December 2011 Almanac
December Is Dark And the Shadows Ever So Long
As December heads toward Christmas, daylight lasts 9 hours and 47 minutes per day, counting the half hour before and after sunrise and sunset. Because the sun has sunk further and further into the southern sky, outdoors types out for a day of it notice that even at noon, shadows still stretch out long and harsh.
Believe it or not, though, the glaring, yellow blob offers warmth at mid-day, unless an icy wind comes out of the northwest, common in the dark, festive month.
For hunters and anglers, short days of less than 10 hours fly by, particularly when action picks up. When weather conditions are conducive for fast sport, ice-trap flags fly, beagles push hares around thickets, bird dogs find grouse, open-water anglers keep a bend in the rod, ducks offer blistering shooting and on and on it goes. The non-blood sports also offer fast times.
Snowmobiling starts booming in the North Country when snow falls deeply, and motels and sporting camps fill up – particularly on weekends – with crowds known for spending money. This sport has become so popular that it helps rural economies in Northern and Eastern Maine.
Hiking picks up in December because folks enjoy walking in snow, particularly shallow snow. This crowd loves deciphering critter tracks in such a perfect medium. Even the most casual observer can see the story, often made the previous night.
Cross-country skiing attracts a handful of participants, small potatoes compared to the motorized crowd, and in fact, certainly less than bicyclists in the 12th month. Bikers try to get in those last few pedals before winter slows down the sport considerably, but it’s not the cold that bothers them as much as all the sand on the road edges after snowstorms.
Wildlife photographers hit the woods hard before snow piles too deeply, and favorite targets include bald eagles, waterfowl along the coast, deer, grouse and songbirds. Any critter is fair game, though.
Certain spots earn a reputation for holding half-tame critters that prove especially cooperative to work with a camera – say whitetails around deer feeders, an especially friendly fox or owl, Harlequin ducks off Cape Elizabeth or you name the place and species. Photographers flock to camera spots where pickings – although never easy – can be easier.
Outdoors types love to read in winter, and a big part of the allure is all the books piling up through the busy fall. Many of us can’t wait to get at them after a leisurely meal by candlelight.
One endeavor starts booming along toward New Year’s – tying flies. Nothing beats an evening at the vise, constructing flies while sipping tea or coffee and dreaming for spring.
All these and more are happening in Maine right now.
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~ TIPS OF THE MONTH ~
Great Month for Songbird Photos
For outdoors folks who don’t go snowmobiling or cross-country skiing, avoid hunting ducks, geese, bobcats or varying hare or never try ice-fishing or open-water angling in cold weather, life slows in December. Because of that, it’s a great time to shoot songbird images in the backyard. If photographers set up right, they can take photos from the warmth of a room looking toward the birdfeeder.
Here’s what to do:
Hang a birdfeeder or two and suet laced with seeds close to a window where morning sunlight shines on birds in such a way that these feathered creatures won’t be backlit. Then, wire a small conifer and a deciduous limb above the feeding stations, making sure to have the sky as a background.
Before the birds come, the photographer puts his camera on a tripod in a room near the window and focuses the lens on a branch. As soon as one of these feathered creatures perches, fine-tune the focus and composition – and start shooting.
Songbirds often land on one or the other limb before dropping down to the food. Because the bird sits on – say a balsam fir bough with sky as a background – the image looks natural as if the photographer shot it in the forest.
A male cardinal perched on a green fir limb with a dark-blue background cannot miss if the exposure and focus are dead on. In December, cardinals are nearly as common as chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, bluejays and woodpeckers, particularly the latter when the setup includes suet.
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~ WHERE THE ACTION IS ~
Mainer’s Late Fall Fishing Skills Improving Dramatically
A few months ago, a writer opined that Mainers needed to learn how to fish in late fall from mid-November through mid-December. When folks did that, the sport would draw more participants.
This comment sat me up straight in the chair. Five years ago, my newspaper column in the O’Connor chain covered a new phenomenon in Maine that had started catching my attention two years before that article appeared.
While looking at Maine’s fishing bulletin boards, photos of lovely brook trout and brown trout began showing up with frequency as folks showed off their catches. A careful observer could see the increase in photo submissions and salmonid sizes – some trout very impressive and reminiscent of mid to late May successes.
Furthermore, back then, The Maine Sportsman published an excellent article on how to fish flies tied to imitate fish eggs in Cobbossee Stream. A small group of fly rodders had perfected the method.
