tender apple tree tips

Greg has been pruning the old apple trees. That means there are branches lying on the ground, a feast of swelling buds and tender tips and a dream come true for hungry deer. The First People called March the time of hunger. If animals could speak they would agree, I think. It is too early for the earliest of spring greens, and most of the winter's food sources have been used up. In a few weeks the island will begin to provide new food sources: fern, purslane, dock, dandelion, and buds and tender tips galore, all you can eat.I used an old towel to clean off the window so I could take a picture of the deer browsing the apple branches. The deer saw my towel moving back and forth and stopped, vigilant, to watch. Then raised her leg several times and stamped it, while staring at me.
This is her signal that if the towel becomes aggressive she will defend her turf.
After the towel went meekly away, she walked over to the younger deer -- her offspring, I suppose, though she seems awfully small herself to be a mother.
They continued to eat, though the mother kept an eye out for any more towel incursions.

These two deer do not seem as starved as the deer we saw last March. Last summer was a good long season for island vegetation. The weather was excellent. Leroy had reduced the size of the sheep flock, so the deer were competing with a smaller number of the island's other large herbivore. They probably went into the winter with good reserves. Last March we could count their ribs. But now they seem strong.

island life continues, and we resume our place within it

We have been home for a week or so. At first it seemed as if we never left, though I'm almost certain we did, a few days before Christmas. Here sits the house, there the stone walls, the apple trees, the stacked wood, all pretty much where we left them.

But there have been changes. The mice came out to play. Three of them were killed in the traps we had cunningly, murderously set along the kitchen baseboards. So, traps sprang shut. On the window sills, flies expired of old age or despair, their tiny legs sticking up in the air. One small shrew fell down the stairs and died on the bottom step. The shrews do that now and then, and always in the same way, dropping from some unknown place and landing on the last stair, a fatal lack of attentiveness or memory that they make over and over, from generation to generation. We came home to this assortment of small corpses, evidence that time had passed.

Each autumn as the weather turns cold again, the deer mice come back into the innards of the house. They arrive through their secret passages, the ones that we will never close up, no matter how alert or ingenious or dedicated we are. And from there, their safe places, at night, while we are asleep upstairs, they enter the kitchen. Where we have set out mouse traps, baited with cheese. They take the bait, or some of them do. And then in the morning we find them dead.

While we were away the house was cold, but still, for the island's most permanent inhabitants, a nice enough place to spend the winter. Now that we have returned, the sad but inevitable dance -- dance of cheese or death --resumes, exactly where it left off.

We do not hate the mice. They are beautiful and charming animals. If only they didn't want to live inside the house, but of course they do want to live here in this warmly crumby place. And there's no co-existing, no compromise that would suit both parties. So, with regret, we kill them off, one by one. And with determination or hopefulness or filial piety, their children and their grandchildren keep coming back to this fabled paradise, the place they hold dear in their collective memory, our kitchen.

It was about this time a couple of years ago, in the dregs of winter, when there's hardly anything left out there to eat, that we began an understanding with the ravens. It was they who thought of it first, swooping closer to the house than we'd ever seen them do before, stalking and preening around in the side yard. Before, they had mostly perched in the spruce trees south of the house, or in the lower orchard apple trees, or flapped in threes and sevens into the dead forest along the shore where the owl lives. They are birds of great size and dignity, and we were surprised to see them coming so close.

On the nights when we ate meat --lamb or venison or mutton, all from the island --we were then in the habit of putting the bones and scraps outside on a bench until the next day, when I would carry them down to the wharf and drop them into the water, for the gulls. One morning Greg saw a raven fly up off the bench. He had torn open the plastic bag and taken the scraps. Then we began to lay the left-overs on the cement platform of the solar tracker: an offering to the ravens. And soon we added the morning's mouse corpse to the collection. The ravens took it all, lifting into flight with their claws firmly holding these gifts.

Now we are home again. Outside, snows have come and gone, fallen and lain and melted. Rain. Ice. Wind. Winter in its relentless power. Of all that I can only guess, like someone with amnesia trying to puzzle this gap back together again in my mind. I get the general picture but I have missed all the detail.

