Vinalhaven Sightings

old harbor pond

Welcome to the Vinalhaven sightings report

March 15^th 2019 edition.

Big thanks to VLT and MCHT. The VSR would literally not happen without them! Thanks a ton!

Highlights – Dead deer, otter, mink, loon (exactly what are they up to these days?), snow fleas, ferry ride, great cormorants, ducks, red-necked grebe, guillemots, Eastern Phoebe, peek-a-poop, old harbor pond and so much more!

former ladder

Business: Contact us – vinalhavensightins@gmail.com – send us your comments, sightings, love, hate (try not to), photos, emails for the exclusive list, limited editions and whatever else you’d like to share! “There is no better place to become immortalized and have your legacy cemented than in the VSR” – actual quote I just made up!

Tiit trick – the photos are click bait. So click on them to make them super-sized!

dead buck
photo by Niall Conlan

Sightings – Niall Conlan –proud father, longtime VSR supporter/reader, and all around great guy -- was kind enough to send in these wonderful photos of a 8 point white tailed deer buck he found washed up on Vinalhaven’s west side (West coast rules!).

What a find! “Majestic”, “wow” and “9” were just a few of the comments that came raining around the “instagram”. Great score and great photos! Thanks for sharing Niall!

washed up
photo by Niall Conlan

Who’s singing – Northern Cardinal, Black-capped Chickadee, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Dark-eyed Junco, Eastern Phoebe (Rockland Ferry Terminal).

Lots of Robins back as well

Ferry Ride – (3/11) decent lighting with the sun a little higher on the 8:45 from Rockland. Calmness too which allowed for distant sightings. I could see this bin of loons and other tweeters from a distance. The best viewing conditions from a Vinalhaven bound ferry I have had in the last four years. It was that nice.

Common Eider

Common Loon, Red-necked Grebe, Black Guillemot, Razorbill, Great Cormorant, Red-breasted Merganser, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, Purple Sandpiper, Surf Scoter, Black Scoter, Oldtails, Bald Eagle, Common Eider,

black guillemot - actively molting

lots of surf scoters this year

Pair of oldtails, pre molt

there is a purple sandpiper in this photo

Harbor seals being Harbor Seals

common loon preening

Loons - so some of the Loons are preening….like a lot of heavy preening. I found this definition of preening online – When a bird or a cat preens, it smooths its feathers or cleans its fur. When you preen, you primp and pay careful attention to how you're dressed and groomed, as if you're inviting the whole world to watch you.

nice bin

Not really the most professional definition, but we’ll take it. When a Loon is preening the feathers on its belly an observer will get a “ventral sided” perspective of the bird (AKA - the birds undercarriage). Several loons were observed “diggin’ in” hard with their bills and they might just be doing a little more than your average preening. The big pre-breeding molt is on, an exciting time in any loon’s life. Makes you/me speculate on whether some of the preening may be an individual helping the molting process along. I wonder if things are itchy during molt. I don’t think I will ever know.

(3/6)looks like the otter came from a nearby latrine
bounding and belly sliding towards the den

Otter sign from the ferry – Lairey’s Narrow specialty. We are all familiar with the handful of narrow(ish) passages the ferry goes through as it winds its way to and fro Carver’s Harbor and the Rockland Ferry terminal. Lairey’s Narrows is one of the “tighter” passages, and marks the short distance between Leadbetter Island to the north and Lairey’s Island to the south. This should not be confusing to anyone at this point.

same cove, deeper snow. belly slide is more robust across the
top of the ledge, sweet multiple use belly slide
reaches the high tide line

After a good snow the relative closeness the ferry gets to these islands opportune the opportunity for observers on the ferry to “track” animals that may have moved along the snow covered shorelines the night before. For years we have been commenting and documenting about a spot on the north end of Lairey’s island that more than often (“usually” even!) than not shows sign of River Otter use in the form of trails and belly slides after a winter storm. Snow on Leadbetter can also capture sign of otter activity, but the island’s south facing rocky shoreline warms up and often melts before too long, taking the trails and tracks with it.

slightly closer view

Anyway, there is an otter den in an old stump on Lairey’s that is easily visible from the ferry and on both 3/6 and 3/11 clear sign of otter activity was observed. With River Otters averaging a 12 year life span in the wild, I wonder what generation of otter this particular den is on…..

the mink trail is in the lower left corner

Basin - (3/11) – Tracks gave away a mink that came out of the Basin’s water and headed into the nearby spruce forest. The mink must have struggled in the deep soft snow, or at least was forced to put out a maximum effort to bound through the substrate. After a dozen or so bounds the mink opted to tunnel through the snow for about 8 or 9 feet, and then proceeded to bound its way towards the forest.

bounding trail of a hard working mink

Mink are cool in that tunneling is an option when the snow is fluffy and deep. Our other favorite weasel, the river otter opts to belly slide in such conditions. If the snow is even too deep for slides, otters seem to stick under the ice. The may tunnel short distances through the snow to get to ice holes or den openings, but other than that I have not seen otter tunnels in the deep snows of winters past. Anyway, it was fun to find the mink tunnel

here's the opening in the snow where the mink
started to tunnel

the tunnel stretched between the mink tracks
with two openings where the tunnel caved in.
undoubtedly long after the mink was gone

and here's where it came out

The warmth of (3/11) combined with rain and snow that had collected on top of Old Harbor Pond ice made for some slushy, snowshoeing conditions.

snow fleas!

my snowshoe track with snowfleas

And with said warmth, everyone’s favorite winter insect - Snow Fleas! (Achorutes nivicolus) – were announcing their presence with authority and numbers! They are members of the order Collembola (Springtails) which are detritus munching vegetarians – loving the algae, pollen and leaf mold (yummy!). On warm winter days they can be seen in huge groups (numbering over 250,000 in some instances) as they spring their way between openings in the snow.

my snowshoe teeth track with snow fleas

snowfleas and twig

I snowshoed through and on my return several of my tracks had already been inundated by Snow Fleas! You know it’s a warm in the snow when Snow Fleas are bouncing around!