deerwoman's sit spot journal, Downeast Maine

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on February 22, 2009 at 3:06pm

Sun., Feb. 22, 4:45 PM Walking down the road in 'Sit' area I came across snowshoe hare and rodentia tracks. These were in a bounding pattern. The stride was 7.5-8", and the trail width of the rear feet was 1.5". No tail drag. Saw the tracks in about 1/2" layer of snow on top of packed snow with ice underneath. I think it could be chipmunk.

Was on the lookout for bobcat tracks as I know there's one in the area and I saw her tracks last night made since the last snowstorm a few days ago. I was looking to intercept her trail from a different point in an area nearby but got out a bit late and the darkness from rain clouds moving in overtook me. There's another snowstorm coming, the precipitation began to fall while I was out there. I saw two parallel concavities in the snow between and beneath two young white birch. I imagined it to be lay areas. Though out in the open, it's in an undeveloped area with rare human activity save an occasional passing vehicle. Lots of hare activity though. It was in an area I've seen the cat tracks...oh, and also the cat! A few weeks ago as I wondered if some tracks were coyote or bobcat (there's a photo of some of them along the shoreline in my member page photo gallery), I had my answer the following day when I came upon the bobcat sitting in the middle of the private roadway, here. I was in my car, and she gave me plenty of time to take her in before she leaped over a snowbank and into the woods. Her thick fur, particularly around her neck and short 'bobbed' tail were amazing to see. My first, and so far, only, sighting of a bobcat. I'd actually seen her a couple of times in the darkness in the yard, also from my car, and had no idea it was a bobcat. The kind of thick 'bopping around' then a dash across a large space and into the woods was completely unfamiliar behavior to me.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on February 24, 2009 at 6:37pm

Feb. 23
Noreaster- Does talking to a neighbor who hunts count as sit spot observation? I did that and learned something about the hunting attitude of a couple of hunters. They feel the deers are being decimated by coyote and bobcat. Not leaving any for humans to hunt.
Feb. 24
This evening white footed mouse tracks with tail drag outside my front door in about 1 1/2" of fresh powder. Looks like it ran out from under my car...hopefully not inside it, to the wooden face of the house along a trim and headed back under the car. Clear, cold and starry sky. A new moon and no power due to the storm, so less ambient light, allowing the sky to be all the more luminous.

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Permalink Reply by Laurie on March 6, 2009 at 2:16pm

Deerwoman:

Where is your art work from? Very magical!

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 11, 2009 at 8:21pm

Weds., March 11, 12:54 PM It had snowed earlier, and is currently raining. 30 degrees.
This is not at my sit spot... but I had gone to look out at the water through the window on the second floor. A large bird came into view from the N. It flew over land between the house and the shore. It was very low and seemed to be flying through the branches of trees. I had a clear view and it was a bald eagle. White head and yellow beak very visible. Heading S it flew over the tall spruce on the shoreline and eventually out of view. I left the window and started to journal it in my little pocket journal and then went back to the window to think about what it had done. When I went back a few minutes later at 1:00 the eagle was flying over again. Now heading N from the S. What luck, to see it again. It was flying a bit higher now and was gliding more than it had been when it headed S. It was flapping it's wings more then. So it headed back the way I had seen it come from.
I'm thinking the wind must have been blowing from the S, and the eagle didn't have to work to fly with the wind as it head N.

