My View of Life on the Dock
Church bells ringing from the Gloucester Unitarian Universalist Church on this beautiful Easter morning. You can very faintly hear Our Lady of Good Voyage from where I was standing (I think it’s Our Lady’s bells). Perhaps I should have tried to record between the two churches. Anyway, a handful of people had gathered outside the UUChurch and it was sweet when everyone clapped at the end. Happy Easter, Happy Passover ❤
I’d like to write Happy Easter and Happy Passover but I think this spring of the coronavirus pandemic is for far too many of us the furthest from happiness that there is. Instead I’d rather think about eggs. Our granddaughter had the best time coloring Easter eggs last weekend (and all the fun made her suddenly love eating hard boiled eggs 🙂 ). It was her little two-year-old self first time and she adored every moment. Imagine children the world over decorating Easter eggs. The egg is a universal symbol of new life, fertility, purity, faith, and hope. We can fight this coronavirus thing with faith and the hope for better days to come (and of course the mandated protocols).
I took some snapshots of eggs from around our home. We don’t have many Easter decorations but the ones we do have I treasure. They include eggs covered in origami paper that we made when the kids were little. A decorated ostrich egg found in a junk store. And a bowl of small speckled stones that I have been collecting from the beach because they remind me of shorebird eggs.
Send us your egg photo tonight and tomorrow and I will post them Easter Sunday night. Any egg photo you like. Thank you. ❤
Photos can be added in the comment section or sent to kimsmithdesigns@hotmail.com.
Ostrich egg vs. chicken egg
Don’t you love the the beautiful ovoid shapes and myriad colors of creature’s eggs?
Love the bits of colorful yarn woven into this Robin’s nest photo taken at Michelle Del Vecchio’s home
Catbird egg
Kildeer eggs
Piping Plover Eggs
No barriers yet on Nautilis Road (we expect they are coming)
No barriers yet on Witham Street
New barriers at the corner of Witham and 127A
Walk-ons allowed and bike stand still in place at Good Harbor Beach
Good Harbor Beach this afternoon, in and out of storms
Local people doing amazing things – DCL is a Boston based leading fabricator of architectural specialties. DCL President Mark Andreasson and his wife Karen Gorczyca reside on Cape Ann. DCL is now producing and delivering Personal Protective Equipment to area hospitals, police, and fire departments. Thank you Mark and Karen and DCL staff for all you are doing to help first responders.
DCL is a leading fabricator of architectural specialties – including custom signage, rebranding, wayfinding, and themed entertainment. We partner with architects and designers to custom-engineer the right solutions for each project. Our experience and expertise spans globally, and we provide custom solutions for the Academic, Athletic, Healthcare, Hospitality, Retail, and Transportation industries.
Casting a pellet is a totally normal thing that Snowy Owls, and all owls do. You may even have dissected a pellet in biology class. I just had no idea until seeing Snowy do this that they could be so enormous!
You can view the first three episodes here: Snowy Owl Film Project. All five will eventually be found on this page. Almost finished with Part Four: Snowy Owl Takes a Bath 🙂
A Snowy Owl Comes to Cape Ann
Part Three: Snowy Owl Casts a Pellet
Once or twice a day an owl casts, or regurgitates, a pellet, which is a mass of undigested parts of the bird’s food. Pellets form after an owl has fed. The owl often casts a pellet, and goes poop, shortly before heading out to hunt.
Pellets contain sharp-edged bones and teeth that could damage the bird’s lower digestive tract. Its presence prevents the owl from swallowing fresh prey.
Prior to dawn Monday morning, two Eastern Coyotes were spotted perusing Saratoga Creek and Good Harbor Beach. They appeared to be a pair; the huskier of the two was definitely the ‘alpha’ Coyote, with the smaller trotting after the larger. Before crossing the Creek, they both stopped to go pooh and pee in a pile of seaweed.
The larger (am assuming a male, but not entirely sure) has a more mottled snout with a black tail tip, while the smaller of the two has a very black snout and no black on its tail tip.
Drive-Thru “Pop-Up” Event – Friday 4/10/20
Scallops and Haddock landed at Fishermans Wharf
When: April 10th, 2020
Starting at 11:00 am – 3:00 pm
37 Rogers Street, Gloucester, MA
Haddock Fillets in 2 lb. Bags
$15.00 / Bag (Only $7.50 / lb.)
Scallops in 1 lb. Containers
$15.00 / lb. (limited supply)
*Please do not walk up to the truck, we will not be selling to walk-ups while we have a line of cars to ensure safe social distancing and to be fair to those in line.
Cash Only
Please try and bring exact change to cut down on the transfer of money.
This will be set up as a “drive-thru” style pick up only. No need to get out of your vehicles. Please follow the signs and stay inside your vehicles to ensure social distancing.
Snowy Owl MightY Hunter is part two of the series A Snowy Owl Comes to Cape Ann. The segment where Snowy is eating prey may be too graphic for very young children, so parents please preview.
