Summer is doing is best to make this island beautiful and very interesting. I had a message from a column reader telling me she had seen 17 egrets together at the Tarn. That must have been a special sight in Maine. You expect large numbers of them in the south but not usually here in …
Hamilton Pond at the corner of Norway Drive and Rte. 3 is the place to visit this week. There is a spectacular display of a special carnivorous plant in bloom. Purple Bladderwort blossoms are bright pink and I have never seen the pond so beautiful. You can get nice overall views of this blooming right …
A flash of yellow and black flitting in the tree this week eventually brought a nice view of the beautiful male redstart. The bright yellow is on both the tail and the wings. They are hardly still for a moment so are sometimes hard to really see well. My favorite place for looking for these …
“RUN! NOW!” must have been what the Mother Mallard called to her medium sized duckling as she went across the road at high speed with her ducklings behind her doing the same. They all made it and cars went on by. It was a cute sight! A friend in the Bar Harbor area sent me …
“Summertime….and the living is easy…” The melody of this famous show tune is in my head a lot these lovely days of summer on MDI. All natural life is very busy with finding food and family duties, busy with life activities and plants blooming. On a friend’s lawn just this week a family of crows …
Daisies, valerian, vetch, wild azaleas, hawkweeds: The list goes on and on as new blooms “step on the stage” this month. Monarch butterflies are feasting in local fields and a nice sight to see. Their favorite food is milkweed. A baby bat was discovered in an island attic this week and the owner wondered what …
July starts with a bang in more ways than one on the 4th. Be sure to protect your pets from the loud sounds on the 4th and consider the wildlife too if you set off your own fireworks. Wildlife is busy with nesting activities and rearing young. Friends in Bar Harbor have a significant cherry …
You never know when nature is going to surprise you with a special treat as you go out and about woods and fields. Just outside a friend’s house on a flowering rhododendron, they discovered abundant tiger swallowtail butterflies. These gorgeous butterflies are very colorful, and their color can vary sometimes, although, locally these lovely butterflies …
Wild iris is blooming at the edges of my pond. This lovely wildflower looks much like those found in gardens. Its Latin name is Iris versicolor. Watch for patches of this lovely wildflower now growing in wet fields, woods and island ponds. The flowers are purple and marked with white and yellow. They have conspicuous …
A friend of mine was looking out her window this past week and suddenly saw a porcupine running out of the woods at high speed, at least it was high speed for this usually slow-moving creature. Every once in awhile, it would look back and then kept going in a rush across the wide lawn …