(I forget the writer and exact date, but the fish-egg-fly information – mostly from anglers on rivers running into the Great Lakes – fills the Net.)
Three top spots for this December fishing include Cobbossee Stream by Collins Mills (DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer [MAG], Map 12, D-4), St. George River below the mouth of Sennebec Lake (Map 14, D-1) and the same river at Payson Park (Map 14, E-2). These three spots occasionally attract small crowds in December, but folks can expect reasonable solitude, particularly on week days.
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A Great Spot for December Bicycling
Traffic subsides in early December but picks up again near Christmas as late-season shoppers fill the roads. In the peaceful time, a delightful spot to pedal a bicycle lies around Camden, a town known for excellent places to eat lunch and drink a beverage after a morning jaunt.
A favorite ramble begins in the parking lot that accesses the Camden Hills State Park off Route 52 just south of Megunticook Lake, a common access to the ever popular Maiden Cliff destination, so-named after Elenora French of Lincolnville fell to her death there on May 7, 1864.
(Check MAG, Map 14, C-3. The map names Maiden Cliff in red lettering.)
Pedal north on Route 52 until reaching Route 235 that heads south to a junction with Route 105. Instead of going west on Route 105, head south on that route number until getting back to downtown Camden, go a short distance northeast on Route 1 and then turn north on Route 52, which gets back to the parking lot by Maiden’s Cliff.
After taking care of the bicycles, head to Camden for lunch and other fun things for a family or couple.
Maine bicycling is booming in popularity with more participants than any of the single following sports: Hunting for waterfowl, bowhunting for deer, hounding bobcats (for sure), black-powder for deer, hunting bear over bait, chasing raccoon with dogs and shooting squirrels or woodcock.
Maine is a-changin’.
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~ NEWS & TIDBITS ~
Dollars Per Thousand Board Feet
According to the Autumn 2011 Northern Woodlands, Maine white ash sells for $338 per 1,000 feet, white birch for $297, yellow birch for $497, sugar maple for $488, red maple for $262 and red oak for $397. These prices are for #1 hardwood logs at least 8-feet long with 12-inch diameters.
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Critters to Look For In Wintry December
Pine siskins, redpolls, chickadees, tufted titmice, white-breasted nuthatches, red-breasted nuthatches, evening grosbeaks, blue jays, finch and sparrow species, downy and hairy woodpeckers liven trees around birdfeeders now, and on walks, hikers notice crows, chipmunks, red squirrels, gray squirrels, ruffed grouse, varying hares and maybe deer and coyotes.
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December Stargazing
Stargazing works well now because the night sky looks ever so clear without that natural haze common in summer. If folks know little about astronomy David H. Levy’s Guide to the Stars (Kenpress, 2001) offers a wonderful diagram of the sky at specific times for each day and hour of the year. Say it’s 8 p.m. on Dec. 14; the viewer turns a wheel on the Star Guide, which offers a view of the sky at that time and date.
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Contrails Predict Weather
Contrails form in the wake of an aircraft when hot gases from the engine turn to streams of condensed water vapor or ice crystals – also called vapor trail by scientific types.
When a contrail remains solid looking across a long distance of sky, it indicates the air up there is stable – a sign that the weather will be good for at least 12 hours. If it breaks apart quickly, that illustrates unstable air – the forerunner of a storm soon to come. Exceptions exist to this simple observation, but it works a majority of the time.
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Dangerous Load Pollutes Kennebec
On Oct. 7, a truck carrying 3,800 gallons of Nopcote that contains calcium stearate crashed near the Bond Brook overpass on Interstate 95 in Augusta, spilling 400 gallons of dangerous paper-making chemicals into a ditch that runs into Bond Brook and eventually to the Kennebec River. This drainage contains a few Atlantic salmon, an endangered species. The spill caused a skim, milky, white plume in Bond Brook.
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Striper Decline Hits Tournament
In very late summer, officials of the Kennebec Benefit Pro-Am Tournament (KBPAT) cancelled the event as did those in charge of the Casco Bay Striper Tournament held in Yarmouth in September.
KBPAT has proven disastrous in the last three years. Last year, 28 anglers caught two fish, and three years ago, 12 anglers landed 193 fish, data that resoundingly illustrates striper woes in Maine.