Please share with friends and your young naturalists. Thank you for watching and take care ❤
A Snowy Owl Comes to Cape Ann
Part One
Dear Friends,
Not last winter but the winter before, an exquisite Snowy Owl arrived on Cape Ann. I think it was sometime in December we first began seeing her perched on Bass Rocks. Many of us followed her escapades daily and we took lots of photos. I was also filming her. Like many Snowies, she was tolerant of people, but I think she was especially unperturbed by humans. I also filmed other Snowies that irruptive winter, a stunning nearly all white male nicknamed Diablo at Salisbury Beach, a pretty female at Plum Island, and several males that were located at a beach just north of Logan Airport. And while filming one morning in the dunes at Crane Beach, two were having an epic battle. I was sitting super still and one of the combatants landed within several feet of where I was perched, startling us both!
About two months ago my computer crashed and I lost my film editing program and also became sick with what I thought was a cold. I had been mostly self-quarantining for a month prior to the mandated quarantine because I didn’t want any elderly friends to catch my cold. It turns out it is pneumonia. So between quarantining and learning my brand new film editing program I have made a series of short 3-5 minute films, mostly for the parents and kids in our neighborhood, and also for all our owl lovers. Hopefully, these shorts will help a bit to pass the time.
A Snowy Owl Comes to Cape Ann is part one in the first of five episodes. Next to come is Snowy Owl Mighty Hunter.
Please share with your neighbors and Moms and Dads home with the kids. I think you will love seeing the Snowy and how beautiful, too, Cape Ann looks in wintertime. And we’ll also learn some fun facts about Snowies!
Thank you for watching and please be well ❤
Janet Rice submits Piping Plover snapshots.
Recent storm wave photos from Len Burgess
Folks at Good Harbor Beach this afternoon practicing physical distancing
Over the weekend many more beaches and beach parking lots closed across the state. Massachusetts DCR State Beaches such as Winthrop Shores Reservation, Revere, Swampscott, and Nahant joined other North Shore communities (Crane Beach, along with Ipswich and Newbury town beaches, for example) in closing to non-residents.
Should Gloucester close her beaches to non-residents? Please write and let us know what you think (and why).
The good news is that State Parks across the Commonwealth are opening early. Massachusetts owns more 450,000 acres of recreational property. Several of the State Parks listed below are beaches, which are now closed, but many are not.
Here is a link to Massachusetts State Parks, alphabetically listed by town.
Murky day and fairly far off but beautiful to see a male and female pair of Long-tailed Ducks at the State Fish Pier.
Two versions of no sew face masks, both with good ideas and well done.
Warden of Gloucester watersheds dies
By Michael Cronin
Staff Writer
Joe Orange, Gloucester’s long-time watershed constable, died on Tuesday at the age of 97.
Orange’s passion was preserving Gloucester’s water supply and woods. He made it his duty to clear out squatter camps erected around Babson and Goose Cove Reservoirs. In 2008, Orange told the Gloucester Daily Times he had evicted around 1,000 people from 60 camps at that point in his career. All the while, Orange made sure to keep an eye out for teenagers hosting illicit parties in the woods.
“The watershed is a huge area; you’d need about 50 people to control it,” he said at the time. “But we can control the shore of the water itself, and that is where we have to focus.”
From 1994 until this year, Orange would conduct nightly patrols around Dogtown. Usually, he would takes these walks all by himself.
Gloucester resident Joe Orange wore his trademark shorts for this portrait by Jason Grow made for a series on the city’s World War II veterans. Orange died Tuesday; he was 97.
At 3:38 a.m. Wednesday morning, the New England Patriots’ team plane departed from an unusual locale: Shenzhen, China. On board the Boeing 767, in the cargo hold that used to be home to Tom Brady’s duffel bags, were 1.2 million N95 masks bound for the U.S.
Dear Friends and Snowy Owl Lovers,
Not last winter but the winter before, an exquisite Snowy Owl arrived on Cape Ann. I think it was sometime in December we first began seeing her perched on Bass Rocks. Many of us followed her escapades daily and we took lots of photos. I was also filming her. Like many Snowies, she was tolerant of people, but I think she was especially unperturbed by humans. I also filmed other Snowies that irruptive winter, a stunning nearly all white male nicknamed Diablo at Salisbury Beach, a pretty female at Plum Island, and a pair of males that were located at a beach just north of Logan Airport. And while filming one morning in the dunes at Crane Beach, two were having an epic battle. I was sitting super still and one of the combatants landed within several feet of where I was perched, startling us both!
About two months ago my computer crashed and I lost my film editing program and also became sick with what I thought was a cold. I had been mostly self-quarantining for a month prior to the mandated quarantine because I didn’t want any elderly friends to catch my cold. It turns out it is pneumonia. So between quarantining and learning my brand new film editing program I have made a series of short 3-5 minute films, mostly for the parents and kids in our neighborhood, and also for all our owl lovers. Hopefully, these shorts will help a bit to pass the time.
A Snowy Owl Comes to Cape Ann is part one in the first of five episodes. Next to come is Snowy Owl Hunting. Stay tuned 🙂
Please share with your neighbors and Moms and Dads home with the kids. I think you will love seeing the Snowy and how beautiful, too, Cape Ann looks in wintertime. And we’ll also learn some fun facts about Snowies!
Thank you for watching and please be well ❤
Love this poster from Mass Audubon!
Good Morning Gloucester 