Heron visits Seal Beach

Where seals rest, herons hunt, and children play
click to enlarge photos

James comes running

On Back River meadow, Friendship, Maine, March 2011

James is very happy that we bought the house on the Back River in Friendship, Maine.  He loves to run on the salt marsh.  It's Labrador Retriever habitat.

Supermoon - March 19, 2011

Tonight is the closest full moon of 2011.  Some are calling it a supermoon.  It is a perigee moon - when the moon is closest to the earth, so its gravitational pull is stronger.  And Saturn is visible in the eastern sky.  Great info at Earthsky.org


I rowed from our house to Friendship Harbor - leaving 1/2  hour before the morning high tide, the meadow at the edge of the river was flooded, and when I took James for a stroll on the same meadow in the evening the water had fallen 11 feet in six hours revealing a dramatically different landscape.  Those shots are HERE.

high tide - supermoon 2011

low tide six hours later - 11 feet lower

Mammalian visitor

a harp seal behind across the Back River behind our house
photo by Kevin Burns

This harp seal visited for a couple of days, lounging about on the ice shelf in the Back River behind our house.  We assumed the seal was sick - because it moved around little.  But a call - by our neighbor Kevin -to the Marine Mammals Hotline at the Maine Division of Marine Resources disabused us of that notion. (click on picture to enlarge)


The seal - an adolescent she estimated from the pictures - would probably stay about 48 hours and move on.  which it did - gone on the high tide in the morning.  Speculation about what brought his this far up river starts with food.  This is spring and there are smelts up the back river.  Smelts are small ocean fish which spawn in fresh water.  Spring is when they spawn and head down river.  The creek in Thomaston - a similar body of water to the Back River behind our house - is home to a dozen or more ice houses every winter.  smelt is the catch.

First day of ice on the Hudson

makes me remember summer

the Back River from our living room - Friendship

the North (Hudson) River from our living room - New York

Sunset - Back River - Christmas Week 2010

Columbus Day - new moon - high tide on the Back River

Spring Sale

Spring sale at the Friendship Trap Company

4 Quick Dips

James cavorting on the Back River Meadow, taking 4 St. Patrick's Day dips.  slide show HERE

No. 1A

Spring work on my skiff  No. 1A  in the basement slideshow HERE

After the storm

18" fell on Friendship, January 1-3, 2010

Blue Moon high tide, New Year's Eve, Back River, Muscongus Bay, Gulf of Maine

Once in a blue moon something like this comes along.

10.9 feet, 9:39 AM, December 31, 2009

Here is the slideshow of the most-photographed cove on the coast of Maine.

Snow arrives in Friendship

It was a monumental storm in D.C., in Philadelphia (23.5 inches - a 150 year high), and eastern Long Island. But just a 2" dusting here in Mid-Coast Maine where everyone from away thinks vast amounts fall.

Click on thumbnail to enlarge photo. - gwc

Two days later

bīngdòng sān chǐ fēi yí rì zhī hán

冰冻三尺非一日之寒。

It takes more than one cold day to freeze a river 3 feet deep

Freezing morning in December - Back River, Friendship, Maine

The Back River is an arm of the Meduncook River which separates Cushing and Friendship. This shot was taken near high tide on Wednesday, December 16. Though snow had fallen, and there had been some cold days, there had been a thaw after the first cold snap, The ground was still wet and workable. Wednesday was a freezing day. Thursday it headed down to 5 F and the ground froze.

Shots of the Back River (the one above) were taken from our land. (Mostly through the living window.) Those from a height are mainly from east Salt Pond Road, Cushing. The slideshow is chronological from December 13 (when I got here) until December 31, god willing.

Exploring the Back river with Annabel

HERE is the whole slide show. Click on the photos below to get the whole image.

Russ, Yoshi, and James Explore the Back River

James showed Yoshi and Russ the way down the Back River, around Heron Bend to James Meadow and back home.




The slideshow is here.

Idylls of Spring

A man, a boy, a dog, a boat.

Life on the Back River, Friendship, Maine

Discovering new lands: James Landing, Nikolas Landing (picnic landings), the Meduncook and Back rivers

Back River Blue Heron

I am going to have to get a longer lens,
like the contributors to the great Spanish birdwatching blog Miradas Cantabricas. But these will do for the moment. These shots are taken right out back at our place in Friendship. The last shot is of the house from my skiff.

Delivery & Launch

Darrin and crew from Carpenter's Boatshop in Pemaquid delivered, on moving-in day in Friendship, my Monhegan skiff, and Marilyn's Adirondack chair.

The bank of the Back River, more on that later, is the kind of environment in which Water Rat and the Mole thrive in The Wind in the Willows, which opens with the famous soliloquy to messing about in boats.