Back in the day (as we find ourselves saying more and more often), our phone messages often concerned birds. I’d come home from grocery shopping to hear from one of our sons that “Bernice called to tell you she saw a big, fat robin with a big fat worm.” It didn’t matter if she was reporting a flock of grosbeaks or a rare warbler, the boys invariably delivered the “big, fat robin” message. So I’d call back to get the details and usually have a chat with a neighbor who happened to live on the other side of town.

 I was the Camden Herald’s Town Correspondent, and bird reports were a staple feature of my column. I’m not sure how that happened; I’m certainly no bird expert, but because I reliably wrote about who had what species at their feeder that week, it was assumed I was. It turns out that the birds kind of drew us together.

 We’re a pretty disparate group here in Lincolnville these days, a trend that’s been happening for decades. The place has always been a sparsely-settled 39 square miles of rugged terrain: Rocky hills, thick woods, wetlands with narrow bands of habitation along the roads. Hard to get to know one another, especially for the childless or elderly, or those employed at home or out of town. Television kept us at home, where once we’d have been at the Grange or the Lodge or the Star in the evenings. Even old friends, schoolmates probably, might run into each other only occasionally, and that at Drake’s for a cup of coffee or loaf of bread or an end-of-day six-pack.

 Ah, but back to the birds. And the internet. Do I need to say that a lot has happened in the past 25 years? For one thing, my newspaper column has morphed into a weekly online article. Between Facebook and the Google group we call the Lincolnville Bulletin Board, along with Instagram, smart phones, texting and other things I know nothing about, we’re in constant digital contact. My phone rarely rings with a bird report. Instead I get photos, even videos, and emails with sightings of wildlife of all kinds.

 Wildlife cameras set up in likely spots have produced wonderful images of “who’s out there,” especially in the night. Thanks to the indefatigable Corelyn Senn and her battery of wildlife cams, we know what a fisher looks like, have seen closeups of deer feeding, learned about the arrival of gray foxes to town, watched innumerable coyotes watching … us? She’s captured moose, bobcat, owls, crows, a bear, raccoons too numerous to count, her own cats and her own self, carrying buckets of feed up Ducktrap Mountain.

 Here’s an exchange between Corelyn and Liz Hand that came through email after Corelyn puzzled over some odd tracks she’d found:

“I am now convinced that it was a river otter that crossed my driveway. Yesterday evening I followed the tracks in both directions ... The animal came up from the river, following in part a small stream which was only partially frozen — it is more partial now because I fell through the ice in quite a few places. I followed it... along the road for quite a ways to see if it had gone back into the woods, either up the mountain or back down to the river, but I never saw any more tracks. There were also a number of slides along the trail. So, now I am trying to get some ice fishing discards to put down by the river with a camera to see what I get.”

 Liz responded:  “It could well be an otter.  I saw two last spring on Coleman Pond — I was able to get very close to them when they came to the shore (I crouched down in the winterberry bushes) and watched one eat a fish, close enough to hear him crunching it as he ate.  I was thrilled as I hadn't seen an otter there in many years.  One winter a long time ago I watched one on the ice — he repeatedly came up through a hole with an eel and ate it.”

 So here are two women, one repeatedly falling through a frozen stream, another sneaking down to the shore and crouching down in some bushes, out of simple wonder at the appearance of an elusive animal.

“Close enough to hear him crunching as he ate”! Now that’s a thrill.

Some years ago I wrote a piece I called “Window Sill Wildlife”, based on the premise that most of our encounters with the wild animals we live among  occur close, very close to home. Here’s part of it:  

 A story that came with our house told of Frances Claytor, the old woman who lived here alone in the 1950s spending hours in her rocker by the kitchen window looking out at Beach Road, at the top of Sleepy Hollow. One day she watched a mountain lion step into the road and stand in the middle for some minutes. Mountain lion sightings, by the way, run in cycles of several years; this past summer I've heard of maybe five, but those were the first in a couple of years. Before that what seemed to be a smallish mountain lion was seen by three different people just south of the Beach; one, Nancy Baer, reported that a large cat with a long tail ran down from the hills toward the shore, crossing just in front of her car at dusk. A few years before that there'd been another cycle of sightings, these all over town.

 In the early fall some years ago a bear careened through town from Youngtown Road to Peg Miller’s above Pitcher Pond raiding bird feeders over a period of a week. People awoke to find the metal poles that held up their feeders had been bent to the ground.

 We've watched foxes run under our windows, seen them trot along the road between snow banks. Wally and Ruth Lindquist lived in the house on the shore that’s now known as the Inn at Sunrise Point. When Max, their pet goose, was caught by a fox, Wally yanked him from its mouth. Dorothy Hamman, who lived with her sister Nettie on the corner of Chester Dean and Slab City Roads, saw King Solomon, our Siamese cat, calmly sitting side by side with a fox where Frohock Brook crosses Beach Road.

