July 17: Eastern Egg Rock

Yesterday my husband and I were fortunate enough to be able to go along on an outing to Eastern Egg Rock in Muscongus Bay. Normally the island is off-limits to visitors, as it's a protected seabird nesting site--most noted for being the island where Project Puffin, a National Audubon program that has restored Atlantic Puffins to Maine waters, originated. But we (and several others) were accompanying Project Puffin founder Steve Kress for this special trip, and thus got to spend almost two hours on the island observing the birds and learning from the five summer interns about their work and lives there.

Being in the blinds so we could watch the birds was a thrilling experience, but even more moving was witnessing the hopeful signs of new young life on the island: nests with eggs and fuzzy chicks of several species, including Laughing Gull, Common Tern, Black Guillemot. (Puffins nest in not-very-accessible burrows underground, so we couldn't see those.) While the interns report good nest success so far, the real challenge for the parent birds is getting enough food into their chicks for them to fledge and reach adulthood. Climate change has affected offshore patterns of the fish that terns and puffins feed their chicks, so food availability is the critical issue for these birds right now. Only time will tell how many survive this summer. But when you touch a fat, wriggling fuzzy butterball of a chick, hope is tangible thing.

Eastern Egg Rock--

seabirds swirl and clamor,

my heart a fixed point of joy.

Gulls and terns overhead. The buildings are the interns' community space and their outhouse.

Atlantic Puffins, as observed from a study blind

Laughing Gull nest with eggs and chick

Black Guillemot chick held by island intern

Atlantic Puffin, adult

Black Guillemots, puffin and Laughing Gull. The red numbers mark puffin burrows.

Common Tern and its whining chick

Project Puffin founder Steve Kress shows us a Laughing Gull egg

Posted with Blogsy 

April 5: Easter morning

Cardinal's loud whistle.

Kids in down jackets

race around for Easter eggs.

Posted with Blogsy

June 1: Nest

Helped lead a walk today as part of the Acadia Birding Festival on Mount Desert Island, on the Wonderland Trail in Acadia National Park. The short trail passes through stunted boreal spruce and jack pine forest to emerge on the granite shores of the sea. As we scanned the waves, one participant looked down instead... and found the nest of a Song Sparrow tucked in a rose bush, neatly cupping four mottled blue eggs.

Vastness that is sea
alongside these small blue eggs,
singing sparrow.

October 18: Carrying eggs

Feeling ill with an incipient cold, I went into work this morning only because I had to; the committee I co-chair was having its monthly meeting. But I fully intended to come home right after the meeting and go back to bed. Well, as things go, I felt a little better as the morning wore on and then got caught up in things, so I ended up working the whole day. Now that I'm home, however, the cold is catching up with me--sore throat, headache, achey joints. Whine and sniffle. It's just a cold, but some days the body just feels so over-sensitive, so fragile. I want to tell it to just toughen up already, a cold virus is nothing; does mind over matter ever work? Instead, I just take more cold meds and huddle on the couch.

A dozen fresh eggs.

I carry them gingerly,

aware of my own fragile shell.

April 8: Easter nests

Earlier today we watched a few lazy snowflakes drift over the backyard. No egg hunts for us on this raw Sunday. The cat batted a felt egg around the living room, while golfers swatted golf balls around the Masters course in Augusta, Georgia on t.v. Here, we were serenaded by a cardinal and a chaotic chorus of goldfinches. In Augusta, Carolina wrens, mockingbirds, and at least one bluebird provided background music to the golfers. Later, we enjoyed Easter buffet with my parents at the Samoset's La Bella Vita restaurant, happily stuffing ourselves at an ocean view table with two gulls staring in at us (or more accurately, at our food).

Signs of spring are becoming more and more apparent despite the lingering chill and today's brief snow, but what struck me as we drove home from the Samoset was how many of last year's bird nests are yet visible among the still-bare branches. One yard had two nests tucked in two different trees: four nests in one small front lawn. My eyes began to pick out one after another in the trees (along with a few squirrel dreys). Songbirds don't re-use their nests like eagles or ospreys, so these truly are homes of seasons past. But in just another month or so, these trees will be leafed out, and nest-building will begin anew...

Holiday of eggs--
in the bare branches we spy
last year's nests, empty.

April 5: Approaching Easter

The moon ripens as we approach Easter weekend. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Interesting that such an important Christian holiday would have lunar--and thus, dare I say, pagan--origins. In fact, the very word "Easter" probably derives from the name of an ancient fertility goddess--Oestre, Astarte or Ishtar. The fertility symbolism is even more obvious when you think about the main representatives of Easter: rabbits and eggs. (I witnessed first-hand as a child, during a rabbit cage-cleaning moment gone awry, the phenomenal fecundity of rabbits.) Even the concept of the resurrected god dates back to many pre-Christian cultures with stories of Attis, Mithras, Osiris, and more. So you don't have to be Christian to fully embrace the feeling of revival in the air right now, as sap rises in the trees, leaf buds swell, the day's light lingers longer, green shafts of lily leaves re-emerge from the underground, loon returns to the river to fill the night with his stirring tremolo, and goldfinches molt into bright breeding plumage. Renewal seems possible for any of us. It's just the way we roll in spring.

Finch sprouts more yellow--
even the birds glow brighter
as Easter moon swells.

December 12: Pretty Eggs

I received a dozen fresh eggs this morning from my friend Janet's laying hens. She's got a mixed flock, so the eggs are all different colors and shades: warm brown, porcelain white, pale blues. (Araucanas account for the blue ones, I'm told.) In the basket, they truly shine like the natural gems that they are. And the gold inside--well, you know you've got good eggs when you see those rich, gold yolks from free-range, happy, well-fed, organically raised chickens. This is truly prime bounty from a friend's farm, for which I am very grateful.

Happy, still-laying
hens translate sunshine to yolks,
which we admire, eat.

October 20: Bluebird Eggs

A friend with bluebird houses on her farm property said she opened one up to clean it out recently and found a nest inside with several eggs, some hatched and some not. The eggs were small and sky blue. We looked them up, and it seems they actually were bluebird eggs. Their condition, though, begs a narrative. Did a few birds hatch and grow up, with the other eggs being duds? Did something happen to the parent birds just after the first eggs hatched so that they couldn't brood the others? Did the parent birds just abandon the eggs after something got the first hatchlings? The life and death permutations multiply in the imagination.

But the eggs, as most eggs are, were small objets d'art: fingertip-sized, unblemished, perfectly shaped, robin's egg blue. (Robins and bluebirds are thrush relatives, so it makes sense that their eggs might be similar.) I had always thought that cavity nesters like bluebirds laid white eggs, because there's no need for camouflage it the eggs are tucked away in a hole. But a bluebird lays a blue egg, and both carry their color beautifully.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Cleaning the birdhouse,
some eggs broken, others not--
past summer's drama.