Posts in Category: Maine
Frosted Oak
Frost on oak leaves. My yard, Kennebunk Maine
Yesterday’s Day Poem was about waking to a heavy frost. What I did not say is that I got dressed and went out into the yard to capture the event in photos, just as the sun was rising. These four images catch some of the feeling of the frost on the oak leaves and grass.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. Processed in Snapseed to bring out the frost effect, and assembled in PicStich on my Android tablet.
And the poem:
Under the street lights this morning
before dawn, it looked like it had
snowed in the night…the lawn was
white, and the cars looked covered.
I had to go to the back deck and
turn on the light to see that it was
only heavy frost. I have been fooled
before. I am ready for snow…oh
I know, once it comes I will remember
it is always, at best, a mixed blessing.
I could be out there right now with
the snowblower in all my winter gear
clearing the drive. No, I guess I won’t
hurry the season. And there is much to
be admired, after all, in a heavy frost.
November forest floor
Fungi, Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Wells, Maine
My wife and I took a walk around the loop trail at Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge near our home in Maine yesterday. The day was overcast, a real late November fall day…no snow yet here in Southern Maine (like most of the nation). The forest was largely bare. Even the oak leaves were all off. The fungi on fallen birches and maples showed easily with all the undergrowth died back. This found still-life was just off the trail. I like the mix of textures here, the way the wintergreen pokes out beneath the fungi, the way the small maple leaf rests, and the richness of the damp colors.
Sony RX10iii in-camera HDR. 200mm equivalent field of view. Nominal exposure: f4 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Processed in Snapseed on my Android tablet. Cropped for composition.
Milkweed. Happy Sunday!
“If your eye is generous, then your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Hope is a puff of Milkweed silk, blowing in the wind, carrying the future. And not the future only of the plant, but the future of the Monarch Butterfly, and in a very real sense, our own as well. It might all rest on where some single Milkweed seed falls to earth.
Hope is a dangerous thing to base a life on, unless, of course, you know where your hope resides…unless there is a huge power of good backing your hope. The generous eye lives in hope. The generous eye sees in the frail beauty of Milkweed silk, all the strength and beauty of the universe…all the loving care of a creator who works through love.
If you can see the beauty in this image, then carry it inside…into your heart and let it grow. Sometimes it really does all hinge on where the Milkweed seed lands. Happy Sunday!
Safe Harbor
Cape Porpoise Harbor, Cape Porpoise Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light.” Jesus
Yesterday was one of those gray fall days in Maine along the coast. Just enough rain falling to dampen, skies heavy overhead, sea agitated…almost angry on the rocky shore. And yet, it was day to enjoy…a day of joy in being alive. In Cape Porpoise the lobster boats were mostly anchored, and the dock was quiet, under the eye of the lighthouse on Goat Island. We ate the excellent clam chowder at the Chowder House, and watched Eiders catching crabs, and Gulls stealing them. The sign on the wall announced the end of the season and begged our patience since all the summer help was gone back to college and school. We were warm on the inside and the outside by the time we left, with a the deep quiet of the end of season day settling in us, still at our centers as the boats floating the harbor…anchored by our faith in a loving creator and wrapped in the light, of the fellowship of Christ. Our safe harbor, our guiding light, no matter what comes in wind and rain, or how the waves beat against the shore…no matter the end of seasons, or even the end of days. We know where our harbor lies…we know the light within and look at the world of weather and change with generous eyes.
Happy Sunday! May you know safe harbor today.
Ruby-throat
Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Kennebunk ME
Another shot from the back deck feeding station. Our only hummingbird. A Ruby-throated female that is regular at our feeder. She seems to be the only one in the neighborhood.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 640. Processed in Lightroom.
House Wren in the wood pile
House Wren, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I have a spotty record with wrens, photographically. I find them hard to photograph, for some unknown reason. I am always happy to try! I am always happy to see on, even if I can’t photograph it. (The obvious exception is the Marsh Wrens of Arcata California with are dead easy to photograph…though I am always happy to see them as well.) So, when I spotted this House Wren hopping around in the pile of broken boards from the old boardwalk at Saco Heath I was delighted. The fact that I got a decent photo is even better! The Civilian Conservation Corps replaced almost the full length of the Saco Heath Boardwalk over the past few summers, and the Nature Conservancy (who owns the property) and the State are doing controlled burns when weather permits to get rid of the old rotting wood. In the meantime it is piled six feet tall in several piles just as you come off the boardwalk into the Atlantic White Cedar grove. House Wrens love wood and brush piles, so it is not too surprising that one or more have taken up residence in these attractive piles.
This has, to my eye, the look of a young bird. I think I see just a hint of left over gape at the back of the beak, but I could be wrong.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ ISO 640 @ f4. Processed and cropped to about a 1000mm field of view in Lightroom.
Ebony Jewelwing in the sun
Ebony Jewelwing, Cascade Falls, Old Orchard Maine
Though there was not much water coming over Cascade Falls when I visited on Friday last, there were many Ebony Jewelwings over the stream below the falls. They seemed to like to perch in patches of sun on the rocks and broken branches in the stream. There is nothing so shinny as Ebony Jewelwing in the sun. It looks like it is forged in aluminum and anodized green. Even the wings have their metallic sheen.
Sony RX10iii at about 1100mm equivalent field of view. (Optical plus 2x Smart Digital Tel-converter). 1/250th @ f4 @ ISO 100. Processed in Lightroom.
Tufted Titmouse. Happy Sunday!
