I want to share a shift I’m making with the paid side of this newsletter, and I hope you’ll find it actually makes things better for you.

When I started offering paid content, I committed to one substantial video each month — something meaty, something that took real time to produce and watch. The idea was: quality over quantity. And I meant it.

But over …

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There are butterflies that are common enough that you barely notice them.

And then there are butterflies that make you stop and look twice—not just because they are beautiful, but because their presence tells you something about the landscape around you.

The Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus) is one of those butterflies.

At first glance, it is simply a handsome black swallowtail. Its hindwings carry orange spots and a wash of blue, and the long tails give it the unmistakable silhouette of a swallowtail. But here in Maine, there is considerably more to the story.

For many years, the Spicebush Swallowtail was considered essentially lost from the state.

The last published Maine record dated to 1934. Then, for roughly 75 years, there was no convincing evidence that the species was actually breeding here.

That changed in 2009.

Researchers began looking not for the adult butterflies, but for something much less conspicuous: caterpillars and the plants they depend upon. Surveys in southern Maine located occupied caterpillar nests in Berwick and Wells, providing evidence that the Spicebush Swallowtail was not merely an occasional visitor—it was breeding in Maine.

And that distinction matters.

The butterfly isn’t really the beginning of the story

The name gives away one of the most important clues.

Spicebush Swallowtail caterpillars depend primarily on spicebush and sassafras. In Maine, those plants are associated with the rich hardwood forests, wetlands, slow streams and seepage areas where this butterfly can survive.

So if you want to find the butterfly, you shouldn’t necessarily start by looking for butterflies.

Start by looking for spicebush.

The adult butterfly is only one brief stage in a much longer relationship between an insect and its habitat. The female lays her eggs individually on host plants. The caterpillar spends much of its time tucked into a folded-leaf shelter, emerging to feed—often when you aren’t looking. Eventually it becomes a chrysalis, and some individuals spend the winter in that stage before emerging the following year.

In other words, the butterfly represents only the visible part of the story.

The less visible parts are happening in the leaves.

A butterfly at the edge

Maine is near the northern edge of the Spicebush Swallowtail’s range. That makes the species particularly interesting here because the conditions that allow it to persist are more constrained than they are farther south.

Maine’s wildlife biologists classify the Spicebush Swallowtail as a Species of Special Concern. Its story is nevertheless a hopeful one: a species once thought to have disappeared from Maine was found to still be breeding here.

Sometimes the important discovery isn’t finding something new.

It’s discovering that something you thought was gone was still here all along.

You just had to know where—and what—to look for.

And there is considerably more to the story. The caterpillar of the Spicebush Swallowtail looks remarkably different from the adult butterfly and has some wonderfully strange adaptations of its own. I’ll be sharing more about Maine’s caterpillars, including some close-up photographs, in the next paid Field Notes.

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There wasn’t much to see at first: a chrysalis hanging quietly from the plant, looking almost exactly as it had looked before. Except that something was different. It was empty.

Nearby was another Monarch chrysalis, and beside it sat a newly emerged butterfly.

She was astonishingly small-looking, not because she was actually small, but because her wings hadn’t filled out yet. They were soft and folded, still looking more like crumpled pieces of paper than butterfly wings. And she wasn’t going anywhere.

That is one of the least considered parts of a butterfly’s life.

We tend to photograph the caterpillar munching happily on milkweed, or the finished butterfly with its wings spread beautifully in the sunshine. The chrysalis gets plenty of attention, too.

But that strange interval between the two?

It is easy to miss.

The trance before the transformation

Even more intriguing was what happened before she emerged.

I watched a caterpillar enter that peculiar, almost trance-like state that comes just before the final transformation. She became remarkably still, and hangs in an odd position, with just occasionally slightly jerky movements to the antennae.

This isn’t sleep, exactly.

Inside that apparently motionless animal, an extraordinary amount of work and change is underway. The caterpillar has already spent its life doing one thing extraordinarily well: eating.

It has consumed enormous quantities of milkweed, grown through several stages, shed its skin repeatedly, and accumulated the resources it needs for what comes next.

Then, when it is ready to pupate, the entire strategy changes. The caterpillar attaches itself, sheds its final larval skin, and becomes a chrysalis. From the outside, it looks as though nothing is happening.

But the chrysalis isn’t simply a sealed container in which a caterpillar magically turns into a butterfly.

Inside, the animal’s body is being reorganized on a remarkable scale. Some larval tissues are broken down and recycled, while structures of the adult butterfly develop.

It is one of those natural-history events that becomes more extraordinary the more closely you look at it. And then, eventually, the chrysalis changes again.

The green becomes increasingly transparent. The orange and black pattern of the butterfly begins to show through. And suddenly the waiting is almost over.

