Outside My Window

Today in coastal Maine we have a Heat Advisory and a Tropical Storm Warning.  Heat today will feel like 100 degrees and then tomorrow, wind, waves and rain.  So far all is calm.

Asters are blooming everywhere now and they’re notoriously difficult to identify.  So many look alike!

Is this one a New England aster?  Dianne Machesney photographed it at Cape May which is well within its range.

What do you think? 

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

We’re on Day Three of four days in a row of incredibly hot weather for Maine.  At this time of year the normal high we’re used to is 75. Today it will be 90 and the air quality will be bad because the air is moving up from PA, NYC, and the east coast.  It’s too hot to hike.

Some of you asked if Hurricane Earl will affect us. Yes, but my husband and I are looking forward to the rain & cooler temperatures.  We might regret that attitude at dawn on Saturday when Earl will have been here for 6 hours, but for now Earl is welcome to arrive ASAP!

There’s a place on the Park Loop Road at Acadia National Park where people often stop to look at Bear Brook Pond.  When a tour bus stops it attracts attention and many cars stop too.  People wonder, “What are they looking at?”  It isn’t a bear.

Bear Brook Pond, nestled against the flank of Champlain Mountain, is also called Beaver Dam Pond for good reason.  Near its far edge is a huge mound of sun-bleached sticks that’s an unusual sight for most of Acadia’s visitors.  It’s even unusual to me.

In southwestern Pennsylvania we have beavers but we don’t have many ponds.  Our beavers tend to make their homes in creek and river banks, usually around the roots of overhanging trees.   One such place is at the big bend in Raccoon Creek at the Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve.  Over the years the beavers have felled the trees on the floodplain and dragged them into a pile in the creek below an overhanging tree.  It’s not a lodge in the classic sense but it serves their purpose. 

Every time I visit the Wildflower Reserve I’m amazed at the changes to the beavers’ home.  During floods the creek piles more debris against their construction or it sweeps part of their home away.  This undoubtedly keeps them busy all the time but I never see them.  They work at night.

Which brings me back to Acadia.  Though beavers are nocturnal, there are always a few cars stopped at the pond and people standing by the road hoping to see them.  I have never seen a beaver there — I always show up at the wrong time — but I stop too.  Maybe some day I’ll see one as close as in this photo. 

(photo from Wikimedia Commons of a beaver in Canada.  Click the photo to see the original)

Every year beginning in late August, broad-winged hawks head south on a 4,500 mile journey from their nesting territories in North America to their winter grounds in Central and South America.  It’s a journey many of us witness at Pennsylvania hawk watches. 

In WQED’s second offering on Things With Wings Sunday (September 26), we will broadcast a beautiful award-winning documentary, Journey of the Broad-winged Hawk.  

The program, produced by New Hampshire Public Television, traces the journey of the hawks and connects with people who watch them along the way. 

It starts in New Hampshire’s White Mountains where we learn how the hawks ride thermals, pauses at Hawk Mountain to watch the migration, then travels down to Corpus Christi where huge kettles of broad-wings fly by during the week of September 23-30.  By the time the hawks reach Texas there are more than 540,000 of them on the move. 

Some broad-wings will spend the winter in Ecuador so the program follows them there to highlight two beautiful places –  Maquipucuna Preserve and Condor Park in Otavalo — where we meet the people of Ecuador who protect bird habitat and educate others about birds. 

Along the way we learn that, for broad-winged hawks our mountains and coastlines are highways and both New Hampshire and Ecuador are “home.”   

The hawks and their journey connect us across two continents.

Don’t miss Journey of the Broad-winged Hawk on Things with Wings Sunday, September 26 at 3:00pm.

(photo of Ecuador’s mountains from NHPTV’s Journey of the Broad-winged Hawk)

One of the most plentiful ducks in autumn at Acadia National Park is the common eider.

When eiders finish nesting their families form large flocks and move along the coast to find mollusks and crustaceans to eat.  The birds stay so close together on the water that an eider flock is called a raft.

A reliable place to find them at Acadia is just off Otter Point at high tide.  The rafts float above submerged rocks where the mussels and crabs are lurking.  Eiders must be very strong swimmers because they seem to prefer diving through crashing waves to pluck a meal from the rocks 50 feet underwater. 

In the fall the males change out of their beautiful black and white breeding plumage and become brown with white accents.  With the females and juveniles already brown-colored, and the males changing to “definitive basic plumage,” the rafts are composed of mostly brown birds.

Believe me, this can be confusing when you’ve heard there are eiders at Otter Point and you can’t find any that look like this!

(photo by Kaido Kärner from Shutterstock)

In late summer the grass doesn’t grow fast and we all get a break from cutting it.  In our yard we have a good crop of weeds because we don’t use weed killer and the grass has gone dormant during this month’s dry spell. 

The dominant weed in our yard is English plantain, raising its bald, knob-like flower heads eight inches above the grass.  It’s the only thing that needs cutting.

My husband debates with me, “Do I really need to run the mower over those knobs?  The grass is short.”  We aren’t gardeners so the plantain stays.

In Maine they have much prettier weeds.  The grass is going dormant here too but instead of ugly English plantain, their hawkweed is in bloom. 

Hawkweed is in the Aster family and there are many varieties.  The flower I see in Maine yards is probably Field Hawkweed or Pale Hawkweed.  Both grow one to three feet tall and produce pretty yellow flowers.  In mowed areas the flowers don’t reach that height so they’re about as tall as my plantain. 

In my opinion Hawkweed of any kind is much prettier than dandelions. 

No debate here.  Don’t cut the hawkweed!

(photo from Wikimedia Commons by D. Gordon E. Robertson. Note that the flower pictured above is Canada Hawkweed. Click on the photo to see the original.)

When you enter Maine on I-95 you are greeted with this motto:  The Way Life Should Be.

I agree.  That’s why I come here.

Life should always be On Vacation, surrounded by beautiful scenery.

Bring on the birds!

(photo of sunrise at Acadia National Park by Moses Martin)

Just a quick note.  Cory DeStein asked me about Hawk Watch information and I realized that many of you may be interested in it too.

Hawk Watches, where people count migrating birds of prey, are active right now across North America.  In Pennsylvania the first big push of broad-winged hawks is in progress.  You can see how many broad-wings pass each day in the statistics posted on the HMANA (Hawk Migration Association of North America) Hawk Count website.  (Choose the hawk watch by name.)

The HMANA website is also a great way to locate a hawk watch near you.  Just click on the map of North America here and select your state.  If you decide to visit one, keep in mind the weather makes all the difference.  Hawks like to migrate in good weather with a tail wind. 

Not sure what a Hawk Watch is?  Click here for a 2005 story that describes what it’s like to watch hawks at Council Cup in Berks County.

(logos from HMANA at hawkcount.org.  Click on the images to visit the website.)

Today’s anatomy lesson is about eyebrows.

The supercilium, sometimes called the bird’s eyebrow, literally means “above the eyelid.”  It’s a set of facial feathers which extend above the eye from the bird’s beak to the back of its head. 

Often this feature is light colored and, on some birds, it doesn’t extend all the way to the back of the head.  In any case, it’s an important field mark and quite useful when identifying sparrows. 

Here, a chipping sparrow at Marcy Cunkelman’s feeder poses to model his white supercilium (indicated by blue arrow).

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)