Happy Birthday to USA...

Happy 231st birthday, America!

Wow! Just think of all the changes you've seen in your relatively short lifetime.

Heck on your 20th birthday you still had ivory-billed woodpeckers, Carolina parakeets, passenger pigeons, heath hens, great auks, Labrador ducks, eskimo curlews, dusky seaside sparrows, and Bachman's warblers around.

And that's just the birds!

There were still massive stands of ancient trees all across the continent.
And cod and sturgeon swimming in the waters.
Herds of bison, and packs of wolves, and unplowed prairies, and chestnut trees...

It's a lot to ponder. But since it's your birthday, I won't get all 'ponderous' on you.
Live it up, America! But don't forget to remember the past as you head into the future.

A great black-backed gull (a fairly recent immigrant to the USA) stands guard next to Old Glory along the harbor in Port Clyde, Maine.

Hog Island: Part 1

Scott Weidensaul leading a group of bird watchers at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine.

Scott Weidensaul, the bard of contemporary nature writing, is the one to blame. Now we HAVE to visit Maine every year.

He's the one, after all, who recommended us to be a part of the teaching staff for the "Joy of Birding" course at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. Seth Benz, director of the Hog Island camp, must be under Scott's spell because, sho'nuff, he invited us.

"A week of bird watching on an island off the coast of Maine?
Hmmm... let us thinkOK! WE'LL DO IT!"

Scott W. and Jen Sauter tide-pooling with Liam. They were gathering creatures for the salt-water touch tank in the classroom.

And we had such a wonderful time that I'm sure we'll want to go back in years to come. If they'll have us, that is.

Seth Benz briefs the staff just prior to the campers' arrival.

Flattered, we were, to be walking in the footsteps of great naturalists of yesterday and today: Allan and Helen Cruickshank, Roger Tory Peterson, and Rachel Carson taught, studied, or spent time on Hog Island. Stephen Kress launched Project Puffin from Hog Island. Today you might take the Ornithology course from Scott Weidensaul and Kenn Kaufman, or one of the dozens of other Hog Island instructors.

Scott conducted a bird-banding demonstration for the campers. They banded a pine siskin, a purple finch and a goldfinch.

I'd heard about Hog Island for years. Roger Peterson wrote and spoke about the place as having been one of his early formative career experiences. And the folks who go there, whether as youngsters or as adults, seem to be captivated by the place. This brings them back, often year after year. A few of our fellow staffers had come to Hog Island as youth campers decades before!

We passed this inlet on our way to and from our cabin. It was different every time.

The setting is right out of a Wyeth painting. Or maybe Winslow Homer. The ragged rocky coast of Maine, spruce clad with surging tides offers a stop-and-sigh vista no matter where your eyes fall. Islands dot the horizon and harbor seals, common eiders, and black guillemots swim amidst the bright buoys marking the lobster pots.

A male common eider. Most eiders were heading into eclipse plumage.

Harbor seals doing the "banana" posture on a rocky shoal, trying to keep their tails out of the cold water.

Cabins on Hog Island are much as they were back in the good old days--rustic and funky. But after a day of sea air, hiking the island's meandering trails, and birding, plus heaps of good food, few campers have trouble sleeping. I know I didn't.

Hog Island Director Seth Benz gives camper Susan the low-down on the camp.

I'll share a few images from our first two days at Hog Island. In my next post, I'll tell you about our boat trip to see the Atlantic puffin colony on Eastern Egg Rock.

Male northern parula waiting for me to go away so he could resume bathing in the camp's awesome water feature.

The Song in My Head

The Song in My Head is:
Two
by Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
from their new album
"Easy Tiger"

Ryan Adams seems to record several albums each year and this new one's already in heavy rotation for me. I first heard a song from this CD on The Henry Rollins Show in the Independent Film Channel. It was a heavy jam called Goodnight Rose and did not give me hope for the appeal of this new CD, at least to my ears, which prefer RA's more melodic work (see: La Cienega Just Smiled, When Stars Go Blue, Harder Now that It's Over, Call Me on Your Way Back Home...). Not that I don't love a heavy jam, mind you....

Then I heard Everybody Knows from "Easy Tiger," the first cut on the Paste Magazine compilation CD # 32 and I was hooked...

You know all those kooks camping outside the Apple Store waiting to by an iPhone? Well I was kind of like that for this album, "Easy Tiger." I didn't camp out anywhere to buy it, (though I DID play Everybody Knows at least 1,000 times while driving during the past month) but I did [warning: geek-moment alert!] pre-buy it from the iTunes Store. Yep! Downloaded it as soon as I could and started listening.

The first track I sparked on was Two which is also included as a live version with a bonus video of the band playing. NICE!

It's the melody that really hooked me. I'm a sucker for a nice melody. Throw in some pedal steel guitar behind the shimmering electric guitars, and a straight-up drum beat and I'm hitting the REPEAT button, babe.

I'm still listening to Two and grooving on the video of the band playing--checking out what guitars and amps they're using. The lyrics are nice, too, but, like I said, it's the melody. This guy's got catchy songwriting hooks in his DNA.

While we were in Maine, Two was the song was in my head and I was singing it to myself when I took the photograph above at low tide near Tenant's Harbor: something about the rock holding on to the seaweed (or is it vice versa?) that caught my eye.