Black-capped chickadee.
Yesterday I picked three tiny ticks off Jack after our hike along the wooded Beech Hill trail. Today I picked six off him. The hill is full of ticks, as anyone can tell you—deer ticks, dog ticks—although they seem to have emerged a bit early this year thanks to our unseasonably warm winter. At certain times of year, after traipsing through grassy habitats, I’ve found dozens crawling up my jeans legs. I can imagine such a discovery would discourage some from hiking the trails at all. Especially daunting might be a diagnosis of tick-borne Lyme or anaplasmosis infections. (I’ve had the former, Jack the latter.) But it won’t stop us.
Northern harrier.
Nope, a Maine woods hiker will encounter such nuisances as ticks, mosquitos, black flies, deer flies. They’re all a part of the experience—all a part of the miraculous food chain. Without these ravenous blood-suckers, we wouldn’t get to appreciate the things that eat them. Later in spring, when mosquitos and black flies swarm, I, for one, will be spending hours on the hill in early morning, enthralled, as warblers and vireos and flycatchers chase and hunt and devour them.
None of those bird species appeared on the hill today, of course. Too early in the season. But I did see a solitary harrier floating above the barren fields, its T-shaped silhouette dipping and rising up toward Beech Nut and down the slope again. And I heard the musical rattle of a pileated woodpecker. Heard the cries of crows and gulls. Spent some time with chickadees. Slogged through mud admiring long forest views between leafless hardwoods—views that will soon be obscured by green.
The weather today was unsettled: sunny, cloudy, drizzly, sunny, foggy. A few raindrops fell on us as we descended through the soggy bottomlands. Tonight, out back, a woodcock spiraled up on whistling wings, descended amid burbles and chirps, and let off its declarative peent! Soon I’ll be listening to spring peepers. Fox sparrows will move through. Phoebes will arrive to dine on flies and mosquitos.
Oak leaf in a stream.
Nope. I got no problem with tick season.
Beech Hill List
Beginning at 4:15 p.m., I hiked the wooded trails.
1. American crow (voice)
2. Herring gull (voice)
3. Black-capped chickadee
4. Northern harrier
5. Pileated woodpecker (voice)
Elsewhere
6. Tufted titmouse
7. House finch
8. White-breasted nuthatch
9. Mourning dove
10. Rock pigeon
11. Ring-billed gull
12. Mourning dove
13. American woodcock
