by Roland D. Hallee

This week I’m going to give up this space to a subject of very much interest. It came across my desk last week, written by Alan G. Button, and it is something that I think I should share with you. It begins:

Three feet! I say again… THREE FEET BY THE END OF THIS CENTURY! This is the new alarming projection for sea level rise reported to us by the evening news over the last few weeks. Wake up people—Al Gore has warned us… TWICE! And scientists around the world, not influenced by politics and financial manipulation, all agree.

My interest (as a volunteer since 200l) has been to study prehistoric shell-middens, only a small number of some 2,000 existing along our often dangerous coastline. And they have been and still are disappearing at alarming rates. Over the last ten years I have witnessed the aftermath of total destruction to at least six middens within the Cushing, Friendship and Waldoboro coastal floodplains. And there is no exemption for what I see ahead.

Shell-Middens (sometimes called ‘kitchen middens’) are the remains of two basic time periods: the Ceramic Period people (precursors to the Wabanaki tribes of today) and the Late Archaics. Dates on rare occasion may range as far back as 5,000 B.P. (before present) which may include the Red Paint People. But most remains are of the four Ceramic Period divisions which terminated when European diseases wiped out upwards of 90 percent of these coastal families during the late 1520s.

Shell-Middens come in all shapes and sizes. But it is their content of bone, small pottery shards, charcoal, numerous lithic types, and various shell types which have only begun to help us understand these cultures. Many questions still remain: including migration and trade routes, hunting traditions, winter survival, and the extent of social life and cultural beliefs. The testing of one charcoal sample costs $250.00 or more. And the testing and analysis of faunal/soil material within a lab just for one site would be in the hundreds of hours.

Protection? Unlike other states, none exists. And unlike research and protection of historic sites funded directly by state legislation… Pre-historic field research performed by a handful of volunteers like myself has no funding. Where are the ‘Field Schools’? Where are the mandates to retrieve vital dateable faunal and charcoal remains? It baffles me, even with a ‘12,000 Year History of Prehistoric Maine’ exhibition within our Maine State Museum, just how many people (even our own legislators) who do not know or understand what shell-middens are nor what they represent.

And what boundaries, besides the lack of money, do we face? Three… Logistics and manpower, especially to offshore islands, ‘Potters’ who seem to believe valuable artifacts may still be found (rarely, and the damage they do is outrageous), and restricted access by landowners who have no
valid reason other than their own personal ideals. One such site on the upper Medomak River is reported to contain at least 800 cubic meters of intact shell/soil matrix. This site has never been sampled. And a 1983 report states a 115 meter (377 feet) wide erosion plain existed within the tidal margin below this midden.

I could think of several colorful adjectives one may apply to this mindset. Should we not demand some form of responsibility? Should not landowners be required to share these educational venues? Have we not learned any lessons from our past with knowledge that has been fragmented, obscured, altered or totally omitted?

I find it strange that when a bridge, culvert or road upgrade takes place at an inland stream crossover, it is a state mandate to have a licensed archaeologist on scene. Yet no such oversight exists for shell midden degradation.

Coastal towns are facing two major types of erosion: a) Wash-over from storm surge and b) Undermining of glacial till from tidal turbulence. The second is the most damaging as it involves subsurface whirlpools during flood-tides skirting in and out of coves and rivers, gouging and undercutting shorelines. Site 17.66 on the west shore of the St George River totally disappeared from undermining during the winter of 2016-17 (estimated to have been 20M x 6M x 25cm). I found nothing but shell hash scattered across the shoreline during a spring inspection in 2017.

What are we going to do? I do not place blame on the hardworking department heads and former state lab techs (where I volunteer) dedicated to conserving former research. But it’s going to take money, man-power, and a research center dedicated to a 10-20 year project to collect this information—something I had proposed some ten years ago. Perhaps, as so often happens, we will wait until it’s too late. And for many sites, it already is!

Let me know folks, only 60 years to go. This is your state… and your history.

Alan G Button is a volunteer with the Mid-Coast Shell-Midden Research; abfirewalker@gmail.com.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

In 1967, Billy Rohr, of the Red Sox, pitched 8-2/3 hitless innings at the New York Yankees in his first major league appearance. Who got the hit that broke up the no-hitter?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

The brown-tailed moth is back in the news. We covered this subject a couple of months ago, but it may warrant going over again. It is not a human friendly insect. This particular moth, Euproctis chrysorrhoea, is one that we probably could do without.

This moth, once native only to Europe, was accidentally brought to Massachusetts in 1897 on nursery stock, and soon spread to the rest of New England, Today, it is found only on Cape Cod and along the coast of Maine, where it is considered an invasive species.