A raven has noticed that we are home, and walks, gravely, like an old man, along the picket fence near the house. It is he who is the keeper of seasons past. He remembers how long ago, before Christmas, we set out meat scraps for him, and the delectable fresh corpses of mice. He hopes to remind us of our old charitable impulses, to reawaken our consciences and stir our memories, to patch December to March, and move on.

season of good cheer

There's a quality of good cheer about deer hunting season on the island. The "hunters" are the same people as our neighbours, only for a couple of weeks they dress differently. As far as I can tell they have customary hunting rights over the whole island, which means that whoever I see riding by on an ATV belongs with one of our neighbours. It's usually one of their fishing mates and some younger relatives who are gradually learning the ways of hunting under more experienced eyes. So, since it's pretty much the same people year after year, they take a great deal of interest in how the deer population is doing. I would say they know more about the habits of the island's deer than anyone else. They are, really, students of the deer.

I'm glad to see them every fall because it's my chance to ask questions and learn something about the mysterious ways of deer. I try not to ask too much. I don't want to seem like I'm prying. So I limit myself to a question or two per year. This year I learned that the bucks usually stay deep in the woods while the does and fawns wander about more. That's why we see does and fawns around the house and sometimes on the road, but hardly ever do we see bucks. Just because we don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

The bucks become less cautious, though, as rutting season strikes them. I learned from the hunters this week that it's the onset of cold weather that triggers the bucks' desire to mate and lures them out of their hiding places. Deer season began officially last Friday, but it only started to get cold a couple of days ago. They said something about the phases of the moon too, but I didn't understand that part. I'll wait until next year to find out more about that.

I like the sound of their ATVs going up and down the road, heading toward their blinds deep in the woods or to another camp, then back again. Each year in late October they clear out their old ATV paths into the interior. Their paths do us good, since we can walk along them at other times of the year and explore an otherwise impenetrable landscape of forest and bog.

For some reason I don't see hunting season as a tragedy for the deer. Most of the deer who gather around the piles of imported carrots and apples to help themselves are does and fawns and under-sized bucks who can't be shot. Maybe the carrots and apples they are eating now will add to the reserves they need to get through the winter. And if the hunters decide the herd seems too small and the bucks too few, they will just agree among themselves not to shoot any. Since they have been hunting here for years, they take the long view. Sometimes I think they are more interested in watching the deer than anything else. But they are truly happy when somebody bags one.

They enjoy being out here for a few days anyway. The young fellas are learning the ways of the woods. The old fellas are getting away from the mainland and enjoying a break between the end of fishing and the start of the lobster season in a few weeks, when they'll be hunting beneath the deep, cold North Atlantic waters.

first day of the season

It's a tranquil scene today. The fierce winds have vanished and the island is surrounded by a serene and peaceful sea.
But from within the forest echo the ominous sounds of gun shots.
Today is the first day of deer hunting season.
Danger lurks deep in these dark woods.
The hens confer. Well, three of the hens confer. The topic of today's conference: do hunters shoot chickens?
Their brave commander flies to her battlement, from whence she will keep watch. Though she might do better to look in the direction of the forest. Behind her.

fancy pants caterpillars

There are some mighty fancy caterpillars that live around here. This one was up in the vegetable garden the other day, blissfully chomping his way through the salad bar.
He's so pretty. But eventually he metamorphoses into an easily-overlooked little moth called the spotted tussock moth (lophocampa maculata).
Same with this guy, who I noticed near our front door. The oak tree is right there, so he may have come down from it. I sort of harassed him, actually, since he wasn't much into photography.
I was able to catch his annoyed expression before I left him alone, which was, really, all he asked. He'll become a banded tussock moth, also called a pale tiger moth or a pale tussock moth. You can't have too many names! His official name is halysidota tessellaris.

I would think that a fancy caterpillar ought to result in something equally fancy once it emerges from its cocoon. But both these caterpillars are much prettier and more striking in this stage of their lives than later, when they turn into little brownish moths with patterns so subtle as to be noticed only by the most devoted mothologist. A case of peaking early, maybe.

the bog beyond the yard

We have a front yard, which probably should not be called anything so grand as a lawn. It is randomly studded with huge half-submerged boulders and equally randomly cropped by the sheep. When, for reasons known only to them, the flock's visits become increasingly random, as they did this summer -- in fact downright unreliable, though who are we to complain -- then the yard is mowed by Greg, with his push gas-powered mower, which is not designed for boulders and magically appearing stumps.

