February 2012 Almanac
February Offers Superb Winter Fun, But We Pine for Spring
On Dec. 22 during the winter solstice, we had less than nine hours between sunrise and sunset, but by Feb. 1, 40 short days later, that time expands to 10 hours, eight minutes.
Yeah, wow! Spring comes fast, but not fast enough for impatient folks longing for spring’s viridescent explosion.
By February 28, we have 11 hours, six minutes between sunrise and sunset. By the spring equinox, the time between daylight and sunset hits 12 hours and actual daylight hits 13 hours.
Despite playing with clock figures, the sun warms the February landscape plenty, and ice anglers and snow sledders worry about sunburn in the second month. By the third month, folks get major-league sunburns on their faces.
Ice anglers have solid ice now except around spring holes and currents, and snow sledders, rabbit hunters, snow-shoers and cross-country skiers find snow galore, particularly in the northern half of the state. Life looks fine for the outdoors crowd who love the white season.
One group of outdoor enthusiasts live for nights in an ice shack, jigging for smelts. In February, smelters do have safe, dependable ice for a favorite Maine pastime that provides a delightful meal and also huge smelts for dangling through the ice for lake trout and northern pike.
Ice-fishing for salmonids has slowed since the first two weeks of January, but in February, some blue-ribbon salmonid waters closed to ice-fishing in the year’s first month now open to the hard-water crowd.
Tunneled conifer thickets and swamps hold rabbits now, and that group lives for days when the hound’s yodel and the soft, rustling wind create a symphony.
A handful of hunters with cat hounds chase bobcats through winter woods, too. This game ends at mid-month.
Wildlife photographers target bald eagles and coastal waterfowl, and folks more interested in shooting photos in warmth stick to songbirds at the feeder. They sit indoors and get images at feeders within feet of a window. Folks do live for the images they get now, and the wise ones wire limbs above the feeders so it looks like a natural setting.
Fly tiers and rod builders work hard now in preparation for spring, and once, that’s all they could do – tie and build rods. Now, though, many waters stay open all winter. As long as ice doesn’t form along river edges, the open-water crowd is in business.
Serious anglers head south to places like the Keys, Costa Rica and Caribbean to fool with bonefish, tarpon, permit, barracuda and far more. What a glorious break for snowbirds getting away from snow and cold.
Sportsmen shows also offer a diversion now, and just about every week, folks can head to someplace in the Northeast for these fun offerings.
Despite the fun a Maine winter offers, though, even the most hardcore snow lover pines for spring when a southwest wind blows from Pennsylvania and the air smells like the new season.
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~ TIPS OF THE MONTH ~
Making Durable Quill Bodies … A Maine Tradition
When tying quill bodies – say the fragile stripped herl on a Quill Gordon – a light coating of head cement over the quill material after wrapping it keeps the body durable enough to withstand the punishment from myriad salmonids, even when fishing for sharp-tooth brookies.
…Another tip:
Some fly rodders use thin gold wire over the body of stripped herl, and that step really creates a tough finish. (To make the body look segmented, be sure to wrap the wire over the white part of the quill and not over the slate gray.)
…Yet another tip:
When fly tiers construct quill bodies or dubbed-fur bodies, they can also wrap over a light coating of wet head cement so the body lasts much longer after fish teeth have gnawed on it.
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Easy Cast-iron Seasoning Procedure
In the old days, folks advocated putting a liberal amount of rendered cooking fat into a cast-iron utensil and keeping it on the warm part of old-fashioned cook stoves away from the firebox for several days. This worked well for seasoning the cooking surface well enough so food didn’t stick.
Modern cooks have access to a product that decreases this time-consuming process to minutes – a non-stick cooking spray that goes by several brand names, including PAM.
After cleaning a cast-iron fry pan or Dutch oven, liberally coat the inside bottom of the pan with non-stick spray and wipe it off. Do this two or three times and the cooking utensil will resemble one that has sat on the back of the stove, seasoning for a week.