Then she comes out—and can’t fly

When the adult finally emerges, she has a problem. She has wings. They are fully formed. But they aren’t ready.

They emerge soft and folded, and the butterfly must hang while fluid is pumped into the veins of the wings. As the wings expand, they gradually take on the shape and firmness necessary for flight. This can take several hours. And those hours are a remarkably vulnerable period.

The butterfly cannot fly away. She can’t escape very well. She can’t do much more than hang on, move her legs, flex and stretch, and wait for her wings to become functional.

The butterfly I was watching spent quite a bit of time waiting. She stretched. Shifted position.

She seemed almost restless, as though she knew something needed to happen but couldn’t quite make it happen yet. Eventually she walked until she found a sunny spot.

That was important.

Once her wings were expanded, she still wasn’t necessarily ready for immediate flight. She needed to warm herself.

Butterflies are ectotherms: they rely on environmental heat to raise their body temperature enough for their muscles to function properly. A newly emerged Monarch has just completed one of the most physically demanding transformations imaginable and now has to spend some time getting its machinery up to operating temperature.

So she sat in the sun.

And waited some more.

There is a remarkable moment when the butterfly becomes a butterfly

A butterfly gliding across a meadow looks effortless. It opens and closes its wings, lands on a flower, feeds, and disappears over the milkweed.

But I had just watched one go from something that looked almost unfinished to something capable of flight.

There was a period when her wings were visibly changing before my eyes.

They went from soft and folded to expanded and recognizable. The veins became distinct. The wings gradually hardened.

And then, eventually, she flew. For a moment, at least, she was completely transformed. I watched her make her first flight.

And then nature reminded me that being ready to fly doesn’t mean you’re safe.

A bird caught her almost immediately.

I know. Not exactly the ending one puts in a cheerful Monarch story.

But I included it, because that’s the other thing I had been watching. The transformation wasn’t a guarantee of anything. It was simply the next stage of a life that is full of extraordinary vulnerability.

The caterpillar’s job was to eat.

The chrysalis’s job was to transform.

The newly emerged butterfly’s first job was to inflate and harden her wings.

And then she had to fly.

There are no guarantees beyond that.

The part we usually don’t see

I’ve photographed plenty of Monarch caterpillars and the chrysalises. I’ve photographed adult Monarchs feeding on flowers.

But until you spend time watching one emerge, you really might not consider the hours in between.

The butterfly isn’t simply waiting for a chrysalis to open so she can fly out.

There is a whole transitional stage in which she has to finish becoming the animal we recognize.

One of my favorite images from this encounter shows the newly emerged butterfly beside another chrysalis that is still hanging there, waiting.

Two Monarchs.

One still enclosed.

One already out.

And between those two little green forms is the entire process of becoming.

It’s easy to look at a butterfly and see the finished thing.

Sometimes you have to stop and watch for a while to see the becoming.

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I found the terns by accident. I wasn’t looking for a tern spectacle that day, but happened upon a place where Common Terns were fishing heavily around a dock, and once I stopped, I discovered that I had stumbled into one of those little pieces of the natural world that seems to become more interesting the longer you watch it.

The adults were everywhere! They perched on boats, railings, pilings and poles, flying out over the water and returning again. The young birds were even more conspicuous. They were old enough to be perfectly capable of catching at least some of their own food, but that did not seem to matter. They screamed at their parents anyway. Who mostly ignored them.

Every so often, though, an adult would relent and deliver a fish, and the youngster would erupt into renewed excitement.

It was a wonderful combination of noise and activity—the constant calls of the young, the adults coming and going, and the frequent explosive plunge into the water.

But what really caught my attention was that they were fishing extraordinarily close to the dock.

Close enough that, standing above the water and looking straight down, I could actually watch them plunge beneath the surface and emerge again. Normally, when I photograph terns, I’m looking across the water at them or trying to catch the instant they hit the surface.

Here I was looking almost straight down at them.

It was a completely different perspective—and a remarkably difficult one to photograph.

Then the light changed.

As the sun moved and began illuminating the water at a different angle, I started seeing what the terns were seeing. There were fish. LOTS of fish.

A massive school of small, silver fish was moving through the water beneath and around the dock. They were perhaps three or four inches long, flashing silver whenever they turned just right in the sunlight. And there weren’t hundreds. There appeared to be tens of thousands. An endless stream of small silver bodies.

I initially wondered whether they were Atlantic silversides—Menidia menidia, sometimes called spearing or simply silversides. That remains my best guess - Atlantic silversides are exactly the right size and shape and they are common along the Maine coast. They can grow to about six inches and are characteristically marked by a brilliant silvery stripe along each side.

Interestingly, the fish weren’t simply milling around beneath the dock - they were moving in a remarkably concentrated area.

