My View of Life on the Dock
Not the prettiest of sunsets, though not bad for a chilly January first morning. Initially it looked to be a bust, but the clouds parted a bit and the sun shone brightly through. Happy New Year wishes. I hope the coming year brings you much love, joy, happiness, and peace ❤
Sunrise sequence January 1, 2017
Heading out New Year’s Day evening
Harbor Star
Duckworth’s wishing everyone a Happy 2017
Catherine writes that the story about her sons Charles and George King’s successful fundraising effort to preserve the Albert Bacheler Civil War coat was number five amongst readers for the Cape Ann Beacon. 
Looking for Snow Buntings while walking alongside Niles Pond, I came around a bend in the road and noticed from a distance the head of a large bird pecking at something on the embankment. Hmmm, a hawk, that’s why there weren’t any birds to be found. Hawks swooping their territory overhead quickly clears the woods and puts the kibosh on photographing songbirds.
Inching forward, baby step by baby step, the hawk was broad and large, and with its beautiful rust-red tail feathers, I thought it was most likely a female Red-tailed Hawk. The females are 25 to 30 percent bigger than the males, and because this bird was definitely on the larger size, for the sake of our story, we’ll refer to the hawk as a female.
She was intently devouring a freshly killed bird and if she had not been very hungry, I doubt she would have allowed me to move in so close. At one point, after having nearly eviscerated the entire bird, she tried to lift and carry away the carcass with her claw-shaped talons (one of the last photos in the batch). She did not succeed and finding more body parts, continued to eat.
After a bit, some boisterous folks came up from behind, startling both the hawk and myself, and off she flew to the far side of the pond. I found a stick and turned the dead carcass over onto its back. The head was missing, but by looking at the black webbed feet as well as the chest and belly feathers, it quickly became apparent that the victim was a Great Cormorant. I am sad to say that I think it was the very same juvenile Great Cormorant that had been living at Niles Pond for the past month as I have not seen another since.
Red-tailed hawks are extraordinarily adept hunters and highly variable in their diet. Eighty percent of the Hawk’s prey is comprised of mammals. For example, mice, voles, squirrels, chipmunks, rats, and rabbits. Records indicate that they also eat songbirds, pigeons, shorebirds, and unbelievably so, female Wild Turkeys and pheasants. Now we can add Great Cormorant to the list. Red-tailed Hawks weigh approximately between 1.5 pounds to 3.2 pounds, female Wild Turkeys average 9 to 10 pounds, and Great Cormorants weigh 5 to 8 pounds.
There were birders in the neighborhood earlier that morning, the morning of the winter solstice, December 21st. I wonder if they saw the Hawk kill the Cormorant, or if the Hawk came upon the freshly killed bird and it had been taken down by another predator. If you were one of the birders watching the Hawk out on Eastern Point near Niles Pond, on December 21st, please write. Thank you so much!
MORE PHOTOS HERE
Continue reading “WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES RED-TAILED HAWK DEVOURING GREAT CORMORANT CLOSE UP”
Captain Dave Jewell stopped by Captain Joe’s with his adorable new Labrador puppy Stormtrooper (his young kids are Star Wars fans). He knows how much Joey loves puppies 🙂
Captain Dave Jewell and Trooper
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea.
“If the average American uses 167 plastic bottles a year, in 60 years they will have used 10,000 plastic bottles.
Those same single use bottles will be around for your children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children.
That’s a lot of bottles to be running away from, for a very very long time.”
Read more at the artist vonwong’s project here www.450years.com
Essex River Sunset and Great Blue Heron
Readers, what do you think?
December 27th Gloucester Daily Times letter to the editor from Elizabeth and Brad Story.
“To the editor:
Cape Ann folks should be aware of the fact that there is significant opposition to dredging the Essex River in town and it comes from local people who know the river best. Rather than celebrating a boondoggle like dredging, we ought to be mourning a body blow to an incredible local natural resource.
The reason the Essex River hasn’t been dredged since the ‘90s is that dredging:
— actually causes the river to fill in more quickly;
— is terrible environmentally, no matter where the dredge spoils are dumped;
— is a waste of money.
When the channel is dredged, the banks are steeper. More boats use the river at higher speeds and the wakes and turbulence from the boats causes the steeper banks to collapse. The collapsed bank material fills in the channel. Now the river is spread out over the tops of the old banks and more filling in occurs.