Now, spiritually, I'm wondering why I happened to see the eagle fly both ways. Sometimes I find out a couple of days later after having a special sighting, like this.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 16, 2009 at 3:48pm

Sat., March 14th- 3:30 PM Took a trip out to Schoodic Point. Wanted to explore more of the coastal areas there. Stopped first at a small peninsula that faced to the west and toward the main part of Acadia National Park. I was there when the tide was not completely out, but allowed to get close to some of the activity that is in the bottom of the cove. Had a chance to see snail tracks under the surface of the water. Very clear and calligraphic bordered by rock seaweed and....rocks. A scenic, miniature landscape. Traveled on to an area near where a land bridge had been built to attach the islands off the tip of the peninsula. The land bridge created an inland pool. The ranger had tipped me off that it was a good place to explore. We still have lots of snow and ice on the ground. The still water is also still covered with ice. Walking, first, along a maintained dirt road I came upon many tracks of other visitors. I saw, also deer tracks heading toward the water. deer are not as abundant in maine as they had been in upstate NY. So, it was nice to see the familiar tracks of the deer. Some tracks appeared so large i thought it may be moose. But, that was wishful thinking. I followed them into the woods where the tracks were not as exposed, and the tracks clearly showed they were deer. After getting a feel for the area i wandered down through stands of spruce toward the water. Evident was a channel through the ice that paralleled the shoreline on the W and sunnier side of the water. I've seen this before and know that raccoon will break through the ice to get out to food sources. But, this was probably sea otter. As I walked along the shore I passed sea otter latrines, black and with the remains of crustaceans in the scat. At one point I got a 'nice' whiff of scent. But I couldn't find the latrine it was related to, so I wondered if it could be a musk secretion. It was interesting to see the activity in tracks made under the low boughs of spruce, where it looks like they may 'hang out', and on top of mounds of grass, where the compressions looked like they liked to pause there. Also, there were many holes in the marsh grasses along the edge where the otters slipped through to go under the ice. Areas in the ice also had openings for the otters to slip under the surface. With the warming temperatures, these holes were becoming enlarged and cavernous looking especially with the tide out. There were long stretches along the ice that appeared to be the width of an otter body, also paralleling the shoreline, where there were 'creases' in the ice. It looked like it may be the remains of where the otters had slid along on the surface of the ice or snow.
I shot photos, and hope they came out well enough to show what I'm talking about.

March 15th, Day One A warm day for these parts. In the lower forties. Seemed nearly tropical. I hear morning doves and a lot of chickadee activity. Ice still melting on the roof and falling in slow drops to the earth. Puddles on the surface of the ice sure to make it all the more slick when it freezes up again. A very dark night. New moon?

March 16th, Day Two Walked along the shore off the property where I live. I'm on the coast of Maine, now, and hope to learn something more about the sea. As I walked toward the water i flushed out the pair of mourning doves which seem to be new arrivals here. had not seen or heard them over the winter. Lots of chickadee sound, as well. Sea gulls out on the bay. Some ice floes out there too. I follow the tracks of a human couple with their dog. It was the direction I was headed in, anyway. I am walking on top of an dense ice pack that is over marshy grasses and possibly boulders. It is packed so dense because there's been rain , freezing rain, then snow many times this winter, and in some places I barely make a noticeable track. I watch the tracks of the phantom people who stop and look at a very large white birch that has blown off the side of the slope and a large section of it has lodge itself in the limbs of a large tree at the base of the slope. There are large shards of birch innards littering all over the are beneath the tree that is now holding the birch aloft. A bit further along it looks like a clear cut has been created in the woods at the top of the slope. The slope is too crusted over with ice to get up to check out further. But, the base of a large spruce is shattered, as if a bomb had exploded inside of it. The rest is littering the slope and probably the area above that I can't get too without crampons. there are tiny limbs still clutching perfect and pretty little cones that seem oblivious to the destruction of the tree that had fostered them. On the way back I see some older hare tracks. Also, many sprouts of new growth of white birch growing out of older, fallen trees. I do not notice bobcat tracks. I do find some cat tracks which are large, but not large enough to be bobcat. I find one in the trail that clearly shows it to be a house cat proportion. These tracks give me warning that the slope where I intend to head up is very slippery because the cat tracks become splayed with claw marks showing. It showed a not very graceful cat trying to get up the slope. I know this cat and know he doesn't really like being out in the cold and snow. So, I was surprised to see he had wandered this far across an area of snow to the water. Tracks will tell....

