Monday, August 10

Monday, August 10

Today was an amazing day! We woke up at 4:20 AM, got dressed, tidied up, had coffee, and drove to the Jonesport marina which was about an hour-long drive. Once there, we were met by Holly, the owner of the Norton Jonesport Puffin tour. We met the deck hand, Jake, an 18-year-old who just came back from 6 months in Kenya. He was the bird man and first mate. Holly’s daughter, Whitney, who will inherit the business and is the last in the line of Nortons (business was established in 1939) overslept so we didn’t leave at 6:30 AM but soon after. There were 14 passengers and the captain along with Holly, Jake, and Whitney.

The swells on the ocean were pretty big but the boat cut through them pretty well. After about half an hour, there were only about four of us left on the deck—the rest went into the cabin to either warm up or dry off. Bob and I were among the four. I was worried that I would get seasick since the boat was really pitching and rolling, but I didn’t. Good thing because the trip to Machias Seals Island was an hour and a half and this was not a very big boat. On the way, Jake proved to be a very capable ornithologist as well pointing out shearwaters, all kinds of terns, gannets, jaegers and guillemots. Along to keep us entertained was their seaworthy black lab, Chip. Instead of a ball, Chip was fond of retrieving water bottles (full or empty, thrown or in one’s backpack). He was a beautiful dog (boy do we miss Katarina and Natasha).

We arrived at the island and was taken in groups of five by skiff—a lot of climbing in and out really shows your age—(my age at least). I was worried that we would not see any puffins, but my worries were for naught because upon pulling up to the island, we saw, literally, thousands of puffins (other birds too but this was a puffin rookery). This island is claimed by both Canada and the United States and there is a lighthouse. Because of the fog, the birds were not out in the ocean hunting; instead, they were performing for us. Upon climbing up the steep ramp to the top of the island, we were shown to our blinds. These were wooden boxes about 4 feet by 7 feet and about 8 feet high with openings which acted like trap doors out of which we could look from all four sides, high, low, and in between at the behavior of the puffins who performed on the rocks inches from the blinds. These birds are adorable but they look like the little stuffed animals that you squeeze to hear the sounds they make. The sounds are like the starting of a chain-saw, or, as I later observed (to Bob’s ears only) male orgasm sounds (which, of course, disrupted his serious biological interpretation and observation so that every time he heard it (and he heard it a lot) he laughed and gave me the tsk-tsk eye. They were virtually everywhere. Now, I am as interested in birds as any other ornithologist’s or birder’s wife, but after a point, I wondered why we were left in the blinds for over an hour. The surrealism (or ridiculousness) of this situation caused spasms of laughter which I couldn’t explain until later. Understand that we were not in this blind alone; there was another couple (who did not talk almost the entire time we were there except to respond in like when I introduced myself and Bob). He was a photographer for National Geographic and even for such a prestigious magazine and even though he was, after all, a professional photographer, I could not for the life of me understand how he could take so many photographs. I’ll bet he took at least-----a million-----well, at least it seemed that way. The photos were shot within milliseconds of each other as evidenced by the click, click, whrr, whrr of the camera. I was practically giddy and maybe a little overwhelmed by such enthusiasm.

Then, we were let out of our blinds, marched back down the island and then the ramp to our awaiting skiff, in groups of five, to be taken back to the boat. The boat took a little detour to an island that was serving as a rookery for another bird, the black guillemot (Mookie, I’m sure I spelled that incorrectly, but I’m too lazy to check any one of Bob’s hundred bird books which he has in various places in this cottage and in the van). So, instead of a 5-hour tour, it became a six hour tour. Although this was very exciting, some of the passengers were turning a bit green and many were huddling together in the cabin (save for the same four of us who stuck it out on the voyage to the island).

Although there were moments when I thought I might have been dreaming (or having a nightmare) it was a fascinating experience. I’m sure it will be, in a couple of years, one of those times I have to ask Bob, “Did I dream about seeing thousands of puffins on an island in the fog, or did I really see thousands of puffins on an island in the fog?”

The trip (as well as our wake-up time) caused us to become suddenly very exhausted after we disembarked, but we decided to scope out another northern Maine town, Machias. The Blueberry Festival is held here every year in August and one of the largest blueberry distributors in the United States makes its home between Milbridge and Machias. This town is larger but does not have the charm of Milbridge. We stopped to have lunch at a family restaurant. Both of us had salads—my cobb was about as bad as Bob’s steak and blue cheese, but the dessert was heavenly. It was a blueberry-cream pie. The blueberries in the filling used gelatin as its thickening agent and the whipped cream was fresh, sweet, and definitely not from an aerosol can or a tub. Because the blueberries were not cooked, they were not sickeningly sweet as they sometimes are in blueberry pies and these were all wild Maine blueberries.

When we came back to the cottage, Bob loaded all of his puffin pictures (and shearwaters, black guillemots, jaegers, terns (roseate, common, and arctic), gannets, and other bird and island shots) onto the computer—he took movies too—so I will try to get some up (no one except Bob and Mookie want to see them all) on our Flicker account asap.