The brown-tail moth is armed with defensive barbed hairs throughout its life span but especially during the caterpillar stage. These hairs break off, and for many people exposed, are susceptible to skin rashes, headaches, and even difficulty breathing. This caterpillar also has a huge host range of plants on which they feed.

The brown-tail moth caterpillar has tiny poisonous hairs that cause rashes similar to poison ivy on sensitive individuals. Rashes may develop when people come in direct contact with the caterpillar or indirectly from airborne hairs. The hairs become airborne by either being dislodged from living or dead caterpillars, or they come from cast skins with the caterpillar molts. Respiratory distress from inhaling the hairs can be serious.

Caterpillars are active from April to late June. Hairs remain toxic throughout the summer but get washed into the soil and are less of problem over time.

The moths, which are attracted to light and fly at night, and active in July and August, have a wingspan of about 1.5 inches. The wings and midsection are solid white on both the male and female. The abdomen has brown on it, and the brown coloration extends along most of the upper surface of the abdomen in the male, whereas the top of the abdomen is white on the female, but the tuft of brown hairs are much larger.

The factors underlying brown-tail moth population dynamics are little understood and have been only thoroughly investigated by few researchers.

According to the Coastal Pharmacy & Wellness staff, the brown-tail moth has been getting plenty of attention over the past few years. This is because the numbers have spiked to a level that haven’t been seen in quite some time. Last year was a banner year and this year’s population is predicted to be even higher.

Throughout much of its life cycle, the moth sheds its toxic hairs. Eggs are laid in August-September, when a female can lay up to 400 eggs. They build their winter nest in the fall and remain there from September to June. In June and July, the larvae spin cocoons in which to pupate. The cocoons are full of toxic hairs. The moth emerges in July and August, mate and lay eggs to begin a new cycle. During this period, more hairs are shed to cover the egg mass.

The brown-tail moth’s excessive desire to eat, and its habit of feeding on many different kinds of foods, together with its tendency to reach outbreak densities, makes this species a major pest of hardwood forests and may also attack fruit and ornamental trees.

According to the Coastal Pharmacy and Wellness staff, moth spray or lotion, to combat the rash, are available by prescription from your doctor. There is no antidote for the toxins, so treatment is focused on relieving symptoms and eliminating further exposure. “Since many reactions occur over weekends, seeing a doctor may not be immediately possible. In these cases, you may find relief by soaking in a warm bath and applying calamine lotion or antihistamine cream.”

Pursuant to Maine Statute Title 22§1444 the Chief Operating Officer of the Maine Center for Disease Control can declare an infestation of brown-tail moths as a public health nuisance. The declaration may be made on the COO’s initiative or upon petition by municipal officers.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

With his win in game five of the 2013 World Series, Jon Lester of the Boston Red Sox became only the second Red Sox left-handed pitcher to win three World Series games. Who was the first?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

There I was last Thursday, driving down the Cross Hill Road, in Vassalboro, minding my own business, listening to my Johnny Cash CD; just cruising on a beautiful, pleasant late spring afternoon, heading for camp.

That’s when it happened. A gray squirrel came darting out from the side of the road. He made a mad dash for the center line, stopping just short, undecided on what he wanted to do. He turned, looked my way. We made momentary eye contact.

Gray squirrels are a treat to watch. During their activities, they can be quite comical. They are acrobatic, agile, and extremely clever. Have you ever seen one stretching from a tree to a bird feeder? It almost defies the laws of gravity.

But they are actually scatter hoarders. It accumulates food in numerous small caches for later recovery. Some caches are temporary, especially those made near the site of a sudden abundance of food which can be retrieved within hours or days for re-burial in a more secure site. Others are more permanent and are not retrieved until months later. It has been estimated that each squirrel makes several thousand caches each season. The squirrels have very accurate memory for the locations of these caches, and use distant and nearby landmarks to retrieve them. Smell is used once the squirrel is within a few feet of the cache.

Squirrels are relentless workers, constantly getting their winter food supply in storage.

I have seen squirrels assume some strange postures in attempts to get into bird feeders, but my favorite one happened several years ago while my wife and I were visiting relatives in South Harpswell. They had a basketball-shape and size bird feeder hanging from an old oak tree. The ball had small feeding stations inserted from the outside, which would make it very difficult for squirrels to get into. I was sitting at the breakfast table watching as the squirrel climbed up the tree, went out on the limb, and jumped on the ball. Well, the ball being made of clear plastic was quite slippery, and the squirrel fell off. Undeterred, he went back up the tree, and proceeded out on the limb once more, jumped on the ball and immediately fell to the ground.