I could watch the school streaming in a particular direction, then see portions of it tighten into dense, almost circular concentrations. The terns were working the same little patch of water over and over.

I walked around to the other side of the dock.

There were no fish.

Not one that I could see.

That really puzzled me.

If the school was moving in from that direction, why weren’t the fish visible there? Why did they seem to remain confined to this relatively small area? And, perhaps most puzzling of all, why did they stay there once a flock of terns had discovered them?

Surely the fish knew they were being eaten.

So why didn’t they simply disappear?

A fish’s-eye view of a feeding frenzy

The first part of the mystery is actually fairly straightforward.

Atlantic silversides are schooling fish, and schooling is one of their primary defenses. A large school makes it much harder for a predator to single out one individual. The flashing, coordinated movements that make a school look almost like a single organism to us can make individual prey difficult to track.

They also live very close to shore. Atlantic silversides are generally found in shallow marine or brackish water, often along shorelines and in dense schools. They can tolerate changes in salinity and are associated with shallow habitats, including areas with underwater vegetation, making a dock an entirely plausible place to find them.

But there was something else happening here. The water itself was probably concentrating them. At least, that’s my best explanation for the peculiar geography of the school.

A dock is not simply an object sitting in the water. Pilings, floats, cross-members and the shape of the shoreline all interfere with currents. Incoming and outgoing tides can create little areas of faster flow, slack water, turbulence and eddies. Even when the surface looks almost still, the water underneath may be moving quite differently.

And the fish don’t necessarily have to be following the dock.

They may have been following the food. Silversides eat small aquatic organisms including zooplankton, tiny crustaceans, worms and other invertebrates. If tidal flow was concentrating those organisms in one particular area, the fish would have a very good reason to remain there.

That would also explain something I noticed repeatedly - the school seemed to be moving constantly without actually going anywhere. They streamed in one direction, circled, tightened, dispersed slightly and then reconcentrated.

In other words, what looked from above like a fish school trapped in an imaginary boundary may actually have been a school responding continuously to moving water and a moving food supply.

The boundary wasn’t necessarily invisible to the fish, it may have been the current.

But why stay when the terns arrived?

This is the part I find most fascinating.

The terns were clearly taking advantage of the concentration. Common Terns specialize on small fish, generally taking prey close to the surface or by plunge-diving just beneath it. They are particularly good at exploiting places where small fish become concentrated.

And these fish were in exactly the right place for them.

But from the fish’s perspective, fleeing isn’t necessarily as simple as it looks.

A school doesn’t make decisions like a flock of birds does. Thousands of individual fish are responding to predators, currents, food and their neighbors simultaneously. When a tern strikes, the school can compress, scatter and reform almost instantaneously.

And there may be a tradeoff involved. The fish could leave the patch—but where would they go? If the area beneath the dock was especially rich in food, leaving might mean entering water with less food, stronger current, more exposure to other predators (such as the cormorants who were hunting further out, and the neighborhood seals), or deeper water.

There is another possibility that is also likely - the dock itself may have been part of the refuge.

From above, I saw the terns plunging into open water. But the fish were swimming in three dimensions. A school can move deeper, spread laterally, or move into the complicated water around pilings. Atlantic silversides are shallow-water fish, but they can use structure and underwater vegetation as cover, and their schooling behavior is itself an important defense.

So perhaps what looked like astonishing vulnerability from my perspective was actually perhaps a reasonably good compromise from theirs: Stay together. Stay near the food. Stay in shallow water. Keep moving.

And hope the tern misses you.

The tide adds another piece to the puzzle

There was one observation that makes me think the tidal cycle was especially important.

The place where I was watching the fish was dry at low tide.

Yet when I returned at high tide, the fish were back in essentially the same area.

That makes it much harder to believe that I was simply watching a random school of fish that happened to like that particular patch of water.

Something about the location was apparently attractive to them when it was submerged.

The incoming tide may have been bringing plankton or other tiny organisms into the area. The dock could have been creating a localized current pattern that retained them. Or the fish themselves may have been using a familiar shallow-water feeding area that became available as the tide rose.

And there is one more interesting piece of silverside natural history.

Atlantic silversides spawn from late spring into summer, and spawning is strongly associated with high tides. They deposit their eggs on the substrate in shallow shoreline habitat.

So if these really were Atlantic silversides, their presence in shallow tidal water in summer fits beautifully with their natural history.

But I don’t think I can use spawning to explain this particular school. The behavior I was watching looked much more like feeding and schooling than a spawning aggregation, and without knowing exactly when and where the fish were spawning, that would be stretching the evidence too far.

Sometimes the most honest natural-history answer is:

I don’t know.

And that’s part of what makes watching worth doing.

The terns knew exactly where to look

The longer I stayed, the more I realized that the terns had probably solved the puzzle before I even arrived.