Just beyond the yard the ground dips into a low swath of bog, before it rises again at the lower orchard. Where the yard ends wildness begins. Like all the island's bogs, it is filled with soft mossy places, little streams and pools where you least expect them, deadfall lying in wait to trip you up, ferns, and grasses. It is criss-crossed with narrow deer paths. The bog is a good hiding place for the deer, easy for them to travel through without being noticed.
There are several varieties of berry-producing bushes in the bog.

Here is some sort of holly -- I think winterberry (Ilex verticillata) but I'm not sure.

And I think this sort is different from the first two. I think it is Indian Pear, which is also called shadbush or eastern serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis).

Its berries change colour from creamy white to pink to deep cranberry to dark inky purple. I don't know whether it is edible for the likes of us.

Here is bayberry, beloved by the warblers. Well, I expect the birds love all these berries.

And here are wild rose hips, just beginning to turn from orange toward dark crimson. In a few weeks the bog will be an Impressionist landscape of bronze and copper and red and mossy green and grey, with occasional dabs of goldenrod and blue aster.

how the music changes

The birds have been slipping away for some time now. I last saw the hummingbirds in the evening on the 31st so I guess they left that night, or early the next morning. They didn't say good-bye, even after we had such a good time together. The juncos and sparrows and mourning doves have left too, along with their babies. The warblers no longer flit among the bayberry down in the bog. The woods where the kinglets dwell is silent. And I haven't seen the robins for a while, though some of them winter over here, so maybe they are only taking a short vacation.

Yesterday I heard a white-throated sparrow's half-hearted song, and there's still one small sparrow of some sort who believes the vegetable garden is her personal kingdom. Other than those laggards, most of the beautiful singers -- the ones that make you stop whatever you're doing and listen -- have gone away and they didn't say where.

As sometimes happens, when the lead singers go off in search of greater glory or at least someplace warmer, you are not exactly bereft after all. It turns out that there were other musicians here all along, practicing quietly to themselves and waiting for their moment. Now their moment has come and they are ready. Bees and grasshoppers and dragonflies saw away on their tiny fiddles. Red squirrels add percussive texture. Lamb and ewe duets offer heart-felt recitative. The seal chorus really only knows its one song, but they love it dearly and never get tired of singing it over and over, their end-of-summer lament.

And there's the single loon who lives year-round in the cove. She's an aged alto, once famous but now retired to this obscure spot. She's still got her voice, and when she sings the island's enthusiastic amateurs fall silent, as anybody would in the presence of greatness.

monarch in lace

Maybe this monarch is preparing for an upcoming flight to central Mexico. Even though it has never been to central Mexico, it knows how to get there. I try to imagine what that journey is like from a butterfly's point of view. But I can't grasp it. It's beyond me in so many ways.

a visit to the ledges

You can see the rock ledges in the western channel when the tide is low. The rest of the time they are submerged, and no buoys mark their presence. These ledges, and the overall shallowness of the western channel, are the reasons it's named False Passage on the nautical charts. There is one particular ledge where the seals gather for choir practice, which they feel especially inspired to do on foggy days. The ledges belong to the shag and the terns, too. Terns are more camera-shy than shag, though.
The shag's other name is cormorant. In south shore Nova Scotia they are shag.
When the Atlantic is rough it sends strong waves into the channel. Then the waves crash over the ledges even when they are submerged, sending plumes of white spray into the air. But when the sea is calm I can even row out here.

humming garden

There's not much reason to spend time in the garden these days but I do it anyway. Oh, I'm harvesting peas and bush beans and lettuce, collards and turnip greens and swiss chard and mustard greens. But mostly I'm just looking at things grow: squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, pole beans. It gives me an excuse to wander around surrounded by the sound of a hundred bees humming away.
They've been hard at work in the garden all summer long. Just because the season is turning slowly toward fall is no reason to change their ways as far as they are concerned. There's still lots for them to do.

When we first moved to the island we couldn't imagine how anything got pollinated, since there were no honey bees.

We've learned that's one thing we can cross off our worry list.

