Rawr! A yawn can make just about any animal seem ferocious.
Tag Archives: Maine
Family Resemblance
Daddy makes one
One of the nice things about visiting Maine to spread my mother-in-law’s ashes was getting to meet many people on her side of the family that I hadn’t met before. The family resemblance was strong in the siblings, but they weren’t the only ones. On a visit to one of the aunts, a family of hairy woodpeckers nicely showed off not only the differences in their plumages but also one of the features that distinguishes them from the similar downy woodpecker — that long glorious beak.
In both hairies and downies, males have a red patch at the back of their heads while females do not. Juveniles have a red patch atop their heads, which my Sibley guide notes is occasionally yellow in hairies. On this particular juvenile the patch was noticeably orange. Another trait shared between downies and hairies is that females tend to have shorter beaks than males, making it more difficult to distinguish between a male downy and female hairy if you don’t get a good look. Complicating matters is that the two species are spread across much of the U.S. and Canada and overlap ranges in most of those regions.
I’m not a top flight birder, so there have been many times where if I don’t get a good look at a bird hammering in the treetops, my field notes just say “downy or hairy woodpecker”. These woodpeckers posed so perfectly, however, that they left little doubt.
Momma makes two
Baby makes three
Snood & Wattle
Snood & Wattle is:
- The long-awaited sequel to Turner & Hooch
- Portland’s newest eatery specializing in Willamette Valley wines
- My nicknames for Sam and Emma
- Red fleshy bits on a turkey’s head
If you’re particularly clever, you might have guessed the answer from the pictures. The snood hangs over the top of the beak while the wattle hangs below.
Opportunity
I’m a night owl by nature so one of the hardest lessons in photography for me to take to heart is to be up early and often. The reptilian part of my brain does its best to get me to go back to sleep when the alarm clock rings, so some deeply buried part of my consciousness has to struggle with all its might to win out and get me up and out of bed.
While we were in Maine, it was a little easier to win that battle as I knew I had an opportunity to photograph creatures I’ve rarely seen since moving to the west coast. After visiting Gilsland Farm Audubon Center one afternoon, I returned four more times at sunrise and am glad I did, even if it left me pretty tired by the end of the trip. It was the third and fourth visits that yielded my best pictures, such as this wild turkey that visited to feed most of the mornings of my visit.
The lesson that I need to make the most of my opportunities was further driven home Friday evening, when I was deeply saddened to learn one of my favorite photographers was showing his final images. He picked up his camera for the last time in May as debilitating health problems have left him unable to hold his gear.
You never know.
Portland to Portland
We recently returned to Portland from a trip to Portland.
My mother-in-law wanted her ashes spread near a favorite lighthouse in Maine so the family gathered in the Portland on the east coast and we spent a week visiting relatives in the area. Since it was a family trip and not a photography outing, I left the big lens and tripod at home in the Portland on the west coast. I did bring my camera and two zooms, I didn’t know what to expect but they pack down pretty small and were easy enough to take along even if I didn’t get a chance to use them.
My wife and I discovered the delightful Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in nearby Falmouth, Maine, on our first full day in the state. It was hot and humid and we didn’t expect to see much, but my spirits rose when we discovered groundhogs near the headquarters! Thereafter I started getting up at 4:30am each morning to visit the refuge for a few hours of photography and still got back in time for breakfast before most of the others had gotten up.
In this close-up of one of the adults about to take a big bite out of an apple, you can see an identification tag in its ear. The groundhogs there are being studied and sport tags in both ears.
Based on my studies, I’d say they really like apples.