They weren’t randomly fishing around the dock. They were working the fish school.

Common Terns are remarkably opportunistic hunters. They don’t need to search the entire ocean for fish if some combination of tide, current, predators or structure has already concentrated prey into a small area. Once they find that concentration, they can repeatedly return to it.

And that explained the behavior of the adults and youngsters around me.

The adults had a reliable food source.

The youngsters knew it.

The youngsters also knew exactly what they wanted.

And the adults knew that the youngsters were perfectly capable of screaming. And hunting for themselves.

So the entire dock became a sort of temporary ecosystem:

tide → concentrated small organisms → silversides → Common Terns → hungry tern chicks. Lots of noise and chaos.

And somewhere above all of it was me, trying desperately to photograph a tern from an angle I had never had before. More chaos. :)

The experience I almost missed.

That’s perhaps my favorite part of this story.

I stopped because I saw a merlin, and the terns were mobbing it. I watched them drive her off and returned to feeding.

I stayed because they were entertaining.

And I ended up spending most of my attention looking down into the water.

Photography does that to me constantly. I go out looking for one thing and come home fascinated by something else.

The terns were the obvious subjects. Their screaming chicks, their plunge-dives, the fish deliveries, the adults perched on boats and pilings—it was all wonderfully photogenic.

But once the sunlight hit the water at just the right angle, the fish became visible.

And suddenly the real story wasn’t just about the birds.

It was about the enormous, almost invisible world underneath.

I still don’t know exactly why those thousands of little silver fish had chosen that particular patch of water, why they moved in those peculiar tight loops, or why they remained there while terns repeatedly attacked them.

I have some pretty good hypotheses.

But I think I’ll go back.

Because the next time the tide comes in, I’ll be looking down before I look up.

And perhaps the fish will tell me a little more.

A natural-history note on the fish

My best identification is Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia), based on the apparent size, silvery lateral stripe, schooling behavior, and shallow coastal habitat. They are widespread along the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of St. Lawrence southward, and Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection specifically includes Atlantic silversides among its nearshore marine fish species.

But I’m leaving myself room for correction. A photograph of a three- or four-inch silver forage fish isn’t necessarily enough to distinguish a silverside from every other small schooling fish that might occur in Maine’s coastal waters. If anyone reading this has experience identifying juvenile or adult forage fish in Maine and thinks I’m wrong, I would genuinely love to hear from you.

That, too, is part of the fun of natural history: sometimes a photograph answers a question, and sometimes it gives you three better questions.

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There were Common Buckeyes everywhere.

I mean everywhere.

I was watching butterflies among the flowers, and after a while I realized I was practically tripping over them. They were scattered across the garden and surrounding open ground—on gravel, on bare dirt, on rocks, along the edges of the vegetation. A few were visiting flowers, but an awful lot of them seemed perfectly happy sitting on the ground.

It wasn’t even one of those blazing hot, perfectly sunny butterfly days. It was warm, but not especially hot, and the sky was more cloud than blue.

The Buckeyes didn’t seem to care.

And then I noticed one that was behaving differently.

She was on a tiny green plant growing close to the ground, and she was moving in a way that didn’t look quite like feeding or basking. I stopped and looked more closely.

She was laying eggs.

Tiny, almost jewel-like green eggs were being tucked individually onto the leaves of the little plant.

Suddenly the remarkable abundance of Buckeyes around me made a lot more sense - I had apparently wandered into a Buckeye nursery.

Meet the Common Buckeye

The Common Buckeye (Junonia coenia) is one of those butterflies that is actually quite spectacular once you stop to look at it.

Its wings are a warm brown, but they’re decorated with a series of enormous eyespots—particularly the two on each hindwing. The largest has a dark center surrounded by concentric rings of color and, on the upper hindwing, a little flash of magenta.

Those eyespots aren’t just decoration.

They are thought to help deter predators, particularly birds. The large spots can make a butterfly look rather less like a bite-sized insect and rather more like something with eyes of its own.

Buckeyes also have a fascinating relationship with sunlight and open ground.

They are butterflies of open, often somewhat disturbed habitats: fields, roadsides, gardens, edges, vacant lots, and places where low vegetation meets patches of bare ground. That’s one reason they can suddenly seem to appear in surprising numbers.

And Maine is toward the northern edge of their regular range.

That’s important.

Maine doesn’t necessarily have permanent Buckeyes

Common Buckeyes are strong fliers and long-distance migrants. The butterflies we see in Maine are generally part of a seasonal northward expansion from farther south rather than a population that simply sits here year after year. Some individuals move north in spring and summer, reproduce, and their descendants may continue the expansion.

That means a spectacular concentration of Buckeyes in Maine can be a little ephemeral.

