh. Over another part of the marsh 14 crows returned to the trees, having successfully escorted a red-tail out of their airspace.

We walked out between the pannes on a beaten trail and got close looks at some bright young least sandpipers. A snowy egret ran back and forth in the shallow water. A Canada goose raised its head from behind a hummock. On the walk back, in a pool on the other side of the road we picked out a little blue heron among some egrets. A few crickets hummed in the faded grass. Only a couple of salt marsh sparrows remained, scuttling from tuft to tuft, and the swallow nesting boxes are empty now.

Some leaves reddening.
Plaintive calls of sandpipers
shifting with the tide.

August 21: For Charlie

We spent a good portion of the day at the Wellesley Country Club celebrating the life of Charlie Palmer, who would have been 76 today. The father of my best friend, he was one of the kindest, most generous-hearted human beings I've ever known. The event was a true celebration--not without tears, but also with a lot of laughter because that's the kind of person he was. Around him there was always laughter, stories, and genuine caring for whomever he was with.

The photo on the back of the program featured Charlie standing up on a chair giving an extravagant toast at our wedding. We felt like family with Charlie, as did, I think, everyone in that crowded room, only some of whom were actual family. Charlie, my man, we miss you. You have left a large void in our lives, and we're all going to have to be better people to help fill it. This one's for you:

Charlie, your friend dreamed
where you are there is baseball.
That is excellent.