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 20, 2009 at 7:04pm

Day 3, March 17th 6:30 PM

Walked down to water directly. Dusk, so I head straight out along the exposed beach at low tide, S, toward 'Eagle Point' ( my name for outcropping along beach where eagle perches). I climbed down off the ice pack along the shore to walk on the sand. Good chance to see what the ice pack looks like from a side view to see what I am walking on and judge safety of walking on top of it. Some places the edge overhangs and will break off soon. Other places the layers of ice has space in between. But, it's still fairly cold- low 30's C.- and it may not break off for a while more. Found an intact common northern welk shell. Average size of 2 1/3" L. (mm? = 60 ?). As I walked along the beach I found pale gray clay deposits. Human tracks as well as dog tracks. I have a chance to walk out as far as Eagle Point for the first time. One of the clay deposits has large bird tracks and dog tracks. The tracks seem larger than gull and they are near to the tall spruce at Eagle Point where the eagle is likely to perch. I measure the bird track to be 4 1/2" L x approx. 3" W. When I return home and look up scale of eagle tracks they are 6"L ! So, the tracks I saw must be gull or duck. I do not see webbing between toes which is the confusion.

As I return from my walk heading N again along the beach, I hear woodcock! There are also a pair of mourning doves, but the behavior and call sounded like woodcock. Hopefully, during this Challenge I'll have more opportunity to see if it's woodcock.

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Permalink Reply by Rebecca Hyde on March 21, 2009 at 10:24am

Thank you. Now I've looked on google images and know what a welk looks like (I've always called those conch) and I found a cool video on youtube about looking for woodcock at dusk this time of year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeBevezTpx0&feature=related. But I miss the ocean! Particularly the Maine ocean, which has a soul onto itself.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 21, 2009 at 6:33pm

Thanks Rebecca. I appreciate that link. The Kamana program recommends a book called 'Reader's Digest North American Wildlife: An Illustrated Guide To 2,000 Plants and Animals'. I looked up the shells in there. It's a handy one-volume encyclopedia of wildlife. Mine is falling into pieces, already. I'm glad you made the comment about the shell because I made more effort to look up the shells in my Day 4 post. It's nice living near the sea, again. I did when I was a child. It's fairly recent that I have access to the shore again. And this coastline is much different than the beaches down in New York where I grew up.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 21, 2009 at 6:09pm

Day 4, March 18th, 3:35 PM It is overcast and the temps. are in the 40's C. This is a warm spell for us. The wind is from the SW. Crossing the snow covered lawn to the shoreline, I sink in and fall because the depth of the snow catches my foot below the crust. I am wearing rain pants anyway because I like to kneel down to look at things. As I walk my stretch of beach, at low tide, again, it begins to rain lightly. I am fascinated by the formation of the ice pack along the beach. It is 33" H at the edge in some places. I am 65" tall. So the ice shelf that runs along the base of the hillside and above the beach is half my height. I feel like I am walking along a glacier or continuous ice sculpture. I'll try to post photos. I find human shoe tracks and am surprised because I didn't think there were many people around in winter to be walking this stretch of beach. In the gray clay embedded in the sand there are some clear bird tracks like the ones I'd seen previously. These measure more clearly at 3 1/2-4" L x 4" wide. One finally shows webbing. So it is likely a herring gull. I wonder why the webbing doesn't show up in all the tracks. perhaps in water when the tide was higher, the webs are too flexible to make a compression. If this is so, then it gives me a sense of time when the gulls were there, a few hours before, when the tide was higher. The gull made a nice set gray tracks from the clay on the flattened and short (don't know why it's short) marsh grass of tracks as it walks out of the clay puddle. It looks like marks made with gray encaustic paint on a burlap canvas. Walking as far as 'Eagle Point' today, which is now going to be my 'sit spot', I find a string of whole and partial mussel, periwinkles, and a 1/2" W baltic macoma shells, pebbles and seaweed. It looks like a prayer totem and a gift from the sea. I just photograph it, at first, then decide I'd like to bring it home to see if it provides me with any insight. Returning back to the yard, I see mourning doves and hear birds whose calls I can't identify in the spruce on the NE side of the yard.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 21, 2009 at 6:50pm

