Hurricane Season

 

Masquetuck

These past two weekends,  Tropical Storms Lee and Ophelia have ruled.  Lee brought high winds but no rain,  and Ophelia brought both.  Equinox winds have averaged in the high twenties,  with gusts in the forties.  The sustained winds have whipped the leaves off the ocean-facing hydrangea and leveled the cosmos and verbena.  White caps and waves crash out front  with fast moving steel-gray clouds.

Head of the Plains looking to Clark's Cove

But the combination of the goldenrod and the groundsel  beckons me to go walking.  Milestone Bog is now brown with grasses and sedges  and yellow with goldenrod.   The  still green Polpis Road flashes silver as the winds whip the Russian Olive leaves and white with the salt bush (groundsel).   Tupelo leaves are almost down, leaving leaves of brown and gold and red in Squam Swamp.   The rain lights up the Usnea moss on the trees. On the bluffwalk, the autumn clematis blankets are without blooms.

I caught some fall warblers in Madaket:  a palm warbler at Jackson Point with the Sunday birders ,  and a pine warbler at Head of the Plains with Josh.  The shorebirds are active:  a flock of pectoral sandpipers in Madaket with the birders and a  white-rumped sandpiper at Sesachacha, along with semipalmated plovers,  greater and lesser yellowlegs, three kinds of gulls, Gadwalls and wigeon.  At the Head ofthe Plains,  I followed this solitary sandpiper walking down the road!

Pine Warbler at Head of the Plains

Pine Warbler

Palm Warbler at Jackson Point

Solitary Sandpiper

Palm Warbler

Foggy Days

 

Foggy September 10 sunrise

In early September,  the Bluff Walk abounds with  Queen Anne’s Lace, goldenrod, autumn clematis, and rose hips. The showy clematis blankets the shrubs, the grape leaves flutter and the groundsel is budding. At Squam Farm, the cobwebs hang in the fog, while goldenrods, grasses and grapes contrast with the reflowering pasture thistles. Mockernuts have fallen from the hickories. Gerardia and Liatris are a treat, as wells a brown thrasher and a least flycatcher. The Milestone Bog is filled with burnweed and still some sickle-leaved silk grass. Sweet Everlasting is in bloom.

Autumn Clematis on the bluff

Goldenrod at Milestone Bog

Liatris, 
New England Blazing Star 

Gerardia

Whimbrel at Pocomo Meadow

Ruddy Turnstone

Black-bellied Plover 

Norwood Oak on September 8

Summer's End

South Polar Skua,
Stercorarius maccormicki

 It’s hard to believe it’s the end of my Nantucket summer: the northwest wind has not yet begun to blow.  But the goldenrods are opening, and September 1 is the end of meteorological  summer .  As a birthday treat, I indulged myself in a pelagic birding trip with the Brookline Bird Club, to journey out to the Atlantic’s continental shelf.

It’s like an overnight camping trip with 45 bird nerds.   The Helen H leaves Hyannis at 6 am on Monday and returns at 5 on Tuesday.  I met new people and people I know, like Naeem Yusuf, the organizer of the trip who lives across the street from my son Charlie.

It takes hours to journey out to the canyons at the continental shelf…Veatch canyon is our first destination.  The first Shearwater we see is surprisingly a Manx.  Then come the Corey’s and then the Greats and the Audubon’s.  Only a few Sooty Shearwaters were seen.  A school of Common dolphins travelled with us for a while, leaping in synchrony.

Wilson's Storm Petrel

White-faced Storm Petrel

White-faced storm petrel

Approaching the canyons, the Wilson’s storm petrels danced across the water and we got good looks at white-faced, banded and Leach’s storm petrels.

The 2-4 foot seas didn’t bother me. Overnight  I heard yellowlegs calling and saw a prothonotary warbler and ovenbird drawn by the boat lights. Later a black and white warbler landed on the boat.  A small least sandpiper also circled. 

The patches of dense life with mammals and birds are far apart in this vast ocean.   The clouds seem to create a tunnel for us to pass through. My boat is so small and the world so large.

Tuesday brought both more marine mammals and more predators.  A south polar skua wheeled overhead and circled.  They breed close to the South Pole and make the longest migration of any skua, feeding on fish and stolen meals from other birds..  Josh and I saw the Great Skua in the east of Iceland. Too bad this one was seen in Dukes County and not Nantucket!

Our trip home was north between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, whereas we travelled out over Nantucket Shoals. Roseate Terns and a flock of American Golden Plovers were the highlights. We also got a look at the staging area for Vineyard Wind.

Manx Shearwater