Here today.

Gone tomorrow.

And, in a particularly harsh Maine winter, the local population doesn’t simply hunker down under the snow and emerge the following spring.

The best available information indicates that Common Buckeyes do not normally overwinter in the northern part of their range. The species survives the winter as adults or caterpillars farther south, while northern populations are replenished by migrants the following year.

So the butterflies I was watching were part of a much larger annual movement.

They had come north, found suitable habit, and now they were reproducing. And the young will then likely head south again.

Which brings me back to those tiny green jewels.

The plant matters

A butterfly looking for nectar can be relatively indiscriminate. A female looking for somewhere to lay eggs has a much harder job.

Her caterpillars will need to eat the plant she chooses.

Common Buckeye caterpillars feed on a surprisingly broad selection of herbaceous plants, including members of the plantain family and the snapdragon/figwort group. Plantains (Plantago) are particularly important hosts, and are readily found in disturbed ground.

The tiny plant beneath my female Buckeye was exactly the sort of low-growing plant that could serve as a host.

And she wasn’t laying a cluster of eggs, she was placing them one at a time - occasionally flying off briefly before returning to lay more tiny jewels.

That’s typical Buckeye behavior. Females lay individual eggs on leaves or leaf buds of suitable host plants. The caterpillar eventually hatches, eats the plant, grows through several stages, and ultimately forms a chrysalis before emerging as another butterfly.

Which means that the little green spheres I was photographing weren’t merely beautiful details.

They were the beginning of another generation.

So why were they sitting on gravel?

If you think about butterflies, you tend to think about flowers, but butterflies don’t spend their entire lives feeding. They need to regulate their body temperature, too.

Buckeyes are particularly associated with open ground, and males commonly perch on low vegetation or bare ground while watching for females and patrolling their territory.

On a partly cloudy day, a patch of gravel or exposed rock can become a useful little solar collector.

When the sun breaks through, that surface warms quickly.

A butterfly can settle on it, spread its wings, and absorb radiant heat.

Then a cloud passes.

The butterfly waits.

The sun comes back.

And the process starts again.

That makes the gravel suddenly seem less like an odd place for a butterfly to be and more like exactly what it is: a convenient piece of thermal infrastructure.

The fact that I was seeing them in open areas with plenty of bare ground fit the species beautifully.

And it gave me a different way to look at the landscape - I wasn’t simply looking at a garden full of flowers, I was looking at a landscape that provided nectar, host plants, open ground, warm surfaces, and places to patrol—all of the ingredients a Buckeye needs.

And then there were the flowers

Of course, they did visit them.

Common Buckeyes feed on nectar from a wide variety of flowers, with composites such as asters, chicory, knapweed, gumweed, and tickseed sunflowers among their favorites. They also visit plants such as dogbane and peppermint.

So the garden was providing two very different things for these butterflies.

The flowers were the adult food source, the small green plants were the nursery, and the gravel was apparently the sun deck.

All three were important - what looks like a random collection of butterflies suddenly becomes a landscape organized around their needs.

A lesson in looking twice

The tiny eggs were so small that I could easily have walked right past them. Even after noticing the female butterfly, I had to stop and really look to understand what she was doing. From a few feet away, she’s simply another Buckeye among dozens.

Through the lens, she becomes a mother-to-be hovering over a collection of tiny green spheres that are barely noticeable to the naked eye.

And those eggs tell a story that the adult butterfly can’t.

They tell me that the Buckeyes weren’t simply passing through.

They were using this place to start the next generation.

I don’t know how many of those eggs will become caterpillars or how many caterpillars will survive predators, parasites, weather and everything else that wants to eat a soft-bodied insect.

And I certainly don’t know how many of their eventual offspring will make it through the long journey south.

But for one warm, partly cloudy day in Maine, the Buckeyes had arrived in force.

They were on the flowers.

They were on the rocks.

They were warming themselves on the gravel.

And one female was quietly planting the future in the leaves of a tiny green plant.

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The 2027 Maine Wild Calendar Is Here

I’ve been working on this one for a while, and I’m finally ready to show it to you.

For 2027, I’ve created something special: a limited edition fine art calendar featuring 12 of my favorite Maine nature photographs.

Only 50 copies will ever be released of this version. Each is individually signed and numbered—making this a collectible piece you can display long after the year ends.

I also listened to your feedback from last year: the grid boxes are back, and I’ve made the entire calendar larger this time so you have plenty of room to enjoy the photographs and actually write in the calendar. It’s a detail that matters.

12 × 18 inches • Limited Edition of 50 • Signed & Numbered
$60, including shipping. Shipping begins on September 1.

Order YOURS now!