We have seen this over and over again. If you look at the time period between dredging projects in the 20th century you will see that the time gets shorter and shorter. This is because the dredging makes the river less deep over time.
In the 19th century hundreds of huge Gloucester fishing schooners, steamers and other large vessels were built and launched on the banks of the river and were brought downriver on successive tides. There was plenty of water for them in the basin where they were launched and the trip down river just had to be guided by someone who knew the river. Once steam tugs were available they didn’t even have to necessarily wait for more than one tide.
Harold Burnham, who brings the Schooner Ardelle up the river to his boatyard, and has brought other large vessels up the river many times, uses the same method today. It is not a problem. My family operated the Story Shipyard, where the Essex Shipbuilding Museum is now, for many generations and I did business there until 1985. I built and launched many boats there and sailed from there downriver to Ipswich Bay hundreds of times.
The only people who have a problem are people who want to zoom up the river to the restaurants or marinas, and don’t want to deal with the state of the tide or the shoal areas. The police chief/harbormaster, who has so far refused to dock his boat at Conomo Point where there is deep water on all tides, also wants dredging. Maybe we need a harbormaster who doesn’t have to do double duty as police chief and therefore doesn’t need to be close to his office in the center of town? Might this work better without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on harmful dredging?
The Coast Guard has always had a problem getting in the lower Essex River but dredging won’t affect that. The problem is the sandbars shifting across the mouth of the river and between the ends of Crane Beach and Coffin’s Beach each year. No amount of dredging will ever change that, nor is it intended to.
The main problem in the Essex River is not its shallow draft. It is people going way too fast in big, powerful boats. This is our public safety problem. We face it every time we try to go boating, especially on summer weekends.”
Mouth of the Essex River, looking towards Cranes Beach, and Double-crested Cormorants
From an early morning stop at the bottom of my hill, with a view towards the Harbor and City Hall (as well as a feisty Common Loon), to the creatures abounding along the shore, it was a gorgeous winter morning, and all set against a widely striped and deeply-hued winter sky backdrop.
Common Loon at the pier, swimming very close to where I was standing and seemingly equally as curious about me as I was about it.
Gloucester FV Connemara Bay
Male (left) and Female Red-breasted Mergansers foraging at the Harbor
The Lollygaggers
Flock of American Black Ducks
Orchestra of earth tones for a well-camouflaged female Mallard Duck
https://www.instagram.com/p/BOkW5ydDEAg/
Beautiful fifty degree weather today and happy to be home to Gloucester. Running errands this morning and just had to stop at the Jodrey Fish Pier for the view and take a walk on Good Harbor Beach on this glorious and unseasonably warm day.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and Wishing All Our Readers a New Year Filled with Peace, Hope, and Joy
Robin Finds Christmas was a favorite book from childhood, given to me by my Grandmother. Funny how sweet little children’s stories stay with you forever. Robin Finds Christmas is about searching for the true meaning of Christmas and was written by the English writer and illustrator Molly Brett.
The first of our amaryllis, planted about a month ago, are blooming, and just in time for the holidays! This variety is Amaryllis hippeastrum ‘Papillion,” and is one of the prettiest I think. ‘Papillion’ has three separate stalks, which means three bunches of flowerheads! 
Amaryllis hippeastrum ‘Papillion’
Chinese Paperwhites for fabulous fragrance
Dominic Nesta’s mini-trawler “Tide Skipper” decked out for the season.
This sweet sparrow-sized bird caught my attention as it was feeding alongside a more subdued-hued Song Sparrow, both smack dab in the middle of the road. How could it not, with its strikingly patterned tail feathers, brilliant white underparts, and unusual hopping-walking-running habit.
Aptly named Snow Bunting, and colloquially called “Snowflake”, worldwide this little songbird travels furtherest north of any member of the passerine, breeding in the high Arctic tundra.
In Massachusetts, Snow Buntings are seen during the winter along the coastline and in small flocks, foraging on seeds and tiny crustaceans.
I hope more Snow Buntings join the lone Snowflake spotted on Eastern Point. If you see a Snow Bunting, please write and let us know. Thank you!
Snow Bunting in Arctic summer breeding plumage, photo courtesy BirdNote
Monday night’s sunset from Niles Beach, click image to see full size
Boston City skyline from Gloucester
The same Ritchie Blackmore from Deep Purple–rock and roller to Renaissance musician 🙂
Hooray – from now until the June summer solstice, the days will be getting longer!
Heading out on a cold December morning, Gloucester Harbor
Good Morning Gloucester 