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Red-Maple Swamps Important Habitat
Most deer hunters reading the Almanac have filled their tag by taking a stand on the edge of a red-maple swamp because deer like to bed in these areas, particularly if alders or leatherleaf grow under the canopy of maples, providing great cover for deer.
Red-maple swamps dot Maine everywhere, which brings up a quick point. This writer never thought of this wetland as a certain type of habitat until seeing it in an Audubon field guide. The facts are simple, though. Several species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and insects rely on red-maple swamps for cover, food and water.
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Is Deer Driving Legal?
Is driving deer legal in Maine?
The State of Maine Hunting and Trapping Laws and Rules covers this simple question with 68 words, which should answer the question:
“Driving deer or taking part in a deer drive is unlawful, except that three or fewer persons may hunt together, without the aid of noisemaking devices. Driving deer is an organized or planned effort to pursue, drive, chase or otherwise frighten or cause deer to move in the direction of any person(s) who are part of the organized or planned hunt and known to be waiting for the deer.”
That’s as clear as a silt-bottomed pool with the mud stirred up. It’s actually legal, despite what the bureaucrats try to make us believe as long as we keep hunting parties to three or less hunters and do not use noisemaking devices.
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Fly Fishing Losing Ground In Maine…and in U.S.
Can you feel it?
Fly fishing in Maine and America has slipped a lot after hitting a crescendo in the 1990s, climaxing with the movie A River Runs Through It. Now, this sport has attracted fewer and fewer folks.
Deteriorating salmonid-fishing quality, lost habitat, lack of interest and other interests have slowed down that fly-fishing fervor in this country and state when commercials on television often had a fly-fishing scene helping to sell vehicles, aftershaves and too many more to list.
It’s a dark chapter for the slender-wand crowd.
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~ BIRD OF THE MONTH ~
Rock Doves by the Hundreds
Rock doves (Columba livia), more commonly called pigeons, catch everyone’s eye in the Pine Tree State, so we all have an anecdote or two about this bird, including this writer.
A few years back in December, William Woodward of Monmouth, and I participated in Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, and I half-suspected the organizers had it out for Woodward, partly because of pigeons in our counting area.
The region that the organizers gave us went through the Sand Hill section of Augusta, along the Kennebec River just downstream of where the old Edwards Dam once sat to a huge farm in Sidney, places packed with flocks of rock doves, different gull species, huge rafts of waterfowl and enormous flocks of blackbirds.
We’d get onto the river and start counting gulls and more gulls and then more gulls, continue on with waterfowl by the dozens and then head up to Sand Hill and see 100-bird flocks of rock doves, lined on the tops of myriad roofs. Later, we’d hit the Sidney farm, where brown-headed cowbirds required a 3-digit number to count them. We’d groan at each place and end up counting 1,500 birds in the run of a day.
Rock doves give me the creeps because my late father got an incurable disease from this species. While managing several rental properties, he was cleaning dry pigeon droppings and wound up with the illness. It didn’t kill him but caused him profuse bleeding from the lungs.
In A Moveable Feast, a memoir by Ernest Hemingway, the great writer talked about eating pigeons in his early years as a free-lancer. In my 20s, that struck me as romantic, but now, it seems just plain gross.
Rock doves make a meaty meal, though. They weigh nine ounces, measure 12 1/2 inches long and have a 28-inch wingspan.
Surprisingly, research shows this species lays but two eggs in each breeding, but it can do so multiple times per year, explaining their huge numbers. They build their crude nests of sticks and debris on window ledges, buildings, bridges, barns and cliffs – the latter natural habitat before humans provided the architecture where they laid eggs.
Pigeons have a well-deserved reputation of carrying diseases affecting humans, so city officials occasionally attempt to eradicate them, which seldom works. They can knock the population down, but not to zero because new pigeons move in from other spots. This bird is a survivor’s survivor.
From a distance, this bird looks bluish gray and drab, but they have iridescent feathers on their neck, extending down toward the breast. The black bars also stick out with a sheen.
Rock doves prefer to feed on seeds on the ground, but as any park dweller knows, breadcrumbs, corn kernels, popcorn and most any finger foods attract this species. Few birds can beat a pigeon’s skill as a panhandler catering to the good nature of humans. (Ken Allen
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~ DO YOU KNOW? ~
Rain Drops Falling on Our Heads
We learned in physics class that different weight objects fall at the same speed, unless air resistance enters the calculation – say a feather vs. a ball bearing. Do you know how fast a rain drop falls?