He would do this about three more times. It was at that point, even while I was wondering what his next approach might be, that I saw what you could describe as unimagineable, even unbelievable. He went back up the tree, ran out on the branch, and began to fool with the knot that hung the feeder. Now, from my vantage point, I couldn’t tell whether he was chewing at the rope, or attempting to untie it. Whatever he did worked, because in a matter of a minute or two, the ball came crashing to the ground, splitting wide open. The squirrel then went down the trunk, casually hopped over to the feeder, and commenced to helping himself to the seed that had spilled out onto the ground.

Did you know squirrels are one of very few mammals that can descend a tree head first? Although squirrels will fight among themselves for food, they also have been known to mob attack potential predators such as domestic cats.

They are also great communicators. In more noisy sites such as urban areas, they communicate with their tails and body movements. In the woods and more quiet environs, they will communicate by vocalizing. They can make a sound similar to the squeak of a mouse, a low pitched noise, a chatter and a raspy call.

Many times squirrels will “scold” me after I chase them from our feeders. They make it perfectly clear they are not happy.

They are kind of cute to watch, and pretty much mind their own business, unlike the more destructive red squirrel. So we live in some type of harmony. I respect their space if they respect mine.

Well, unfortunately for that squirrel last Thursday, once he turned and looked in my direction, he made a fatal mistake. He tried to return to the shoulder of the road. Had he elected to continue to the other side, he would have been fine. I felt badly, especially since I was listening to “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which MLB pitcher originally drafted by the Red Sox and traded to Baltimore before ever playing a game with Boston, returned for both the Red Sox titles in 2004 & 2007?

Answer can be found here.

by Roland D. Hallee

While taking a break from my chores at camp over the weekend, I tried to figure out what my column was going to be about this week. Thoughts were coming hard until I noticed all around me were blue jays galore.

Other than knowing they are scavengers, noisy and the mascot of a professional baseball team in Toronto, I had to learn more about them.

Blue jays, Cyanocitta cristata, are found in all kinds of forests but especially near oak trees. They are mostly found on the edges of forests as opposed to deep forest. They are common in both urban and suburban areas, especially where bird feeders are found.

Blue jays prefer tray feeders or hopper feeders on a post rather than a hanging feeder. We have found at camp that many of the jays we see are feeding on the ground under the hanging feeders. They prefer peanuts, sunflower seeds, and suet.

They also glean insects and take nuts and seeds in trees, shrubs and on the ground. Blue jays sometimes raid nests for eggs and nestlings, and sometimes pick up dead of dying adult birds. Stomach contents over the year are about 22 percent insect. Acorns, nuts, fruits, and grains made up almost the entire remainder. They hold food items in their feet while pecking them open. They also store food in caches to eat later.

Blue jays build their nests in the crotch or thick outer branches of a deciduous or coniferous tree, usually 10 – 25 feet above the ground. Male and female both gather materials and build the nest, but on average, the male does more gathering and female more building. Twigs used in outer part of the nest are usually taken from live trees, and the birds often struggle to break them off. The birds may fly great distances to obtain rootlets from recently dug ditches, fresh graves in cemeteries, and newly-fallen trees. Blue jays may abandon their nests after detecting a predators nearby.

The highly-recognizeable bird is known for its intelligence and complex social systems, and have tight family bonds. They often mate for life, remaining with their social mate throughout the year. Only the female incubates the eggs. The male provides all her food during incubation.

For the first 8 – 12 days after the nestlings hatch, the female broods them and the male provides food for his mate and nestlings. Females will share food gathering after that time. There is apparently a lot of individual variation in how quickly the young become independent. Blue jays communicate with each other by sound and by “body language,” using their crests. The lower the crest, the lower their level of aggression, and when they become more aggressive, the crest is high. When the blue jay squawks, the crest is virtually always held up.

Blue jays have a wide variety of vocalization, with an immense “vocabulary.” They are also excellent mimics. They have been known to mimic red-tailed hawks among other species of birds.

Some people don’t like blue jays because of their aggressive ways, but there are birds that are much more aggressive, like woodpeckers, grackles, mourning doves, mockingbirds and cardinals, throwing in gray squirrels in the mix. These species will actually keep blue jays away from feeders. So, to compensate for that, blue jays will imitate hawks when approaching a feeder to ward off the other, more aggressive birds, causing them to scatter. However, they usually return once they realize its a blue jay, and not a hawk.