A note: Later this season, I’ll be releasing another calendar—an unlimited, mass-produced version with smaller dimensions, different photographs, and an open edition format. It will be a wonderful, more accessible option. But this calendar? This is the keeper. The one with the personal signature. The one you’ll want to hold onto.

I hope you enjoy these twelve photographs. They represent some of the encounters, places, and moments that have stayed with me over the past year.

Thank you, as always, for following along and supporting my photography. And grab this calendar before I run out - like I did last year! :)

Buy Calendar Now

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I first noticed the ants, moving around on one of the tall black-eyed Susans in the garden, apparently interested in something dark on a midrib of a leaf. I was in the middle of doing something else, and I didn’t have my glasses on, so I gave it only a passing glance and went on with my day.

But, several hours later, the ants were still there - and that got my attention.

I went back for another look and discovered that the dark things weren’t bits of plant at all but tiny insects—several little black-and-green nymphs clustered along the stem, with ants moving deliberately among them.

Too close to dark, I didn’t get any images. But the next morning, they were still there.

This time I sat down with the camera and simply watched.

The ants weren’t wandering randomly over the plant. They seemed to be tending the little insects, repeatedly running their antennae over them and moving carefully among the nymphs. They had the unmistakable air of tiny livestock keepers checking on their herd- and, in a way, that’s almost exactly what was happening.

A very small partnership

The insects appear to be treehopper nymphs, most likely Aster Treehoppers (Publilia concava), although closely related treehopper nymphs can be difficult to distinguish with certainty from photographs alone.

What makes them especially interesting is their relationship with ants.

Treehoppers are sap feeders. They insert their mouthparts into the plant and tap into the phloem—the tissue that carries sugars and other nutrients through the plant. Because phloem sap is relatively rich in carbohydrates but comparatively poor in some of the nutrients the insects need, treehoppers have to process a lot of it.

And of course, what goes in eventually has to come out. The result is honeydew: a sugary liquid excreted by the treehoppers. To an ant, that honeydew is valuable food.

So the ants have a reason to stay, but they’re doing more than simply collecting a snack - they are also providing protection.

Ants will attack or harass predators that might otherwise feed on the treehopper nymphs. Researchers studying Publilia concava have documented this as a genuine mutualism: the treehoppers provide the ants with carbohydrate-rich honeydew, while the ants protect them from predators. The presence of ants can also facilitate the treehoppers’ feeding.

In other words, those ants I was watching weren’t merely near the nymphs.

They were working. Instead of having a guardian dog, these lucky nymphs had guardian ants!

Watch an ant long enough

Once I understood what I was looking at, I became fascinated by the behavior.

The ants repeatedly touched the nymphs with their antennae. They moved from one to another and seemed almost to check on them. Occasionally an ant would stop beside a nymph and linger.

It is easy to look at something like this and anthropomorphize it—to imagine a little ant mother fussing over her babies. Of course, that’s not what is happening, but the behavior is still remarkable.

The ants are maintaining a relationship that benefits both sides. They have learned that these particular little insects are a dependable source of food, and the treehoppers have an effective defense force stationed right beside them.

True to nature’s form, the relationship can be even more complicated than that.

Treehoppers can respond to predators with vibrational signals transmitted through the plant, and research has shown that these signals can increase ant activity and help bring the ants toward a predator threat. So this isn’t simply an arrangement in which the ants happen to notice honeydew and occasionally chase something away. There can be actual communication between the partners.

The more I looked, the less these tiny insects seemed like passive objects on a leaf.

They were participants in a relationship.

And then the weather changed things

I had to leave for the weekend.

When I came back, I went looking for my little colony.

They were still there, intact, almost unchanged except the nymph were more developed.

By then, however, the heat had begun to take its toll on the plant. The foliage was starting to wilt, and sometime during that period the ants disappeared.

One lone nymph remained.

I watched it for a while, wondering whether the ants would return.

A few hours later, it was gone too.

I have no idea where they went.

Perhaps they moved to another part of the plant. Perhaps the nymphs dispersed as they developed. Perhaps the changing condition of the plant made it a less suitable place to stay.

I watered the plant thoroughly and am hoping for a little rain, both because the plant needs it and partly because I’d really like to find my tiny colony again.

There’s more going on here than two insects

What I find especially wonderful about this relationship is that it doesn’t really stop with the ants and treehoppers.

The plant is part of the story too.

The treehoppers are taking resources from it. The ants are protecting their food source, but in doing so they may also drive away other herbivorous insects. Research on ant-tended Publilia treehoppers has found that ants can reduce damage to the host plant by deterring other plant-eating insects.

So one small group of insects on one stem can connect three levels of the ecosystem:

Plant → treehopper → ant.

The plant feeds the treehoppers.

The treehoppers feed the ants.

The ants protect the treehoppers.

And the ants may, incidentally, protect the plant from other herbivores.