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~ BOOK OF THE MONTH ~
Fournier Hooked Reviewer…And Reeled Him In!
Paul Fournier hooked me with the first sentence in his new book, Tales from Misery Ridge (Islandport Press, 2011), when he wrote, “I was fifteen that summer when first love struck.”
That first love was a 17-foot long Old Town canoe.
Fournier started to reel me in on page 3 when he mentioned purchasing his second canoe – at age 17 – from Leon Prince of North Monmouth.
I had to read Fournier’s passage about Prince to my wife, Lin, because this canoe builder was her grandfather. After I read her that part of the book, she said Fournier’s words had captured her twice-widowed grandfather exactly.
Fournier noted that Leon was “a small, genial, lonesome gentleman in oversize overalls. Contrary to the stereotype of taciturn rural Maine folk, he was downright garrulous.”
Lin says her grandfather was all of that as well as an exceptional piano player. He even taught her to cook.
Leon was famous for his canoes in this area of Central Maine where Lin and I both grew up.
When I was reading Tales from Misery Ridge, my extremely understanding wife drove most of the way to Campobello, where we planned to spend the first weekend of October. That gave me a great opportunity to devour Fournier’s book. It was that, or read while I drove!
I doubt that you will set this book aside after you begin reading. Fournier’s life experiences are many and varied from sporting-camp owner and guide to bush pilot to his 20-year stint as public information officer for Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife from 1980 to 2000.
In chapter two, “Trophy Salmon,” Paul reeled me in with a tale of a 9-pound landlocked salmon. I caught one that big once – in Quebec. Paul’s story of this huge Maine salmon is astonishing – and that’s all I will say because the ending will knock you over. Wow!
The longest chapter relates the incredible, arduous, and ultimately disappointing effort in 1986 to restore Caribou to Maine. This chapter reads like a novel, compellingly told.
I learned a lot from this book. I thought I knew everything there was to know about spawning brook trout until I read Fournier’s account. Throughout the book, he blends interesting factual presentations with entertaining stories.
Fournier got in on the last of the ice-cutting days at Nugent’s Sporting Camps, and I found that chapter – “Crystal Harvest” – particularly fascinating.
“During the 1890s,” he wrote, “the average Kennebec ice harvest exceeded three million tons annually, worth over $36 million.”
From rampaging bears to giant brook trout, bush flying to treks down the Allagash, this book moves along faster than our spring-flooded rivers. It’s a great ride. (George Smith)
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~ INNOCENT BYSTANDER ~
Complaining About Where-to-Go Seldom Works
If a reader complains about me highlighting a fishing or hunting spot, that encourages me to write more about it. Many other outdoor writers in my vast circle of acquaintances have adopted a similar attitude.
Writers talk about this topic all the time with one another, so I know what many think about it. Many hot-stove-league or coffee-shop discussions have continued for hours on this topic with writers telling me funny anecdotes to illustrate points.
Mean-spirited revenge doesn’t lead to our reaction of continuing to write about where-to-go, either. In my case, if a chosen honey hole generates a complaint because I covered the hotspot in an article or book, it’s good enough to tell my faithful readers. If the fishing hole truly stunk as a destination, no one would mind me mentioning it.
…Which reminds me of a reader from circa 1990. My article covered trout-and-salmon fishing in Pierce Pond northwest of Bingham, and a man owning a summer place there took exception to me publicly advertising it. He claimed this storied water had run onto hard times, so I shouldn’t have encouraged visitors to travel to “his pond.”
I was fishing Pierce a lot then, getting there via the hand-carry boat launch at Otter Pond Cove. He was partially right about the deteriorating fishery. At the time, Pierce didn’t produce brook trout and salmon as it did 20 years before that time, but what Maine water did?
However, when this controversy involving my article erupted, it was still a helluva’ fine brookie destination by any standard, and smaller salmon were numerous. Pierce probably still produces, too, or the two sporting camps on it would go out of business.
Long before and since then, folks have complained bitterly about Pierce winding up in my writings, but this article and another one proved memorable because the whiners had enough power with two editors in the publications to stop me from writing about Pierce.
And that got them nowhere. I’ve been published in dozens of magazines and newspapers, so if someone shuts me up in one place, I pop up in another.