  At Ducktrap any summer afternoon you can watch kingfishers and ospreys fishing, hurtling down from up high into the sea. On the ponds in winter see eagles feasting on the pickerel and perch left behind for them by ice fishermen. Heron, Canada geese and even a mama wood duck with her dozen young swimming behind are frequent sights at Pond Bridge at the end of Norton's in the Center.

  Speaking of Pond Bridge, this is where one of our more celebrated recent sightings took place, as a pair of mating otters frolicked on the ice, diving in and out of the open water, amazing (and amusing) Fritz Trisdale who happened to be walking by. Another day Ric McKittrick told me he was late to work after watching a beaver from the bridge for half an hour.  

 On Youngtown Road a woman watched two bucks fighting for a doe standing in nearby bushes; she saw this literally from her kitchen window. My own never-to-be-forgotten sight was triplet newborn moose calves following their big lumbering mother across Slab City Road one spring many years ago.

  Animal populations change, as any windowsill observer knows. Turkeys are new in Lincolnville, and so are turkey vultures. Mourning doves are relative newcomers, but where are the whipporwills and bitterns? And, I might add, where have the toads gone? The peepers still announce spring, though, from every puddle and pond. Bluebirds have caused alot of excitement in the past few years as they'd almost disappeared from this area until recently. For several years Harriet McIntyre and Judie Hazen, one on Heal Road and the other on High Street, contended for Most Bluebirds in Town. No, it wasn’t a contest,  just a friendly competition.  Now with people putting out birdhouses there are many pairs returning year after year. One family rigged a nestbox near a window so they could videotape the birds inside.

 Margaretta Thurlow, who lived in the home she was born in until she died at age 97, had learned all the birdcalls as a child and could still identify them by their song. Each spring she came by our shop for the “thrums”, the short lengths of cotton warp leftover when weaving. “The orioles prefer pure cotton for their nests,” she told me and took them home to lay out on bushes around her yard for the nesting birds. Not far away, at Youngtown Corner, Todd and Martha McIntosh watched pairs of Northern Orioles raise their young in their apple trees.

 Those who knew Margaretta, and she was/is legendary among her friends and neighbors, still speak of the time she contended with a skunk in her 90s. She was kneeling in her flower garden, weeding one day, when a skunk walked right up to her. She shoved it and told it to get away, whereupon it bit her on the hand. So Margaretta stood up, got in her car and drove to PenBay for rabies shots. No fuss. Just take care of it.

LCS

Congratulations to December’s Students of the Month: Kindergarten, Ophelia Larsen and Vanessa Merry; First Grade, Amelia Davis and Carter Campbell; Second Grade, Luke Baker; Third Grade, Sophia Skrivanich and Liam Day-Lynch; Fourth Grade, Gwen Hustus and Chloe Burgess; Fifth Grade, Freya Hurlburt and Kaden Wood; Sixth Grade, Elise Condon; Seventh Grade, Lily Clement; Eighth Grade, Kevin Bergelin.

Library

Tuesday

The Library Book Group meets Tuesday, Jan. 17, 6 p.m. to discuss Kenneth Roberts’ Arundel. The story follows Steven Nason as he joins Benedict Arnold in his march to Quebec during the American Revolution. Kenneth Roberts’ historical novels about Maine’s early days are a great way to get some background and perspective on our region’s history; a great way to pass a winter’s evening or a nasty day outside is to sit by the fire and get lost in one of them. Even if you read Arundel years ago, or have never read it, the book group would love to have you come and join the discussion.

Wednesday

Wag It, Lincolnville’s own dog training school, is starting up new classes next month, including Basic Manners and Puppy Class, both on Feb. 9. Other classes offered include “Fun with Scent Games” and Agility Trials (spectators welcome). Wag It offers training for therapy dogs and agility games as well. Classes and trials are held at the Wag It facility on Calderwood Lane off Beach Road.

United Christian Church is undergoing some change this winter as the congregation prepares for the June retirement of Pastor Susan Stonestreet, minister for the past 18 years to the UCC’s 100+ members. The number is fluid, because as Pastor Susan has always said, “if you’re sitting in the pews, you’re a member of this congregation.” She is now preaching and leading worship twice a month with various guest preachers on the other Sundays, though she leads worship those days. A relatively new feature is “children’s church” with young children leaving at the beginning of the service to gather in the Parish Hall for their own special instruction and play around the Bible stories. Next Sunday Rev. Kate Braestrup will be preaching. For those who are interested, I’ll list each Sunday’s preacher in the Calendar sidebar.

Of course, there are two other churches in town – Community Crossroads Baptist Church, which meets in Walsh Common at the school, and Bayshore Baptist Church on Atlantic Highway, north of the Beach. Services for both are listed in the Calendar. I always welcome news from either of them, so please let me now of their events.