It is a tiny food web playing out on a plant in the garden.

I had walked past it without noticing.

Then I walked past it again.

Then, finally, I stopped.

That’s one of the things I love most about spending time outside. The interesting things aren’t always the spectacular ones. Sometimes they’re a few ants on a plant that you almost didn’t bother to look at.

And sometimes, if you sit down and watch long enough, you discover that you’ve been looking at an entire partnership.

That’s the part of natural history I never want to become too familiar with to notice.

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I‘ve been noticing the colors in the garden. At first, it wasn’t really consciously, but I could feel the flowers shifting seasons. And then, looking at my photographs, I realized that I was seeing the same combination over and over again: yellow, pink and purple.

The calendar says August, and apparently the flowers know it.

The bright colors of June and early July are giving way to goldenrods, Rudbeckia, asters, Joe-Pye weed and all sorts of other late-summer flowers. There are still plenty of other colors, of course, but the overall feeling of the garden has changed.

I wondered if I was imagining it.

I’m not.

It isn’t that flowers somehow decide that August should be yellow and purple. It’s that different plants come into bloom at different points in the season. Their flowering is influenced by things like day length and temperature, and each species has its own schedule. So the landscape changes as one group of plants finishes and another takes over.

And that means the insects change with it - which is one of the reasons I like photographing flowers at this time of year. You can go out looking for a flower photograph and end up photographing almost anything.

Including this guy.

I have no idea what he was doing on top of the Black-eyed Susan. Actually, that’s not quite true. He was apparently going somewhere. Very slowly.

He made his way across the flower, completely exposed, with his little feelers out in front of him, apparently unconcerned about the fact that he was sitting on top of a bright yellow flower in full daylight.

I found this enormously entertaining, especially since it wasn’t my lettuce he had decided to explore.

That’s one of the things I have come to appreciate about macro photography. You start with a flower and think you’re photographing the flower. Then you get the camera close.

And suddenly you are looking at the surface of the petals. The tiny structures in the center of the flower. Pollen. An insect you hadn’t noticed.

Or a slug.

That’s particularly true in late summer because there is so much going on in a flower garden right now. The flowers may look as though the season is winding down, but the insects certainly haven’t gotten that message.

Bees are still working the blossoms. Butterflies are moving from flower to flower. Wasps and flies are everywhere. Spiders are waiting for something to wander within reach.

And the flowers are still producing the nectar and pollen that keep all of this going.

So perhaps the changing colors aren’t really a sign that summer is ending, they are a sign that this particular part of summer has arrived. Enjoy what you have today, and stay in the moment.

I’m finding that I rather like its colors - and the promise of those soon to come.

Especially when they come with a slug.

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There are some subjects I tend to walk past with the camera, and then there are the ones that stop me. This week, it was a lovely, massive, cecropia caterpillar.

At first glance, it is almost ridiculous. Huge. Pale green. Covered with what look like brightly colored little knobs and spikes. It is not conventionally beautiful, at least not in the way we usually use that word. But get a camera close enough, and the whole thing changes.

Suddenly there are patterns everywhere. Blue. Yellow. Orange. Red. Tiny hairs. Texture.

And, on one of my favorite photographs, an entire collection of little feet.

I could have spent an hour just looking at those.

The feet are stranger than you think

We tend to draw a caterpillar as a long, simple creature with lots of little legs., but it isn’t quite that simple.

A caterpillar has three pairs of true legs attached to its thorax, just behind the head. These are the legs it will retain in some form as an adult moth or butterfly. But then there are the fleshy structures farther back along the body called prolegs - which aren’t true legs at all. Stranger still, they’re temporary!

When the caterpillar transforms into a moth, the prolegs disappear. Just - gone.

The little structures are remarkably effective. They help the caterpillar grip the branch or leaf while it moves, feeds, and—probably most importantly—hangs on when a breeze starts moving the entire plant.

Cecropia caterpillars can grow to roughly four inches long, so there is a surprising amount of caterpillar to support. But what really fascinated me was seeing those feet in a photograph. I actually didn’t really even notice them while taking the photograph - it was once I got home that I saw those little padded slippers.

But through the macro lens, I COULD see an animal that was much more complicated than I had realized. And that, to me, is one of the great pleasures of photographing insects - the pictures don’t just make them look bigger. They make ME look harder.

And then there are those crazy knobs

The structures that make a cecropia caterpillar immediately recognizable are the colorful projections scattered across its body called tubercles, or caruncles.

They look almost as though someone decorated the caterpillar with tiny Christmas ornaments spiked with hair. The largest are reddish-orange. Others are yellow or blue.

They aren’t there simply for beauty, or decoration. The projections, along with the caterpillar’s overall appearance, are part of its defenses. The structures are bristly and make the caterpillar a considerably less tidy mouthful for a predator than its soft green body might suggest.

