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 …
The song of a hermit thrush is like none other and very special as the day ends. You hear its lovely song far more often than you see the bird itself. Hermit thrushes are very shy birds living in both deciduous and evergreen forests. They seem to crave privacy. The hermit thrush slightly resembles the …
May moves right along spreading color and beauty and beautiful sounds to the outside world here on our island. The delicate first leaves on our trees are special now and still let us get good views of the returning nesting birds. Later, when the leaves are fully out, it will be hard to see the …