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~ WHERE THE ACTION IS ~
Northern Maine Bunnies
Northern Maine has superb varying-hare hunting compared to the bottom third of the state, and one hotspot lies along the Greenville Road. For hunters to orient themselves with this area, please peruse DeLorme’s The Maine Atlas and Gazetteer (MAG), Map 50, D-2.
Those side roads off the Greenville Road are snow-covered now, so hunters can run their rabbit hounds without fear of them getting hit by vehicles. Better yet, these byways slice through regenerating clear-cuts with great habitat for Mr. Long-Ears – an excellent playground for a day of sport.
The quickest way for folks from the South Country to get to this region near Millinocket requires a northwards drive along I-95 to Medway, and then, approaching from the northeast through Medway and Millinocket before heading southwest.
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Belgrade Lakes Ice-Fishing Smorgasbord
The Belgrade Lakes chain once attracted huge crowds of ice anglers, but this place has slowed down in recent winters, puzzling some folks. Maybe it’s the severely plummeting salmon fishery that has led to a lack of mobs.
This region still produces giant brown trout, and in Great Pond, some browns reach double-digit weights. Check MAG, Map 20, E-4 for access details. Great Pond also holds brook trout and northern pike.
Messalonskee Lake provides folks with brook trout, splake, brown trout, jack smelt and northern pike and access lies at Map 12, A-4 and A-5.
Long Pond holds stray browns that drop down from Great Pond and also the occasional landlocked salmon from stocking. Pike do a number on the salmon, though, so fishing has fared so poorly that few salmon anglers fish Long Pond anymore. In late April and early May, the boat launch on the Castle Island Road often has no vehicles, where once this writer has counted 100-plus filling the lot and lining the road. Long Pond may be the chain’s premiere water for giant pike. Access lies at Map 20, E-4.
North (Map 20, D-4) and East (Map 20, D-5) ponds offer superior largemouth- and smallmouth-bass fishing in winter and summer.
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~ NEWS & TIDBITS ~
Maine Forest Acreage On the Increase
The latest inventory of Maine’s forests shows the state is growing 15 percent more wood than it is harvesting each year. That’s a substantial change from the 2003 inventory, when cutting exceeded growth by 3 percent.
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Springtails in Maine Darned Numerous
Mainers call them “snow fleas,” those miniscule black critters that congregate in our footprints in winter to seek warmth. They belong to the Collemboia family, which includes 7,000 species worldwide.
A square yard of healthy New England soil can hold tens of thousands of springtails. In fertile soil on a warm winter day, springtails prove so numerous in a footprint that it seems to crawl.
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Christmas-Tree Producers
A statistic caught our eye in late fall. In 2010, Maine sold 127,000 Christmas trees, putting it in third place as a Christmas-tree producer, which looks impressive until realizing that first-place Oregon sells 6 million per year. North Carolina takes second place.
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Embracing Quimby’s Gift
In a December 11 “Voice of the People” in the Maine Sunday Telegram, Lloyd Ferris of Richmond wrote the following:
“Think what the Katahdin region would be today if Maine had rejected Percival Baxter’s gift. Second homes would likely surround our state’s highest mountain. Wilderness jewels such as South Branch Pond and Daicey Pond, places where every-day people go camping, would be gated communities. Some corporations would probably have a permit pending to build a wind turbine farm on Traveler Mountain.”
Ferris went on to say, “A gift of a wilderness, like Percival Baxter bequeathed to the public, is a rare event for everyone. But today, miracle of miracles, Roxanne is generously offering 70,000 acres of creation of a North Woods Park. Rejecting her gift would be a tragedy for Maine.”
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Beavers in Winter
Submerged alder and poplar sticks used for beaver forage in winter serve another purpose in spring and summer, construction material for dams. They’re soaked so do not float, at first an aid in the dam holding its integrity through flooding. Eventually, the sticks on top dry.
Submerged alder sticks that wash onto the bank and dry make superb firewood – often called biscuit wood back in pod-auger days. This wood burned with a fierce heat, perfect for baking biscuits.
