Welcome to the Vinalhaven Sightings Report – October 20 2021
Brought to you, with the support of VLT and MCHT! – Thanks to both! And
to you!
‘I’m not nature bummin’ man, I got sh*t to do’ – a dear friend
young Cedar Waxwing on Armbrust Hill
Highlights – Osprey, Mushrooms, Sapsucker, Owl Pellet, and so much more
ghost plant/ghost pipe
Business – contact us – send in your photos, sightings, poems and whatever inspires
you about the nature of Vinalhaven and the Fox Islands and we’ll plug them into
the next report (or the one after that ). vinalhavensightings@gmail.com is the email address to send to. You
won’t regret it, or you’ll only regret it once? Send in your stuff – operators
are standing by now.
Seal Bay great horned owl pellet
Tiit Trick –
click on the photos to make them jumbo sized. Fill your screen up with photos
of mushrooms, birds, pellets and otter spraint. The way life should be, as they
say…
Zion Canyon
photo by Linnell Mather
First up through is a photo or two sent in by Linnell Mather of a recent
trip she took to Zion National Park. California condor and sweet geological features
– looks like it was
a beautiful trip! Make sure you corner Linnell for more info on her time out
west.
california condor
photo by Linnell Mather
osprey
photo by Pam Alley
Sightings! - Pam Alley was
kind enough to send in these photos of the Boy
Scout Point Osprey and nest on Lane’s Island. Young have fledged probably
not because the parents opted to insulate the nest with plastic
plastic insulation
photo by Pam Alley
Janet Ghores
sent in this report from Calderwood Neck
Rd. A palm(er) warbler and a bay breasted warbler came with a great
mixed flock that stayed all day. Also at Arey's Neck were red-necked grebes, common loons
and red-breasted merganser.
sapsuckah!
Tweeters around island – Seal Bay – lots of Bonaparte’s Gulls seen from Huber…
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are around, this one from Perry Creek …
yellow rumped
Yellow-rumped Warblers are numerous….here are a few of the gazillions we’ve (the
royal ‘we’ve’) crossed paths with recently.
aka butter butt
And of course – who’s singing October
style – Ruby-crowned and Golden-crowned
Kinglets, and Brown Creeper males have all struck up their tunes recently
in the woods…
 |
| harbor porpoise exhale |
A decade or so later when I was
living on Cape Cod I put it together that it probably wasn’t orca, but more likely Harbor Porpoise and I was
fine with that. What was more important was the memory of that sound, probably the highlight of the entire program
and that includes hacky-sacking on the greens in Bar Harbor. I’m tempted to say
it was a/the sound that got me into nature, or something cheesy like that. It
was certainly the coolest thing I had heard up to that point in my life.
 |
| semi-palmated sandpiper - rockland breakwater - on vinlahaven granite! |
And I’ve heard it a bunch of times
since, but I can’t remember the last time from shore (often heard from a kayak
in my experience). Minimal research turned up this nugget on info from Norway….
lots of shorebirds coming through
‘In
parts of Atlantic Canada it (Harbor Porpoise) is known colloquially as the
puffing pig, and in Norway ‘nise’, derived from an Old Norse word for sneeze;
both of which refer to the sound made when porpoises surface to breathe’ –
Wikipedia
Maybe I was getting back to my Nordic roots, but the sound of a
whale’s exhale is wonderful to hear (not so good to smell – SNARGE!). How we’d
locate whales in the fog from the whale watch. That was from boats well off
shore though, truly a pelagic experience. Fun to hear (and see!) the porpoise
from shore once again. Good times….
Same day, different cove
– productive day by the way, and I mean productive beyond
how easy it was to observe wildlife – this time in Seal Bay. A juvenile
Double-crested Cormorant was working a nice bait ball of fish trapped in a cove. The dark amorphous blob below
the surface “undulated so much” and avoided the predator at all costs. The
Cormorant disappeared within the murky waters, only could tell its position by
the shape of the bait ball darkness. Pogies? The fish looked larger than super
small when they banked and flashed, and I will be the first to admit I don’t
know my salt water fish very well. So sure, yeah, it was pogies.
bait ball
Anyway, it was fun to see and connect
it with the porpoise in Perry creek earlier. Undoubtedly bait fish in that
circumstance as well. Couldn’t see from the angle, but something was keeping
those porpoise focused. Food seems like a likely reason.
looks like lobster was on this otters menu
Otter spraint
for you!
Mushrooms – a
few highlights from this impressive mushroom season, Amanita muscaria was a
favorite this fall….
Red-gilled Cort has had a season to remember, as
many corts seem to have had.
unassuming ventral view
Here’s a photo gallery of some Red-gilleds I crossed paths with in the
Basin recently. They were, and still are (fungus is year round) everywhere this
year. Fun to imagine what’s going on underground hyphae wise.
And speaking of Corts – this unidentified
Cortinarius species I crossed paths with in the basin had an unusual growth
pattern, referred to as ‘Rosecomb’,
where gills or what look to be gills growns on the top of the cap.
Seen this before with other species
of mushroom, always an interesting look. See what you think….
young honey
Honey Mushrooms
have shown up, but not in numbers that we’ve (the royal ‘we’ve’ again) seen in
years past. So interesting to see what mushrooms have responded to this year’s
wet patches, and which have not.
Anyway and always good to see, Honey Mushrooms are one of the coolest
mushroom ‘species’, and I use that term lightly. A conglomerate of extremely closely related species, this
group (or gang as I like to call them), they possess the titles of the ‘largest known (to humans) living being on
earth’ as well as being edible (but
not always agreeable). The honey groups consists of saprophytes that can turn parasitic when times are lean, and create ‘foxfire’ glowing in logs. So
much going on with that species/group, with so much still to learn.
I love em, and I hardly eat wild
mushrooms anymore. More of a pasta guy
always have been.
Yellow-fairly cups teamed up with Purple jelly cups…these
photos are cute and sweet, showing the more sensitive and shallow side of mushroom
photography.
Anyway, both species are out and
about.
Irregular earth tongues are a crowd favorite, and this year they have responded to the rains – unlike honeys! –and have turned up many patches….
irregular earth tongues
king bolete (and Corts) photobomb
irregular earth tongue photo shoot
Including this one that was honored
by a visit from a King Bolete. We’re not worthy for sure.
Limited editions are out in numbers these days...
thank you hostess
Keep an eye peeled for them, even
though eye peeling is gross
with his buddy Oliver
And photos of the boy, heading up
mountains
And running races. He’s cut time off of each of his runs over the
season , 3 minutes total so far (from 19:something to 16:something) in the 2.1
miles. anyway - he's having fun running.
Last race Thursday (today?) – we’ll
report on that later.
But hey – we’ll see you out there!
Fall is a beautiful time; let us hear what you are seeing!
Rock on!