Day 5, March 19th, 6:30 PM
My observation of my sit area is primarily from my 'tree house' today. That's what I call my screened porch made of timber that is set against the woods and on the S side of the second floor of the house. I could see a lot of seagull activity on the water. A lot of calling. This is unusual. It may have meant that there were certain desirable fish in the water. I hear birds in the woods that I can't identify. It seems there are new arrivals that hadn't been here in the winter. The sunset leaves a pink glow on the clouds and water.

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Permalink Reply by deerwoman on March 22, 2009 at 7:03pm

Today was so special I have to get the highlights down before I drop from exhaustion...and then I'll have to continue backtracking.

Day 6, 7 to come

Day 8, March 22

I started out at 2:15 PM and headed down to the coastline. The temp. was in the low 40's C. and overcast with clouds traveling from the N to the S. I headed to the shore, which is across the yard that continues to be completely covered with snow. Though it was warm and the snow was soft I could walk on it easily and not drop through. I guess it is compressing somewhat from the thaws followed by freezing temps. I had very conflicting feelings as I approached my path to my sit spot. Had that 'same old, same old' feeling. That is not something I normally feel. I am feeling that it's harder to penetrate a beach environment. It doesn't seem to have tremendous variety. But, perhaps, I'm not really connecting with it. It's possible that there is too much, and I haven't really figured out where to start with it. Not sure. That's why I'm doing this.

Once I was on the beach it seemed like the day was about the sky. In Maine the sky is often as dramatic with the landscape. behind me up the slope, in the stands of spruce I hear the mourning doves. To the N which is the bottom of the horseshoe shape of the bay, the clouds were stretching toward the earth with precipitation dropping. To the right, the S, the sky was blue with beautiful puffy cumulous clouds. The wind which was blowing lightly was coming from the N blowing the clouds off shore to the S. The ice pack shelf at the base of the slope is still there in force, but there was lots of melting going on. The side I walk on faces E, so doesn't get the afternoon sun to melt it from sunlight. The beach is much wetter and soft. Will have to start wearing real mud boots, like the fisherman.

The tide is way out, at least 100' from shore. I see a bald eagle flying over the E side of the bay. he's quite high as he glides in circles for the short time I noticed him. then he disappeared up into the clouds before I have a chance to see him with my binoculars, which I brought, today. There are many seagulls, some are fishing for fish...maybe herring? They plunge into the water from a few feet above the surface with neck bent so the face goes into the water first. Out they come while floating on the surface or flying back up, and they have something dangling from their beak. A wiggly little fish? With the low tide, others are eating mussels or clams by flying with it about 20 feet above a hard surface and dropping it. One guy had his act together over a private tiny island which was mostly a large boulder surrounded by mudflat. He didn't seem to need to repeat his clam dropping technique very often before eating. There were also loons on the water. I only heard a call once. But, it helped me to identify them. They seem to float low in the water. I almost though they were cormorants. I heard one loon mutter, who is she calling a loon? While I sat at my sit spot at 'Eagle Point' the precipitation came over and it turned out to be snow flurries! The wind is blowing stronger and is making sound in the dense growth of spruce in the woods behind me. At my sit spot I am shielded by being on the S side of the point. It is clear of snow, while the N side just a few feet away is completely covered in snow. Everyone here is pulling out their lighter clothing prepared to act like it's spring. I'm glad I followed my cardinal rule of dressing warmly in layers with hat and gloves into April. I have gotten stuck at this transitional time of year without the right clothing and it wasn't fun. So, I was comfy sitting there in the light snowstorm with my rain overpants, warm boots, down parka, hat and gloves. The water turned many colors and textures in front of me as the weather system changed. It went from a tranquil silvery blue with a variety of ripples from shoreline to center, to an agitated surface that turned dark grey. It was interesting to watch. Mezmerizing, really.