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Varying Hares in Winter
In winter, varying hares forage on twigs and buds of sugar maple, poplar, white pine, eastern hemlock, rubus bushes and beaked hazelnut.
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Today’s Main Street
This past fall, the Harvard Business Review published a feature article that claimed shopping malls were satisfying the needs that main street America once fulfilled in small-town America. In short, malls are “Main Street” in the 21st century.
Malls such as the large one (by Maine standards) on Civic Center Drive in Augusta have a health-care facility, so shoppers can visit a doctor, pick up groceries and buy clothes, electronics, televisions, sporting equipment, bicycles, exercising gadgets, firearms, bows and arrows or you name it – all under the same roof. Larger malls have day-care options so folks can leave their children while shopping. On and on it goes.
Like in yesteryear, many hunting or fishing trips begin on “Main Street” where folks buy food, ammunition, fishing stuff, clothing and more for a trip to the woods.
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Forget the Leg of Lamb
Sheep produce less meat per pound of ‘live weight’ than cattle; yet, they generate similar amounts of methane. These two critters are the two biggest offenders, but the third big offender might shock those who haven’t looked into the topic – cheese. Production involves many of the same problems that sheep and cattle raising entail (feed, fertilizer, manure and so forth), and it takes 10 pounds of milk to produce a pound of cheese.
…The message? Let’s eat wild venison. (Ken Allen)
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~ BIRD OF THE MONTH ~
Maine’s Ring-billed Gulls
During my childhood, ring-billed gulls (Larus delawarenus) lived along the New England coast where they were far from rare, but not numerous either. As a kid, they caught my eye with just enough infrequency to make me stop and look. These days, though, ring-billed gulls prove common in Maine – like glancing at herring gulls.
For instance, these days, I see them everywhere, including the Wal-Mart parking lot in Augusta. In the early 2000s, I participated in the Audubon Christmas bird count for two years and found plenty of them along the Kennebec River in Augusta.
As the name suggests, ring-billed gulls have a black ring around the bill – extremely distinctive. Once birdwatchers notice the ring, they seldom mess up with identification for the rest of their lives.
Ring-billed gulls grow a little smaller than a herring gull and are also more buoyant and according to Peterson, dove-like. Their legs have a yellowish color, and the bottom of the primary feathers shows blacker than other gulls do.
Ring-billed gulls weigh 1.1 pounds, measure 17 1/2 inches in length and have a 48-inch wingspan – four feet! That’s a lot of wing for what we consider a relatively small bird. It’s little wonder they soar so well.
Herring gulls like Thayer’s and both black-backed gull species have a red dot on the bottom mandible, so even a casual observer can spot a ringbill from the near distance by looking at the ring as opposed to the “bloody” spot. In the distance, the ring sometimes shows up as a black tip – or maybe that’s my older eyes talking.
Ring-billed gulls spend the summer in Canada and then winter from the coast of Nova Scotia south to Florida and across the bottom of the country to the Pacific – clear into Alaska.
In The Sibley Field Guide to Birds of Eastern North America, Sibley, calls them “probably our most widely seen gull.”
Ring-billed gulls migrate through the upper half of Maine but are common visitors along our coast from late fall through winter.
Ring-billed gulls often nest on the ground and line the cup with grass, but in the north, they may use a tree for nesting. Gulls are gregarious and nest near other gulls or terns, often on island lakes.
Ringbills lay two to four spotted buff or olive eggs, suggesting a rather low mortality on chicks. (Ken Allen)
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~ DO YOU KNOW? ~
The Silent Owl’s Flight
Do you know why owls are able to fly so silently as they wing through the forest or across open land with their eye on prey?
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~ BOOK OF THE MONTH ~
Wonderful Bird Nesting Guide
A Guide to the Nests, Eggs and Nestlings of North American Birds (Second Edition) by Paul J. Baicich and Colin J.O. Harrison (Natural World Academic Press) has held a cherished spot on this reviewer’s bookshelf since 1997, one of those guidebooks that birders end up taking for granted.
