Howdy from Hog Island

I've got posts pre-scheduled to get us through this week AND next, but I couldn't resist breaking in for a dispatch from Maine.
Taken yesterday on Harbor Island. I am holding Liam's head up because he had the wiggles, bad. That boy had holes to dig and porpoise bones to uncover, and he just couldn't stand for a picture. Obviously I did not get the Wear a Blue Shirt memo.

Gosh, it's good to be here, with a parula warbler singing just outside in the misty cool air. We've had the most amazingly fantastic time birding, and the sun, which had been predicted to hide all week, blessed us yesterday for our cruise to Eastern Egg Rock to see puffins, and for a butterfly-studded hike on Harbor Island. This is my favorite puffin shot of the day.

The kids are enjoying themselves; life is good. Here, Liam has discovered that it is possible to make a sand angel, just as one would make a snow angel. He is putting a special twist on it, though, making his sand angel enormously anatomically correct. BOTB's son, that one.

This morning, we take a walk originally plotted out by Roger Tory Peterson in the village of Medomac, when he led birding groups around Hog Island. The place hasn't changed much, and the walk is birdy as all get out--even though Roger would be 100 this year.

Yesterday seems like a dream--an all-day cruise around Muscongus Bay. The sun broke out and smiled on us all afternoon as we picnicked and hiked on Harbor Island. Butterflies danced in the hawkweed and we squeezed through a dark cave and found a fairy house on the other side. A perfect day was capped by the news that Bill would be on NPR that afternoon. He went birding with Melissa Block and her adorable almost-six-year-old daughter Chloe, and it was all captured on tape. We got to tune in and listen, with our whole Joy of Birding group attending.

Go listen here. It's like birding with Bill.

To Maine!

It has taken me quite awhile to work around to telling you about Maine. As wonderful as it was, our Maine trip was the last in a string of big trips that started full force in February. Five talks in Ohio, then Guatemala, West Virginia, Boston, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Maine. Each one was wonderful in its own way, but it's nice to have done them all now. I was so thrilled to get home again to stay for awhile, to water my flowers and plant a few late ones, to harvest the snap peas and beans, to feed the buzzing crowds of hummingbirds around the front porch, that I got caught up in it all. Still am. There's so much weeding and gardening to be done... But now I'm going to take you to Maine.

It was such an honor to be asked to join writer/artist Scott Weidensaul (yes, he paints and draws beautifully!), author of Living on the Wind, The Ghost with Trembling Wings, and Return to Wild America, to join him in teaching a first-time course on Hog Island. Maybe calling it a course is a bit of a stretch. We birded, talked about birds, pointed out birds, gave talks…we had a blast. Thirty-two campers, most of them great birders, came to experience the boreal forest and Maine coast. A number of them, me included, had a not-so-hidden agenda to see an Atlantic puffin, after a lifetime of yearning.

Most of the buildings on the island date from the turn of the 20th century. They’re pretty, uninsulated, creaky, and basic, just what you need and no more. I snuck up on the boys in a rare afternoon moment of repose in our little cabin. Bill has collapsed, in full birding dress, in between the morning field trip and lunch. Liam mowed through a pile of chapter books on the plane and in spare moments like this. He’s resting on Piggy (pronounced Pr’GAHH), a pillow that, for better or worse, goes with us everywhere. At least there’s not much danger of losing a titty-pink pig pillow in a hotel room.


Staying on Hog Island immerses you in 11-foot tides, tangy salt air, the cries of gulls and terns, and the putt, hum, and roar of lobster boats. Scott warned us that the lobstermen get going pretty early in the morning, so we might not want to stay up too late. Down this far east, the June sky starts getting light around 4:15 AM. Just when most people are deep in REM. Black-throated green warblers tune up around 4:30. And the lobstermen come to check their pots, whose colorful buoys are so thick that it’s an absolute wonder there are any lobsters left, at the same time. Sound carries over water, and the boat engines do not purr. They go BRAAAAP.

Reminders of the past are everywhere on Maine’s coast. Near Hog island lies the wreck of a five-masted schooner, the last one built, and among the last to be decommissioned. Here's one like her. She was used as a lobster pound until she deliquesced into the sea. And there she lies and rots, the whisper of her beautiful form collapsing to decay.
You may be sure there is more. I was up until midnight downloading and resizing just some of the Maine photos. But now, there is weeding to be done. We got 1/2" of rain last night and I now have a prayer of uprooting some of the iron-hard weeds in the gardens, so off I go.