Broad-winged Hawk

Spruce Grouse

Shyly tame.

Hummingbirds

A lazy Sunday. Spring really sounds like, and feels like spring. The days are warming slowly, or at least the bounce between way too cool and it's a little warmer than we are used to, has moderated. Nights give way to spring peepers, the woodcock are still peenting. It's an odd way to describe the call, but it fits exactly the way they sound. A rising trill late in the night means the toads are starting up.

The rest of the state is greening up, and Rangeley is slowly,painfully slowly, almost unbearable in the speed it comes creeping up the mountain. It will come, and it will bowl us over with a speed we can't quite comprehend, then summer is here and it seems before we can settle down into the good life of a warm summer evening, autumn is here and then...  Our spring and summer are to be savored, it doesn't matter how you do it, as long as being outside is where you spend your time. Let the insects feast.

So I was sitting on the deck, it's warmish,muggy even, just sitting with a friend, watching the hummingbirds. It's too tempting to pass up, I run inside, grab the camera and they pose.

Spring thus far.

The following is the phenology of spring. It's the poetry of spring.


March 20- red-winged blackbird. The Infant.
March 22- Eastern Comma, mourning cloaks. Kennebago River ice is out.
March 23- Turkey vulture. Alders and aspens beginning to flower.
March 28- after a week of above average temps, we have 2 inches of snow. Starting around 3/12 to 3/24 temps were above average, reaching up to the mid 70’s. Majority of snow has melted. Now it’s more like average

April 1- Winter wren
April 3 - kestrel at golf course
April 7- Turkeys gobbling, first time since 3/18. Snowshoe hare at home are still all white, at the BSC, mostly changed.
April 8- rusty blackbird ,BSC.
April 10- Saw a woodchuck in Oquossoc
April 11- Tree swallows.
April 13- Eastern Phoebe
April 14- Ruby crowned kinglet. Northern Harrier.
April 15- Coltsfoot in bloom. Red-tailed hawk,loon. Possible cherry gall azure, solitary bees. Wood frogs.  A bumblebee.
April 16- Not FOY, but porcupine, bald eagle, turkeys.  Spring peepers. First dandelion
April 17- common snipe, savannah sparrows. Ice out Rangeley. FOY tiger beetles, meloe sp. blister beetles. American toad early am. Yellow rumped warbler, chipping sparrow.  Flickers.
April 18- Wood turtle tracks at BSC. Found in morning, more than likely made yesterday.
April 19- Trip to Farmington. Aspens are beginning to leaf from Madrid, on.




I was going back to compare how this year has been to previous years. About 2 weeks to a month ahead for some things.

Northern Lights

Last night we had a storm. I didn't know, I only know that I woke at 11:30 last night, looked out the window and the sky was glowing. Just a faint green glow, if you stared at it, you thought you might see a curtain, but the camera showed more. 

And so I braced my camera on the windowsill, clicked the shutter and hoped for the best.

I'm not a tourist, I live here.

In all endeavors of life, it does help to keep a little bit of humor  with you.

I notice when people from away come for a weekend or a week, the outside light usually stays on all night. Why? For the raccoons and skunks? To annoy the neighbors? Are you people scared if the dark?
Once, some people left their light on for an extended period of time. Said light shone into my normally very dark room for that time. It was annoying. It went out. Enough said.

As I look up at my calendar, I see it is now April. The town is and has been very quiet for about 2 weeks. The snowmobilers and most of the skiers have gone, and the summer complaints still have a few months before they start to harass us. Or entertain us. You see, it's all a matter of how you look at it.

With spring I'll be getting out more and hopefully reviving this blog. I have some ideas for some projects and well  we will have to see just how much fun I get get into, so hang in there.

A summer evening

It's snowing out.  But this time we are supposed to have more snow than our daily dustings of late. We shall see.  As I haven't been out other than to walk the dog due to a cold, my mind was wandering back to  several years ago. The summer.  It had been a hot day, and I had wanted to float down a river. Needed to. It's as simple as that.  Now I don't always do the easiest things, some of what I do can quietly be called a sufferfest. I have a few friends that can back me up on that. They can also question my sanity, but hey, we have fun.

So early evening  I took a small raft, walked it up 2 miles of dirt roads, to the Kennebago River. I had in mind a float down the section from the bridge on  Grant's Camp Rd to Steep Bank Pool. It was mid-summer and the water level low. Remember that, it comes back to bit me.   I put the raft in the river, hopped in and didn't move. I didn't move a lot.  The rocks bumping my butt was not reassuring. I walked.

It's not hard to walk down a river. It's probably one of the more enjoyable things in life, but with time beginning to fly, the earth rapidly turning towards night, it becomes more of a concern. I thought floating I could cover the 2 miles (probably more due to the turns) before sunset.  Those rocks bumping along my backside every time I hopped back in the raft  was getting real old.

The sun set, and the northern summer twilight did it's magic.  I floated and walked on down the river. The water murmurings, it's language,  makes you think, relax.   I kept trying to judge my location , kept going back to my mental map, always trying to gauge my speed with where I needed to be before it got too dark.  The dark was winning.

Coyotes started howling about 100 yards downstream from me.  By this time you wouldn't have been able to read a paper. I still had a half mile to go.  Not a soul was on the river, the sandbars I stopped only showed moose tracks. It was quiet.

And before I know it, I'm back at my jeep, dripping wet,waving some mosquitoes away, and packing up. I look up and about 100 feet away is a bull moose watching me. It was dark.  I can't wait to do it again.