seals basking with pups.
I'd like to slip out of my skin.
Showing posts with label ferry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ferry. Show all posts
Monday, May 30, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
May 22: On the ferry
It takes an hour at sea
to shift from island thoughts.
Mocked by laughing gulls.
to shift from island thoughts.
Mocked by laughing gulls.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
August 15: Elizabeth Bishop Symposium
The North Haven (Island) Library hosted a symposium over the past two days celebrating Elizabeth Bishop, one of my favorite poets. I attended this morning's session, which entailed taking an early boat from Rockland and returning by ferry this afternoon, head full of thoughts about Bishop's life and poems, while across the water clouds piled up dramatically over the Camden Hills.
In honor of this event, I thought I'd give myself the exercise of starting off today's haiku with a line of Bishop's poem "North Haven":
Nature repeats herself--
waves rock the ferry,
storm-petrels weave among them.
In honor of this event, I thought I'd give myself the exercise of starting off today's haiku with a line of Bishop's poem "North Haven":
Nature repeats herself--
waves rock the ferry,
storm-petrels weave among them.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
November 7: Cattle Egret
I rode the morning ferry out to the island of Vinalhaven to spend part of the day birding with a friend who lives there. A naturalist by profession, Kirk knows where to find the birds, and despite the rather bleak, chilly, and eventually rainy day, we had a good time looking. I've gotten out birding so infrequently lately that being able to spend a concentrated amount of time watching any avian life is welcome. So to be shown a bird I hadn't previously seen in Maine within ten minutes of getting off the ferry was bonus.
Cattle egrets are a small white heron generally seen well south of Maine. Until today, the only ones I'd seen were in Florida and North Carolina. How this one ended up on an island off the Maine coast is one of those mysteries of migration. As I disembarked, I ran into one of the ferry captains who is also a birder--a birder who particularly enjoys chasing rarities. When I explained that I was out there so Kirk could show me a cattle egret, he complained, "Kirk never tells me anything!" An island resident had recently described to him seeing a strange bird, like an "all-white gull with a big yellow bill." It suddenly dawned on him that she'd been describing the cattle egret. He'd have to try to see it on a future trip.
Kirk and I headed off through town to "The Ballfield," where he'd photographed the bird not an hour earlier right next to his car. A woman driving past stopped to tell us that she had recently seen the egret following Wizard. Turns out Wizard is her horse. That made sense to Kirk, because the bird had first been spotted on Greens Island following a small flock of sheep. They got their name because they follow livestock, eating the insects such animals attract. So we went off to see Wizard. Before we got there, however, we spotted the egret hunched over in the middle of a lawn. Kirk set up his scope and we got great looks at this southern visitor.
We were soon joined by a neighbor who knew Kirk and who may or may not have been slightly inebriated. Even though we were clearly already watching the egret, he wanted to be sure we saw the bird, gesticulating wildly at it. "I knew you'd want to see it, because I know you like birds and sh*t," he declared. He had seen the egret earlier standing in a ditch full of minnows, eating. "It looked to me like a f**king big white sandpiper!" he said excitedly. "Is this rare? Because I've never seen a bird like this here before." Kirk assured him that it was very unusual.
You'd think that the rest of the day's birding would have been anticlimactic after that. But although I didn't pick up any more new Maine species, every stop had its highlights. At State Beach, a big flock of pale and lovely snow buntings flew back and forth above the pebbly shore. Horned larks hung out in the road with a single late-migrating semipalmated plover. A great blue heron croaked loudly as it flew in to land on the opposite shore. At Folly Pond, we spotted eight eagles, including a pair of adults perched side by side on a spruce bough, and a couple of brightly plumaged male wood ducks drifted past with a pied-billed grebe. At a culvert called The Boondoggle, a lone yellowlegs stood knee-deep in what must have been freezing cold water while hooded mergansers drifted and bobbed. The Basin offered up hosts of Canada geese and several more duck species.
Even the ferry ride home was not without adventure. My ferry captain friend invited me to ride back to Rockland up on the bridge, which offered great views of flocks of Bonaparte's gulls, a zillion more loons, big rafts of eiders, some surf scoters, and one gannet. He recounted the day last summer when he'd seen an albatross fly across the bow. The passage across the bay was a rough one, with swells rocking the ferry hard enough to knock over a chair at one point. The spray of whitecaps corrugated the surface of the sea. Thanks to turning back the clocks last night, twilight (and a cold rain) were settling in over Rockland Harbor as we pulled into the ferry slip. As we got ready to unload, a seal popped its head out of the water just off the port side, giving us all a long look as if wondering what we were doing out in this weather. Cattle egret, I wanted to tell the seal. And eiders, mergansers, and crossbills. I don't think it would have understood.
Brisk island wind, rain.
Egret and I share a look,
both visitors here.
Cattle egrets are a small white heron generally seen well south of Maine. Until today, the only ones I'd seen were in Florida and North Carolina. How this one ended up on an island off the Maine coast is one of those mysteries of migration. As I disembarked, I ran into one of the ferry captains who is also a birder--a birder who particularly enjoys chasing rarities. When I explained that I was out there so Kirk could show me a cattle egret, he complained, "Kirk never tells me anything!" An island resident had recently described to him seeing a strange bird, like an "all-white gull with a big yellow bill." It suddenly dawned on him that she'd been describing the cattle egret. He'd have to try to see it on a future trip.