After all, if I have written a piece, it’s a waste of my time to throw it away. Like most professional writers, everything I write goes somewhere. When it comes to where-to-go pieces, that’s the name of the blabber game. (Ken Allen)
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~ ANSWERS TO “DO YOU KNOW?” ~
Falling Speed Depends
Recently, a trivia question on a WMTW Channel 8 television news program asked how fast a raindrop falls, and the meteorologist’s answer shocked this writer because it sounded so wrong – 7 miles per hour (mph).
A human falling to the ground travels at a terminal velocity of 125 mph, so why would the raindrop go so much slower?
Also, if the drop goes so slowly, why does it sometimes sting our skin?
The questions required perusal of the Net, which quickly showed a continuing story in television-news facts. In short, don’t trust ‘em.
The following data came from http://www.wonderquest.com/falling-raindrops.htm
Raindrop speeds vary from 5 to 20 mph and may go slightly slower or faster than the extreme on both ends, but often enough, the exact figures depend on the website. Apparently, some scientists cannot agree on numbers that encompass all the speeds.
At sea level, according to the website address above, which by the way has an affiliation with Wikipedia, a large raindrop the size of a housefly (5 millimeters) falls 20 mph, and a drizzle drop about the size of a salt grain (1/2 mm) lumbers along at 4 1/2 mph, slightly speedier than a fast walk by a human in reasonably good condition.
The site goes on to say, “A raindrop starts falling and then picks up speed because of gravity. Simultaneously, the drag of the surrounding air slows the drop’s fall. The two forces balance when the air resistance just equals the weight of the raindrop. Then the drop reaches its terminal velocity and falls at that speed until it hits the ground. This simple view neglects updrafts, downdrafts and other complications.”
“The air resistance depends on the shape of the raindrop, the cross-sectional area presented to the airflow and the raindrop’s speed. Most drops are fairly round with the small ones spherical and the larger ones flattened on the bottom by the airflow. At high speeds, the air resistance increases with the square of the velocity.”
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~ NEXT MONTH ~
It’s Winter All Right
Forty years ago, January in Maine meant rabbit hunting with merry beagles and ice-fishing for warm-water species. That was before state officials changed the ice-fishing opener for salmonids from Feb. 1 to Jan.1.
About the same year ice-fishing opened a month earlier, modern conveniences such as snowmobiles, power augers, space-age clothing, modern traps that don’t freeze, wonderful jigging rods and more had caught on big time and helped popularize ice-fishing even more. Since the 1970s, ice-fishing has increased rapidly as a state pastime.
Sure, back in the day, a handful of folks skied cross-country, chased bobcats or rode snowmobiles a little, but the bulks of the time, outdoors folks were rabbit hunting or ice-fishing.
How times have changed in 2011:
Snowmobiling booms even more in January than it did in mid to late December, so reservations for rooms in motels and sporting camps prove crucial to guaranteeing lodging – even at midweek.
On the weekend for sure, sledders must book ahead or stand a good chance of sleeping in a vehicle. Who thought in the 1960s that snowmobiling would grow as big as it has in 2011?
Ice-fishing also rocks now because last year, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIF&W) opened more waters to salmonid angling – both open water and through the ice – in late fall and early winter. DIF&W has expanded opportunities greatly.
By January in the North Country, ice usually thickens enough to be safe. The bottom third of the state also has frozen water by now, but in places such as Sebago Lake, open areas of water can still have thin ice now, thanks to sweeping winds.
A handful of folks cast in open rivers and streams as long as shell ice doesn’t line banks, but the number of participants are few. Oddly, too, most of the participants are fly rodders. Go figure.
No figures exist on this subject, but it would be a safe bet that more Maine anglers travel south to places like the Florida Keys than to this state’s open-waters in winter. And why not?
Saltwater fishing offers a world-class experience in the southern U.S.
Folks talk coyote hunting, but few do it consistently, if at all. Those who target this canine also try their hand at the smaller cousin – the red fox.
By January, fly tiers are going full blast, trying to fill boxes before spring. A small bunch of fly rodders build rods now, too.
Beaver trapping picks up now where it’s legal. This sport and business conjures images of mountain men circa the 1830s.
Winter camping interests a tiny group, as does wildlife photography, another small collection of like-minded folks.
Sure enough, Mainers have plenty to do in winter, but a lot of them satisfy themselves with building leisurely meals, reading and birdwatching. As we get older, spring isn’t far ahead, but younger folks suffer out winter because the green season comes ever so slowly.