…A mistake.
This meticulous work has life-sized colored plates of the eggs of each bird species as well as colored plates of chicks. If those offerings aren’t enough to titillate birdwatchers, the text also describes the habitat preference of each bird, description of nest material and construction, breeding season dates, incubation time, nestling description and time span before the offspring leave.
The nest descriptions really impress this reviewer. For example, look at what the authors wrote about white-breasted nuthatch nests:
“A cavity in dead wood. Cavity floored with bark flakes and strips and lumps of earth; with a cup of finer bark shreds, grasses and rootlets, but mainly lined with fur, wool, hair and feathers. Built by female.”
What a resource for the amateur naturalist!
With so many colored photos, it’s a bargain at $22.95. (Ken Allen)
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~ ANSWERS TO “DO YOU KNOW?” ~
The Feathers…the Feathers
When the snowy, darkened landscape looks void of life, owls sometimes call in the distance – both near and far – and make us aware that the woods still hold warm, live critters in this seemingly dead season. For veteran observers, owls surely add excitement to winter.
These efficient predators impress us as they sit in a quiet vigil, listening and watching for a meal, but their silent flight impresses humans the most. Like a ghost, they glide through forests or across fields.
Three characteristics with their plumage allow them to wing through the air in nearly complete silence.
• Their feathers have a fluffy, velvety feel that allows this body covering to absorb high sound frequencies.
• The flute, the leading edge of the first few primary feathers, looks like the teeth in a comb, which deadens the sound of air rushing over the bird’s wing and tail feathers in flight.
• The tattered, unkempt looking feathers on the back edge of the wing also help silence flight sounds as air flows over the top of the wings.
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~ NEXT MONTH ~
March Is on the March! Can Spring Be Far Behind?
In the bottom half of Maine, March begins like more of winter with snow and ice covering the land, albeit even casual observers notice the longer days. By the end of March, spring has begun its march.
Fields or any open spaces have abundant bare spots, showing brown grass and leaves, and by later morning, walkers across such landscape smell that fecund, sherry odor as the warming sun heats dead vegetation.
Rivers and streams, the large ones anyway, begin to open plenty, and brooks eventually follow suit. Early in the month, rivers and streams prove fishable, but the spring runoff ruins this resource until the end of April when flows drop to lower levels – not low mind you, but lower.
When this writer was in his 20s, he lived for white-water canoeing every March and early April. In those days, rising water excited me, but now, dropping currents mean good fishing soon. In short, we could skip spring flooding, and that would bring a smile.
In the North Country, the first half of March definitely looks like winter, and even by the 31st, snow sledders and ice anglers still head into the frozen countryside. Without a doubt, Aroostook County weather runs about a month behind York County.
Even in late month, snowmobilers heading to northern hamlets better have lodging reservations or risk having no place to sleep. Nothing illustrates seasonal difference between the two Maines more than that statement.
Hunting in March excites diehards, and these folks have multiple options from which to choose – varying hares, coyotes, common crows, woodchucks (as soon as field become bare) and red squirrels.
Why would anyone hunt red squirrels?
The Maine Sportsman’s Tom Seymour eats them, many fly tiers use the tail for wing material and the body hair for dubbing and some folks feel a need to lower the population around homes and camps where the tenacious critters manage to chew their way inside buildings.
In Maine, sportsmen shows run on weekends through the month, sports shops become gathering spots for folks anxious to go open-water fishing and trips to the Caribbean for salty critters like bonefish and tarpon pick up. Good bonefish and tarpon fishing in the Keys are still six weeks away.
And speaking of fly tying…. Folks rush through this month to finish replenishing fly stocks and constructing hot new patters. This unofficial sport really attracts numerous Mainers.
Snow photos this month create a mood, one of less freshness that shows a feeling of closure. Those crystalline, settled snows show winter has reached a point of no return. Spring will be here soon.