Kirk and I headed off through town to "The Ballfield," where he'd photographed the bird not an hour earlier right next to his car. A woman driving past stopped to tell us that she had recently seen the egret following Wizard. Turns out Wizard is her horse. That made sense to Kirk, because the bird had first been spotted on Greens Island following a small flock of sheep. They got their name because they follow livestock, eating the insects such animals attract. So we went off to see Wizard. Before we got there, however, we spotted the egret hunched over in the middle of a lawn. Kirk set up his scope and we got great looks at this southern visitor.
We were soon joined by a neighbor who knew Kirk and who may or may not have been slightly inebriated. Even though we were clearly already watching the egret, he wanted to be sure we saw the bird, gesticulating wildly at it. "I knew you'd want to see it, because I know you like birds and sh*t," he declared. He had seen the egret earlier standing in a ditch full of minnows, eating. "It looked to me like a f**king big white sandpiper!" he said excitedly. "Is this rare? Because I've never seen a bird like this here before." Kirk assured him that it was very unusual.
You'd think that the rest of the day's birding would have been anticlimactic after that. But although I didn't pick up any more new Maine species, every stop had its highlights. At State Beach, a big flock of pale and lovely snow buntings flew back and forth above the pebbly shore. Horned larks hung out in the road with a single late-migrating semipalmated plover. A great blue heron croaked loudly as it flew in to land on the opposite shore. At Folly Pond, we spotted eight eagles, including a pair of adults perched side by side on a spruce bough, and a couple of brightly plumaged male wood ducks drifted past with a pied-billed grebe. At a culvert called The Boondoggle, a lone yellowlegs stood knee-deep in what must have been freezing cold water while hooded mergansers drifted and bobbed. The Basin offered up hosts of Canada geese and several more duck species.
Even the ferry ride home was not without adventure. My ferry captain friend invited me to ride back to Rockland up on the bridge, which offered great views of flocks of Bonaparte's gulls, a zillion more loons, big rafts of eiders, some surf scoters, and one gannet. He recounted the day last summer when he'd seen an albatross fly across the bow. The passage across the bay was a rough one, with swells rocking the ferry hard enough to knock over a chair at one point. The spray of whitecaps corrugated the surface of the sea. Thanks to turning back the clocks last night, twilight (and a cold rain) were settling in over Rockland Harbor as we pulled into the ferry slip. As we got ready to unload, a seal popped its head out of the water just off the port side, giving us all a long look as if wondering what we were doing out in this weather. Cattle egret, I wanted to tell the seal. And eiders, mergansers, and crossbills. I don't think it would have understood.
Brisk island wind, rain.
Egret and I share a look,
both visitors here.
Friday, April 9, 2010
April 9: Island Ferry
My friend Elizabeth and I are spending the weekend on Vinalhaven, ostensibly for a writing retreat, though as she said when we saw the palatial room we're staying in, "I don't know whether to take a nap, curl up with a book, take a bath in that big tub, or open that bottle of wine and watch the fog." Here's our view to the left:
The skies are supposed to clear tonight, so maybe by tomorrow all the fishing boats will emerge from the thick fog.
The thing about visiting islands it that you have to take a boat to get there. The ferry ride from Rockland was about an hour and 15 minutes, during which time Elizabeth and I sat across from each other in the cramped passenger area, with just a wall of white out the window, and gabbed. When we landed, it was almost startling to be reminded that the rather dream-like ride was just the passage, the means to the end, and now we were where we had wanted to be and had to actually get up and do something about it. It was as if it was enough just knowing we were on our way to this island retreat--we could have happily remained in anticipatory limbo for hours more. I was reminded in a way of Elizabeth Bishop's brilliant poem "The Moose," which beautifully captures the lulling rhythm of travel. Our journey, however, was unpunctuated by anything exciting like a moose sighting. Just lots of fog, rain, water, and a handful of gulls washed clean.
Lulling wave rhythm--
our ferry takes hours in fog,
rocking in limbo.
The skies are supposed to clear tonight, so maybe by tomorrow all the fishing boats will emerge from the thick fog.
The thing about visiting islands it that you have to take a boat to get there. The ferry ride from Rockland was about an hour and 15 minutes, during which time Elizabeth and I sat across from each other in the cramped passenger area, with just a wall of white out the window, and gabbed. When we landed, it was almost startling to be reminded that the rather dream-like ride was just the passage, the means to the end, and now we were where we had wanted to be and had to actually get up and do something about it. It was as if it was enough just knowing we were on our way to this island retreat--we could have happily remained in anticipatory limbo for hours more. I was reminded in a way of Elizabeth Bishop's brilliant poem "The Moose," which beautifully captures the lulling rhythm of travel. Our journey, however, was unpunctuated by anything exciting like a moose sighting. Just lots of fog, rain, water, and a handful of gulls washed clean.
Lulling wave rhythm--
our ferry takes hours in fog,
rocking in limbo.
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