Vinalhaven Sightings

from Lane's

Welcome to the Vinalhaven Sightings Report

July 11 2021

Calderwood Island

VLT. MCHT and you

‘I like it when we all play nice together’ - anonymous co-worker

sparkplug, the lighthouse
not the farm

Highlights – Mushrooms, butterflies, birds including seabirds, spiders, sunsets, ants, the fruits of Calderwood Island– you know! The usual suspects!

Business: contact us – we welcome your emails and comments and nature whatnots, and whatnot. vinalhavensightings@gmail.com . It’s okay to share.

Tiit Trick – click on photos to enlarge, jumbo size them!

Slight delay –brief delay in posting this. Woke up a sleeping giant and its mother last weekend, which because rather consuming and exhausting at the same time. Those often go together I guess. Ahhhhh people…..

Ants
photo by Linnell Mather

Sightings – Ants – herds of them. Linnell Mather was kind enough to send in this video and photo of a ‘gang of ants’ that she crossed paths with ‘on the road near my house’.

There goes the neighborhood.

Funny thing is, and it’s not so funny, the same morning while packing up to head to the island there was a mass, excuse me – a gang of actively undulating (not the correct term and a bad description) ants in the driveway at 4:30 in the morning in St George.

Linnell's gang

video by Linnell Mather

‘Linnell’s gang’ (which is the official and correct phrase to describe the ant gang that Linnell saw) returned the next day (or the next) as did the gang in St George. In fact, the ants went nuts on the base of the sunflower in the front and took down what must have been a giant redwood from the ant’s perspective (ant-thropomorphism! Is that a dad joke? Ryan gates where are you?)

tip toe sunset

Anyway – thanks Linnell for the photos and report. We’ll see if the recent rains can keep the ants in line.

Boat Rides – Red-billed Tropicbird – Captain John Drury (don’t feel like you have to salute him, it’s optional) reports the Red-billed Tropicbird is being seen with consistency.

red-billed tropicbird
by John Drury

Check out John’s blog – http://sightingsfromskua.blogspot.com/ - for recent sightings and great photos. Contact John for a boat ride!

Here’s from his July 6 posting –

photo by John Drury

Razorbills, Great Cormorant, Arctic terns, Puffins, Black Guillemots, Common terns , Double-crested Cormorant, daily, Murre most days, also Wilsons Petrels, gannets are becoming more frequent, I have seen just two sooty shearwater and one Manx, but expect more shearwaters before long, also Eider, Black-backed Gulls, Laughing Gulls and Herring Gulls, there has been a Peregrine at Seal Island.

The Red-billed Tropicbird has been out there,

There have been a few Harlequin ducks at Brimstone.

Porpoise and Grey Seals every day, though the porpoise have been fairly few,

goldenrod crab spider on vetch

PSA – it’s tempting to call the Red-billed Tropicbird something cute like ‘Troppy’ or ‘Mr. Shake Your Tail Feather’ or ‘whatnot’. There has been a request for this activity to stop. Not going into details, but if you are wondering why, go to the mirror, put on a smile and repeat ‘Its name is Troppy’ and ‘we call it Troppy’ 100 times. We should all be on the same page now.

Around the island - Common Terns – they are around in good numbers, which may or may not bode well for the status of this year’s offspring.

lane's island Pheasant
photo by Rick Morgan

Lots of birds singing around the island - Northern Parula, Ovenbird, Yellow, Yellow-rumped and Black-throated Green Warblers, Common Yellowthroat, American Redstart, Winter Wren, Brown Creeper, Hermit Thrush, White-throated Sparrow

Frogs – Spring Peeper – Crossed paths with this little being along Seal Bay. Don’t get to see them as often as I would like to, always fun to see.

cool toes

Trip to Calderwood –

Fruits of Calderwood

Blueberries – seemed a little early in late June, but right about now seems about the right time…

bay berry

Bayberry – looking rather greenish and naïve. Will get grey soon enough.

Hadn’t really looked at them closely in the green stage. What else have I been missing? So much.

Flowers – Ghost Pipes – found this patch the other day, seems early as well

Cool moth on them.

rose pogonia

Rose Pogonia – there you have it

exciting times mycologically speaking

Mushrooms – Good push of mushrooms on the early side of things in late June (traditionally speaking and with limited long term personal data) and now a burst with recent quality rains.

Here’s a few we (the royal ‘we’) have been appreciating lately.

double conjoined? conjoined triplets?

Boletes - conjoined Lilac-brown Boletes (Tylopilus eximius).

classic tylopilus

I have always been a fan of this species, saw my first in Acadia ’05. Diggin’ the Tylopilus scales on the stalk/stipe/

action photo of the conjoinedination

Had never seen conjoined ‘Lilac-brown twins’ before, much less conjoined ‘Lilac-brown triplets’ as this group presented itself. Find of the year? Doubt it….