Tufted Titmouse, our back deck, Kennebunk Maine
“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus
Yesterday, when I was in the kitchen beginning to think about supper, I slid back the screen on the back deck sliding-door to chase a squirrel away, and then, when the birds at the feeding station came back almost immediately (including our female Ruby-throated Hummingbird) I left the door open and went for my camera. The light was lovely, with filtered sun after a brief rainstorm on the feeding station and the apple branches we have bolted to the deck for perches around it, and the background of dark trees 25 feet behind the station already in shadow. There was a fairly constant flow of Chickadees and Titmice, and the hummingbird came in for a drink from the feeder several times and perched out on the apple branches. I had a very enjoyable 30 minutes standing and watching and taking pictures. Small active birds are always a challenge, photographically, and there was the added test of getting exposure on the sunlit birds right against the dark background. And of course, there were the birds themselves, going about their business only a dozen feet from me. Thoroughly enjoyable, and perhaps more so, since I was propped up in back door of my own home. When I bolted the apple branches to the deck, it was times like this that I was thinking of…hoping for.
This Tufted Titmouse came several times. The image has almost a “studio” feel to it, a portrait, as though I posed and lit the bird for best effect. The lighting and the background gives the bird unusual dimension…and that, along with the level of detail in the feathers and in the bark of the branch, makes it look uncommonly “real”…alive and present. And of course, it was images like this that I was thinking of when I bolted the apple branches to the deck. 🙂
Still, for all my forethought (or hope) and what little skill I can claim with the camera, it is the bird that makes the image. The bird, bold enough to perch on my apple branch, close, while I stood completely visible in the open door. The bird with its little spark of life, trusting that little spark of life to me in exchange for a sunflower seed or two.
I think it is bred into us, even stronger than our hunting instinct, this desire for the peaceable kingdom…for an Eden-like experience where we are surrounded by all that lives…by every living creature, neither threatened by, or a threat to it…at peace with life itself. I think it is part of our heritage as children of God…the overflow and outflow of the creative love, the caring heart, that made the whole of the natural world we are part of. Our kinship with all that lives is an expression of our kinship with God, who created all in love.
And yes, it was to celebrate that kinship that I built the feeding station on our deck…and the foresight expressed was one instance (still too rare) of my eye being generous, and the light within me reaching forward in time to encounters and images like this. Happy Sunday!
Pitcher Plant
Pitcher Plant, Saco Heath, Saco Maine
I took the new Ford C-Max Hybrid on its maiden photoprowl yesterday…a swing north to Saco Heath, then cross-lots on back roads to Route 1 and eventually to Cascade Falls and back home. I am not sure I have been to the Heath this season at all. I know I missed the early bloom of Rhodora and Sheep Laurel and High-bush Blueberry, and the Grass Pink Orchids. I was surprised to find the Pitcher Plants in full bloom. I had remembered them as early bloomers, but I was happy to be proved wrong. Not only were they in bloom, but there were more than I have ever seen on the Heath.
Saco Heath, if you are just tuning in, is a raised peat bog, where the peat and sphagnum moss have risen above the level of the ground water. It is one of a very few in Maine and the only one in Southern Maine. The environment in a peat bog is highly acidic and very poor in nutrients, so it is populated by a group of rare plants that are specialized to nutrient-poor soils, and by stunted Pitch Pines. There a slightly higher section of the bog that supports one of the only stands of Atlantic White Cedar in Maine. The area is protected by the Nature Conservancy, and by the State of Maine. A boardwalk, renewed over the past several summers by the Civilian Conservation Corps, runs right across the heath to a loop of trail in the Cedar stand.
Pitcher Plants survive in the nutrient poor sphagnum surface by capturing and digesting insects. They are carnivores. The “pitcher”, a tube of adapted leaves, contains a digestive fluid at the bottom. Bugs crawl or fall in and contribute most of the nutrients the plant needs. The flower is very large (3-4 inches across), on a tall stalk, and more “interesting” than “beautiful”. As I say, there were many of them along the more raised sections of the boardwalk in the Pitch Pine hummock, and along the edges of the White Cedar hummock.
Sony RX10iii. The first shot is a telephoto macro and the bottom side-view is a wide angle macro. Exposure varied. I was shooting in Program and shutter speeds were from 1/60th for the pitcher shot to 1/320th for the telephoto. ISO ranged from 100 to 250. All shots at f4. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Eastern Amberwing Dragonfly
Eastern Amberwing, Quest Ponds, Kennebunk Maine
There is a poem.
I got out to one of my dragonfly ponds
today, for a photoprowl. Mid-80s and
clear, but with enough breeze to make
it tolerable…pleasant actually…and lots
of dragons and damsels doing their thing
around the pond. Eastern Amberwings,
my first this year, not much bigger than
a bee, but holding their own among
dragons 4 times their size…flying low
to the water like orange sparks, resting
on floating clumps, clots of algae, males
and females playing tag across the pond.
I kept hoping one would land close in
to shore for a photo, but they held well
out, busy with Amberwing concerns,
and I had to settle for distant shots…
so little they are, they hardly show
in the frame, and wouldn’t at all if they
were any other color. Amberwings.
And that says all you need to know.
One of my favorite Dragonflies and one of the smallest. A skimmer. The males like this one have bright orange wings…the females have clear wings with orange/brown spots…the same color as the body. Like all skimmers, they take no guff from anyone…including the much larger Green Darners and Black-saddlebags that frequent the same ponds in our area…not to mention the Twelve-spotted and Widow Skimmers. You rarely see them more than a few inches above the water, so they only really share airspace with the Azure Bluets with abound at this time of year.
Sony RX10iii at 600mm equivalent field of view. 1/320th @ ISO 100 @ f4. Cropped heavily for scale (about equivalent to 1200mm field of view) and processed in Lightroom.