Spring has been cool, so everything is a bit delayed this year. One sign of this delay was that the alewife were sparse in the rivers. This meant that the gulls and osprey that feed on the alewife were also making themselves scarce. We visited the Damariscotta Fish Ladder ...
... where it was obvious from the lack of birds that the alewife were not running. If we had not been certain their sign that gives the harvest date made it clear.
To paraphrase the sign: Lots of water, few gulls. But handsome gulls.
Some flowers were proof that spring had at least partially sprung.
The situation was similar in Warren, another spot we have often seen osprey and gulls catching fish. This young cormorant is certainly hoping to practice its fishing skills soon.
This little wildflower was hiding from the chilly spring breezes.
Two fishermen were setting up these unusual looking traps along the side of the river. They are for catching elver, also known as glass eels. Elver are valuable, sold mostly to Japan where they are raised for food. This year the harvest has been impacted by the cooler temperatures, and at least so far the harvest had not been very good.
Although it was slightly cooler than typical for May, this picture at Tugboat Inn shows that it was much warmer than when we were there in January.
For comparison, the January picture is at this link. The gulls were hanging out nearby.
Here is a view of the bridgehouse and of the footbridge that was finished last year. The bridgehouse itself dates from 1902, while the footbridge itself dates from 1901 (and 2024).
While we were walking on the footbridge and attached dock one morning ...
... we met a couple of women who also had mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (MILC) (the replacement to DSLR cameras). One of them owns Captain Sawyer's Place B&B, which is just down the hill from Topside Inn. She and her husband (who live in New Jersey) bought the inn as an investment, and hired a young family to live at the inn and run it. The inn owner, living out of town, had not yet heard that Topside had been sold. One evening earlier in the week, we had noticed a group of people with cameras and tripods walking downtown. That group was a beginners photography workshop staying at Captain Sawyer's. While these 2 women were part of that group, they more experienced and, in fact, were the only ones who had gotten up early with their cameras. Realistically, those who slept in did not miss a lot that particular morning. Except us; they missed meeting us. The sleepyheads also missed some nice opportunities to take pictures that they might not otherwise have taken.
Hopefully they ventured out on other mornings when the conditions were a bit nicer for pictures.
They were not the only ones staying cozy at an inn. Anne's pet rocks did not venture out into the elements this week. They stayed sitting by the fireplace.
Another interesting sight at the harbor was 'Heidi and Claire'. Heidi and Claire is a tugboat of sorts. It moves (tugs?) a float that can transport heavy machinery. This week, it was transporting dump trucks filled with dirt out to and the empty trucks back from Squirrel Island. And yes, that makes the expression "cheap as dirt" extremely inaccurate. The captain of Novelty told us that it cost $5000 per truck load and that many truckers are too nervous to allow their vehicles to be transported this way; they don't want to risk losing their truck!
The weather did not provide us many interesting sunsets, but we had a couple. We enjoyed one of those at Ocean Point.
The other sunset we observed was from Fishermen's Memorial Park on the east side of Boothbay Harbor. From there we also saw another sign of the season opening up was these men putting moorings into the harbor. We had not realized just how large those floats were until we saw them next to these two men.
And then we stayed for the sunset.
Updated June 2025