The wild bees take care of everything. They don't make honey so humans don't think they are just the end-all and be-all. But humans can be short-sighted that way.
There's a Grimms Brothers tale called The Queen Bee. The youngest of three brothers, who was dwarfish and insignificant, followed his two older brothers out into the world.
He may have been insignificant but he was kind. Maybe his own dwarfishness gave him empathy for other small creatures.
In three episodes of the story, he defended first ants, then ducks and finally bees against the cruelties of his brothers.
Then came the tests to break the spell on an enchanted castle and win the hand of the princess.
They were quite impossible tests.
But the grateful ants, ducks and bees came to the aid of the youngest brother and so he was able to accomplish them all, even though his older, stronger, and no doubt more handsome brothers failed.

I often think of this story.

neither a borrower nor a lender be

The red squirrel pursues the most conservative of investment strategies.He expects to get on his return precisely what he put in -- no more and no less.
Just now he is keeping his eye on walnut futures. Timing is all.

being at home in the world

I go out in my rowboat only when the water is calm, so there's no need to row to actually get somewhere, or to keep myself from being taken away from where I want to go. And besides, wherever I am in that boat is pretty much where I want to be. Any destination is fine, and sort of made up at the last minute, and bound to change again a few minutes after that. So I zig and zag and stop and start, not doing much and not going anywhere in particular.

Instead, I ship my oars and lean over the edge of the boat to watch the bottom of the harbour. I drift on the current while images stream past below me: rocks flecked with light and limpets or hidden beneath tangled golden piles of waving rockweed, schools of tiny silvery fish, white sand, underwater fields of bright green seagrass, whelks, clamshells, a lone laggardly jellyfish, and huge scary fingers of kelp like a monstrous bronze hand reaching out to grab the boat from below and drag it down to a watery grave. I'm away from each sight as soon as I arrive.

I have been looking for starfish this summer, but I have not seen a single one. Last summer they were plentiful, at least below the government wharf and out on the seal ledges. Maybe they'll return again next summer. The ways of starfish are mysterious.

But while searching for starfish I found sand dollars instead. I hardly recognized them at first since they looked so unlike the only sand dollars I've ever seen: dead ones, whitened skeletons piled in souvenir shop bins, with that silly, insulting Legend of the Sand Dollar attached to them so they'll sell better.

Here, though, I began to see, in particular places beneath the water, as if cast upon a soft bed of pale sand, what appeared to be perfectly round and flat black objects.
As I looked more closely I could see that these dark round objects bore the sand dollar's five petal pattern, but in reverse, like a wax resist technique using fine sand instead of wax to reveal the pattern. The sand dollar is an ocean filter, sucking in organic matter beneath it and releasing water through the tiny holes that form its petal pattern on top. What I could see was, I think, the residue of its filtering process.

Even at low tide they lie a couple of meters below the surface, beyond my reach. That's just as well. As it is I can only look but not touch, as if I am visiting a collection of rare masterpieces. I doubt they are rare. But who knows anymore what's rare or endangered? Things seem to slip away without our noticing, and then they are gone. For now these sand dollars remain where they belong, on the ocean floor, their dignity intact, doing whatever small obscure thing it is they do on behalf of the world.

swimming deer

Shelley Van Buskirk Spears took an amazing picture yesterday afternoon of two deer swimming across the western channel of Shelburne Harbour, from McNutt's Island to the beach at Carleton Village, on the western shore. Her husband Alex called her to say that he had spotted the deer leaving the Horseshoe on McNutt's. That's the northern arm of the cove, here on the western side. Shelley ran to get her camera and stood on the shore to wait until they appeared.

You can see part of McNutt's in the upper left of the picture. The wind was quite strong yesterday afternoon, coming from the west-northwest, and the water was choppy, with whitecaps. This must have been a difficult swim. It's hard to imagine why the deer went across. People have always said that deer swim to and from McNutt's Island. But as far as I know this is the first time anyone has taken a picture of it. Thanks to Shelley for sharing her photograph.

beautiful swimmers

I let the rowboat drift in the cove for a while this afternoon so I could watch the jellyfish.They propelled themselves so quickly beneath the water that I could hardly take a picture before they had come and gone.
They are intent on their journey.
Here was the biggest jellyfish I saw today.
Its tentacles waved gracefully, though I understand their purpose is practical, not aesthetic.
But still...