Welcome to the Vinalhaven Sightings Report

September 15 -October 1, 2025

Thank you - Vinalhaven Land Trust & Maine Coast Heritage Trust

‘Hugs and Twirls for Old Times and New!’

 

'Torso'

Highlights – Yellow-crowned Night Heron, Snowy Egret, Carolina Wren, Harbor Porpoise, Mushrooms – featuring King Bolete!, Sea Pickle, Bayberry, Northern Blue Iris, Monarchs, Snakes, Trip to Calderwood! and so much more!

 

Down to Business – vinalhavensightings@gmail.com

 

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Get on the list! – send emails (yours or other’s) to the above address to receive an email announcement every time a new VSR is posted. It’s about that time and it costs nothing! And you’ll feel better about yourself if you do. Maybe.

 

Send us your stuff! – Hey! Got something ‘nature-ee like’ about the Fox Islands and/or the larger Penobscot Bay area that you are just itching to share with others?  Send ‘em in – photos, sightings, deep thoughts, old stuff, new stuff – to vinalhavensightings@gmail.com .

 You'll most likely not regret it! Guaranteed!

 

'numbskull'

PSA – Wear Orange in the woods

Trix is for kids - Tiit Trick!  - click on photo to make 'em bigger!

Randall trick - turn yer phone to the horizontal when looking at the VSR on the phone.  

juvenile Yellow Crowned Night Heron
photo by Valerie McQuillan

Sightings! – Funky Tweeters - Valerie McQuillan was kind enough to send in these photos of a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night-heron that spent some time recently in down town Vinalhaven!

 

yellow crowned night heron
photo by Valerie McQuillan

Valerie – as honest as honest can be – admitted that her ‘better-half’, Don (McQuillan) spotted the night-heron while she was visiting the New Era Gallery (New Era Gallery plug! Everybody go buy some art stuff and mention the ‘VSR’ for a 0% discount! You’ll most likely feel better about yourself (guaranteed!).

 

YCNH
Photo by Valerie McQuillan

Anyway – the most current Yellow-crowned Night Heron breeding range maps (that a minimal search could turn up) show their breeding range to include much of the southern and central US and along the Atlantic coast up through Connecticut. This is a species that is known to wander, and southern/mid-coast Maine is considered part of their ‘passage migrant’ range (remember, this was a minimal search). I think, in other words, they (YC Night Herons) make appearances in Mid-Coast Maine on a somewhat regular (yearly?) basis, and apparently the fall is when juveniles are likely to visit. Either way welcome to Maine newbie! The way life should be…   

 

couple o' snakes

Thank you to Valerie and Don for the sighting and photos! Keep ‘em coming!

 

Rich Holschuh reported 2 Snowy Egrets spotted at Low Tide from Armbrust Hill. Always a treat to see Egrets on Vinalhaven! 

 

Carolina Wren – heard singing up the hill across from the ferry terminal and again across from the co-op.

 red-breasted Nuthatch – very few in the summer of 2024, can’t get away from them in the summer of 2025!

 

Frogs – Spring Peepers can be heard peeping just about everywhere. They won’t be quiet!

 

sea pickle

That Red Stuff in the Marshes / What’s new with Sea Pickle –

 

It’s about that time for (Salicornia depressa) – a/k/a Virginia Glasswort and/or Sea Pickle (that’s how I learned it!) -  to add that special red glow to salt marshes around the island (and beyond!).

 

sea pickle in the ballground

From the Ballground to the Basin, and all/most salt marshes in between, Sea Pickles can be found year round. For much of the year local Glassworts are green (and a lovely green at that), for much of winter they are old and crispy (sound like anyone you know?), but its in the late summer/fall when they change colors/show their true colors and add what can be quite the dramatic splash of red to marshes that are seemingly ‘fading’. It is that time of the year.

 

Ask Javier Penalosa –

Q: What’s your favorite thing about Salicornia depressa?

Javier’s answer – ‘Fall color. Sphagnum color very fine now too. Those tree colors are just for the tourists.’

 

Didn’t ask about Sphagnum, but this is Javier in a nutshell! Thanks Javier!

 

Here’s some Glasswort stuff I lifted from Sue Pikes’ article ‘Sea pickles are the most common salt marsh plant’

 

Glassworts are ‘‘halophytes’ (plants adapted to salty conditions). They are also considered a pioneer species; meaning they are usually the first plants to settle in a mudflat and begin its evolution into a salt marsh. These pioneers help stabilize the mud and deliver oxygen down into the mud through their roots allowing other species to settle - sea lavender, sedges and grasses and the like’.

 

Thanks Sue! Check your favorite salt marsh for that flash of red. It’s wonderful.

 

Berries – Bayberries are always a favorite to watch change over the summer, and even the quickest of trips to Lanes Island these days turn up excellent views of the seductively textured, greying berries as they complete their development on the shrubs and get ready for the next stage.

 

What’s the next stage for these ‘berries of bay’ you ask? Well, for one they may eventually fall to the ground and a new bayberry shrub will grow. And lets face it – the world needs more bayberry shrubs.

