August 27, 2015: 2:21-4:15pm. 77ºF (25ºC). Breezy and sunny with puffy clouds. Chickadees, crickets, grasshoppers, dragonflies, bees, mosquito larvae, starfish, breadcrumb sponges, a flock of anonymous ducks, and 3 crows.
No companions today, just me celebrating my 48th birthday by photographing bugs and poop. When I’m alone, I look around more carefully and spend more time watching seawater evaporate and bugs crawl, so this one will be heavy on photos and light on text.
It was perfect height-of-summer weather: breezy and sunny with puffy clouds in a deep blue sky. I could hear chickadees off in the woods, and crickets and grasshoppers chirping in the grass. There were dozens of dragonflies in the air and tons of bees on the asters.
I started out at the Maine Coast Heritage Trust parking area on Cooksey Drive
and headed downhill through a scrubby growth of young red maple, asters, raspberry-ish canes, alder, chokecherry, viburnum, bracken, low juniper, spruce trees, and bayberry.
Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis)
Looking back towards Hunters Head.
And looking south toward the Cranberry Islands. You can just make out the monument on East Bunker Ledge out there in the Eastern Way.
There was poison ivy everywhere – I’d never thought of it as a seaside plant, but it was growing in cracks in the cliffs beside seaside goldenrod and wild roses.
Oh yeah, I finally bought new hiking boots!
Wild Harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) growing in a granite cleft.
I’ve been told this enormous quartz vein runs clear across the island.
Probably raccoon poo. Maybe fox? Something that likes fruit, anyway.
Seaside Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens)
Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), native to Europe and invasive here in Maine. This stuff is everywhere.
Mosquito larvae and pupae (the larvae are the skinny, wiggly ones and the pupae are the dark, oval ones.)
Heavy traffic in the Eastern Way.
Gosh that was fun!