Blue jay populations decreased by about 28 percent between 1966 and 2015, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Also, Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of about 13 million birds, with 87 percent of them present in the U.S., and 13 percent in Canada. The bird is not listed on the 2016 State of North America’s Birds Watch List. They are not endangered.

The most frequent cause of death associated with humans come from attacks by dogs and cats.

There may have been a sizable decrease in their population over the last 50 years, but we’ve seen an increase in their presence at camp, and at home.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Which baseball team won the first World Series championship in 1903?

Answers can be found here.

 

by Roland D. Hallee

On Friday, May 11, my wife and I officially moved to camp for the summer. It’s always great to leave the city and live in the serenity by the lake for about five months.

And, on Sunday, we were greeted by my wife’s favorite bird, the ruby-throated hummingbird. It was nice to see the little critters back with us.

As usual, the rule of thumb for their return from the south is around the middle of May.

The ruby-throated hummingbird, Archilochus comumbris, the only hummingbird species found in Maine, winters between southern Mexico and northern Panama. During their migration south in the fall, usually mid-September, older male and female birds are better prepared for long-distance flight than first-year birds by having higher body weights and larger fuel loads.

Adults of the species are not social, other than courtship, which lasts a few minutes, they lead solitary lives. They do not migrate in flocks, so individual birds may spend the winter anywhere in this range where the habitat is to their liking. They probably go to the same place every winter.

While we’re talking about their migration, let’s put a myth to bed. The myth states that hummingbirds hitch a ride on the backs of geese as they migrate south. The legend is entertaining, but false. Hummingbirds and Canada geese migrate at different times and to different locations. It is also a fact that not all hummingbirds migrate south for the winter.

Following the mating, the male departs and the female provides all parental care.

When it’s time to return north to their breeding grounds during the spring migration, portions of the population fly from the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico, across the Gulf of Mexico, first arriving in Florida and Louisiana. That in itself is an amazing feat. How can such a small creature travel the 500 miles nonstop over water? It would seem the caloric energy would far exceed the hummingbird’s body weight of 0.11 ounces. Research has discovered the tiny birds can double their fat mass in preparation for their gulf crossing, then expend the entire calorie reserve from fat during the 20-hour crossing when food and water are unavailable.

During the courtship displays, they make ticking sounds with their wings, and shuttle side-to-side in flight. I once witnessed a male hummingbird during courtship by flying, rather rapidly, in a U-shaped pattern, beginning at the top of the inverted arch, flying downward, circling back up to the same height as it began, and back again, several times. It was pretty impressive to watch.

Hummingbirds have one of the highest metabolic rates of any animal. During flight, their oxygen consumption per gram of muscle tissue is approximately 10 times higher than that seen in elite human athletes.

They feed frequently during the day. When temperatures drop, especially on cold nights, they may conserve energy by entering hypothermic torpor (the process of lowering their body temperature to conserve energy).

During their hovering at feeders, the hummingbird’s wings beat up to 80 times per second. They are also the only bird that can fly backwards. Once, while my wife was sitting on the deck near a potted geranium plant, a hummingbird came to feed. It got so close she could actually feel the cold breeze coming off the bird’s fluttering wings.

Hummingbirds almost never stop. Although I have seen them sit on a perch at the feeders, they spend nearly all of their time in the air. Their legs are so small and weak, they typically can’t walk at all. But in the air, they are masters. They can, however, shuffle to move along a branch, and can scratch its head and neck with its feet.

Speaking of feeding, when is a good time to put out the feeders in the spring? In the northeastern United States, they should be ready by the end of March. Don’t wait until you see your first hummingbird, that may be well after the first ones arrive.

As unlikely as it seems, hummingbirds have predators. A variety of animals prey on hummingbirds given the opportunity. Due to their small size, they are vulnerable. However, only very swift predators can capture them, and a free-flying hummingbird is too nimble for most predators. Chief predators include sharp-shinned hawks, praying mantises, green frogs and bull frogs. Praying mantises especially have been seen to ambush adult hummingbirds at feeders on more than one occasion. Blue jays are common visitors at nests, as well as bats, squirrels and chipmunks.

The oldest known ruby-throated hummingbird to be banded was a little over nine years old. Almost all hummingbirds over seven years old are females, with males rarely surviving past five years of age. The reason probably being that males may lose weight during the breeding season due to the high energy demand of defending a territory. Also, the high demands of the migration can take its toll.

The “hummers” are back, and that definitely means summer is not far away.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

“Game, set, match,” is an expression used to indicate a competitor has won the game in which sport?

Answer can be found here.