 

The second thing (2 out of 2 as far as this post is concerned) that may happen is they get eaten. Jays and Crows (probably Ravens too!) will mack on them, as will Yellow-rumped Warblers. And it is the healthy and hefty amount of Bayberry berries on Lane’s that allows Yellow-rumped Warblers to overwinter many, if not most years on Lane’s island itself. Warblers in Maine in the winter. Regularly/ What a world.

 

Yellow-rumpeds, sometimes lovingly referred to as ‘butter butts’,  are the only warbler that can digest wax, which covers the bayberry fruits, and thus are the only warbler that can handle/process/feast on this bountiful fruit.

 

We are big fans for how adaptable Yellow-rumped Warblers are!

 

Trip to Calderwood – and speaking of Bayberries….

 

Recently hit up Calderwood Island (off the little Thorofare, North Haven) for a day/work trip.

 

Beauty of a day with minimal time to explore (so it goes) but lots of Monarch butterflies visiting Goldenrod, and some American Coppers and Pink-edged Sulphurs as well.

 

The Goldenrod was in full-on, fluffy force (we like that time of year) and very distracting, but my friend and co-worker Kat (totally cool) stayed focused enough to spot a Smooth Green Snake slither across the trail.

 

It was a great day and lot of work got done and many a laugh were had. Ha ha!

 

northern blue flag iris seeds

Back to the seeds -  Northern Blue Flag Iris

 

We all love to see Northern Blue Flag Iris in the spring , in full bloom with ‘their crazy looking blue flowers, sprinkled with subtleties of yellow and white’ (I said that just now, as recent as a quote can be quoted!). And knowing that eating them could be very, very bad for you makes them even more attractive in spring.

 

But did you know Irises (Irisi?) still live after the flowers have faded? Well, they do, and it turns out the seed pods and seeds are very photogenic.

 

Take a look.

 

your majesty

Mushrooms – Couple precipitation events over late September turned up some fun trailside shrooms. Here’s a couple of fun species I crossed paths with in the Basin Preserve recently.

 

Jelly Tooth (Pseudohydnum gelatinosum) – Classic trailside fungus that blooms shrooms on logs and stumps, helping to decompose the habitat and turn those plant parts back into soil.

 

As far as ‘top-side’ goes , the Jelly Tooth you find can be seen at a distance when pure white. However, coloration can vary across ‘the grey spectrum’, and at times Jelly Tooth (Teeth?) can be easily missed when they blend in with the log at hand.

 

The caps of the Jelly Tooth group I saw had that subtle look to them on top, but ‘once you take a peak underneath you’ll never go back’ as they say! What a world under there!

 

Now, I am on record as being a major advocate for people looking at ‘mushroom undercarriages’ – it’s like another world under there! Like many mushroom species, Jelly Teeth (I’m going with that one) use gravity and wind to disperse spores and thusly drop (gravity) them (spores) from their undercarriage to be blown away (wind).

 

Undercarriages can sometimes be smooth, holey (porey?), gilly (full of gills), or teethy. Teeth are a good way to increase the surface area of your spore dispersing surfacem thus increasing your spore dispersing potential. We here at the VSR are huge advocates of a nice ‘toothy undercarriage’. Take a look.

 

hand lenses are handy

And of course here is Javier Penalosa getting close enough to use a hand lens to get a closer look at the undercarriage of  the Jelly Toothies (I may go with this one).

 

King Bolete – Boletus edulis (complex)

 

Two shrooms that really got my attention trailside in the Basin – demanded my attention actually – were two King Boletes. There is so much to say about this particular species , and these two shrooms themselves, but we’ll cut right to the chase – these are the best.

 

Some people call them Porcini, others might know them as The Cep, most everybody calls them yummy! I call them cool. I seldom pick mushrooms along trails – want to leave them for others to enjoy – but fresh Kings? They are coming with me!

 

There was an inch of rain on September 7^th, and legend has that you look for Kings ‘two weeks after the first significant rains’ , and in Maine that translates to two weeks after the first rain of September. Doesn’t always come true, but when it does its fun. And this was fun.

 

King Boletes are mycorrhizal – the fungus in the ground (the actual being/thing that ‘is’) is attached to the roots of trees and in classic symbiotic style the fungus and shroom help each other and exchange beneficial nutrients (and stuff) with each other. We can learn a lot from fungus.

 

I added the word ‘complex’ after the species name above because when it comes down to it, it’s just hard to trust Latin when it comes to fungus. And what I mean by that is that it’s hard to trust ‘our’ (humans) knowledge of fungal relationships and speciation enough to slap latin names on fungi and have them stick for forever. And what I mean by that is that in my 30 years of ‘mushroom tracking and watching’ a lot of latin that I have learn has turned out to not be correct. With some species the latin has changed multiple times, and much of what is called ‘Boletus edulis’ might/surely/has turned out to be multiple closely related species with subtle differences that may be impossible to tell apart in the field. A complex of species if you will, all of which essentially behave (and taste) like Boletus edulis. We have so much to learn about fungus, its  exciting.

 

And so I took these two shrooms, dry sauteed them, ate most of it straight up and put the rest on pizza. King Boletes remind me of my time in Haines Alaska (that’s where I got turned onto them), and those are always good memories.   

 

Anyway – I’m calling that this post is long enough, so to the blog it goes!

 

We’ll be back in a shortly with more VSR stuff!

 

In the meantime – we’ll see you out there!