I noticed today that there are three types of rock seaweed that I can discern. There are also large sheets of seaweed that look like membrane. Found a tiny periwinkle shell, that was 1/2 the size of my pinky nail. Do the periwinkle discard their shell as they grow larger?

Later in the day I head out to Schoodic Peninsula, which is another part of Acadia National Park. I go to a visitor area on the W side of the peninsula. The tide is still significantly out. The storm has passed. It is very mild and comfortable and somewhat sunny. Along the rocky shore I notice that there is movement in a pool of water on one of the rocks. There are pebbles in the pool and the little aquatic critter are moving from rock to rock and scooting behind the rock, curling up as they go inside, straightening out as they moved to the next location. there was also a lot of mating going on. The two that are mating are quite different in size. At first I'm not sure I'm seeing a second body. I have no idea what I was looking at. Was it in salt water or was it fresh snow melt? They could have been shrimp larvae...mating larvae? Or mayflies (?) Mayflies in salt water? Anyway, it was my first glimpse into a miniature aquatic habitat. It was warm enough to lie on the rock and watch into this miniature world for a while. I didn't have my camera to photograph it.

There is a bridge that leads out to a dock, probably, when the weather is better. At the end of the dock, which is high above, the low tide water, I see a surprising sight. A harbor seal! he is not swimming around but seems kind of stationary as if he is paddling water. He tilts his nose up, most of the time, and I imagine his body is directly below him. Every so often he drops his chin and takes a look around him. he seems to be a good size. I am amazed at the scale seeming so like a human being. I am thrilled that this is my first live harbor seal sighting. I had seen one that was dead and provided many meals for an eagle in the area. This harbor seal, however, seems completely unmoved by how special he is [to me]. No, he has no awareness whatsoever that to one human he is a very special being. I watch for a while, and he continues to just 'float' in the bay, occasionally looking around, and sometimes dunking below the surface, coming back up close to where he went down. So, he's not doing much swimming. I hope he isn't injured. I don't see any companions. After I leave the dock bridge I find a pile of scat on the park lawn. It is a deer-like pile. But, doesn't look like deer scat I've ever seen. It's much larger segments, about 3/4" L x 1/2" wide. breaking it open, it is densely packed, somewhat dry, with a very fine fiber material. No bone. Not a meat eater. All a very fine woody or plant material. The color is a med. brown. Not a dark color. No odor. I did take photos, which I will have to post. My thought is moose. I see a compression in the grass beside the scat that it similar to moose track proportions. In the grass it looks like 5 1/2' L x ? W. I guess 5" because part of it is stepping on the scat. I'm not sure that the critter is the one that stepped on the scat, though. I scout around a bit to see if I can see other tracks. There's a couple of places in some piles of snow along a trail that looks similar in shape to the grass compression. Within feet of that I notice what appears to be browse on the smaller branches of a fruit tree. The browse goes higher than above my head. I measure some at 66" off the ground. I can visualize this as being moose browse and scat. It is possible for them to be in this park. My first moose sign, if it is moose, since coming to Maine. Two firsts in the same spot.

6:40 PM As I leave an amazing fuschia, pink and orange sunset through the trees is behind me as I drive E.

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Davis on March 22, 2009 at 9:02pm

Sounds like you had an exciting day.

Here's an explanation of some Maine pebble beach processes: http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/marine/facts/sep00.htm

and info about the seaweeds you are seeing....Field Guide to Maine Seaweeds
http://www.noamkelp.com/technical/handbook.html

Shells like periwinkle are made by the living animal inside that is attached to it. They continuously build the shell along the opening edge—creating the spiral structure. They do not discard small shells--they are the builders of the shells.

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