And although the caterpillar looks as though it ought to be dangerous, those colorful knobs aren’t venomous stingers like those of some other caterpillars. They are primarily physical structures rather than a mechanism for injecting venom.

A caterpillar with a very big job

The spectacular adult cecropia moth gets most of the attention, which it should.

It is one of North America’s largest moths, with a wingspan that can approach six inches. The reddish-brown wings, white markings, and enormous size make it difficult to mistake for much else. But the caterpillar is doing the hard work.

It eats. And eats. And eats. What a life! I’m jealous. :)

Cecropia caterpillars feed on the leaves of many different hardwood trees and shrubs, including maple, birch, cherry, oak, willow, poplar and others. Fortunately, they are rarely abundant enough to cause significant damage to their host plants.

By late summer, the caterpillar’s entire purpose is essentially to grow large enough to make the next transformation possible.

Eventually it will stop feeding, construct its cocoon, and spend the winter there.

The moth that emerges next spring will have a very different problem.

It won’t eat. Adult cecropia moths don’t have functioning mouthparts for feeding. The food collected during the caterpillar stage has to carry them through their brief adult lives.

The caterpillar is the eating machine. The moth is the reproductive stage.

Two completely different animals, really, living inside the same life cycle.

This is why I like macro photography

There is a temptation in nature photography to think that the goal is to make a beautiful picture of a beautiful subject.

But macro photography has another gift. It makes ordinary things strange.

A leaf becomes a landscape.

A bee becomes a furry animal carrying enormous loads of pollen.

A spider becomes a hunter with eight eyes and highly specialized legs.

And a caterpillar becomes an intricate piece of living machinery.

That is what happened with this cecropia.

I knew what I was photographing before I raised the camera.

But I didn’t really see it until I looked at the photographs.

The tiny feet.

The textures around the head.

The individual tubercles.

The way the apparently smooth green body is actually covered with an astonishing amount of structure.

For insects, I generally try to get the camera down to their level rather than simply pointing down at them. I move slowly, avoid casting a sudden shadow across the subject, and take a few photographs from farther away first. That gives me a useful record of the whole animal before I start moving in for the details.

Then I get close.

Really close.

And that’s when the photograph becomes less about documenting a caterpillar and more about discovering one.

There is an enormous world hiding in plain sight

This is one of the reasons I’ve become increasingly interested in photographing insects this summer.

They’re everywhere. On the flowers. Under the leaves. Along the edges of the garden. Sleeping beneath blossoms after a rainy night.

Hunting. Eating. Mating. Hiding. Building.

And most of the time, we walk right past them.

A cecropia caterpillar is easier to notice than many of the insects I photograph because it is so large and spectacular.

But once you start looking closely, the same lesson keeps appearing.

There is almost always more there than you thought.

Sometimes you just need to get closer and look intentionally.

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There are moments in wildlife rehabilitation when everyone knows the ending is close, but no one can predict exactly when it will happen. Slowly, the signs begin to accumulate.

Over the past several weeks, the peregrine falcon I featured awhile back has continued to grow stronger. Every training flight sharpened the skills that a fractured wing had nearly taken away. His turns became tighter. His landings more precise. His confidence unmistakable.

Most importantly, he continued to gain weight. To many people, that probably sounds backwards. Wouldn’t a lighter falcon fly better and be in better shape?

In falconry, however, body weight tells an important story.

Falconers often speak of a bird’s flight weight—the range where a falcon is physically capable of flying at its best while still motivated to return to the glove for another meal. A well fed but slightly hungry falcon is more likely to come back. A bird that is healthy and regaining its independence begins making different calculations.

This peregrine was eating enthusiastically; his weight climbed steadily.

And with every passing day, the falconers became more convinced that he was no longer thinking like a patient -he was thinking like a wild peregrine.

They understood it was time.

Before his next training session, they quietly removed the leather jesses from his legs.

It was a simple act.

Two narrow strips of kangaroo leather.

But those jesses represented months of trust between a wild bird and the people who had helped save his life. Removing them acknowledged something profound: if he chose to leave today, there would be nothing holding him back.

Before the flight, he was offered a generous meal.

That wasn’t a reward, it was insurance.

A peregrine leaving rehabilitation may not make another successful kill that day—or even the next. By filling his crop before release, the falconers gave him a valuable reserve of energy to carry into those first uncertain hours of freedom.

Then came the waiting.

He perched quietly on the glove.

There was no sign that anything unusual was about to happen.

He looked around the familiar yard where he had spent weeks rebuilding the strength that a broken wing had stolen from him. The buildings. The open sky. The trees. The people who had become temporary companions on an unexpected detour in his life.

He simply watched.

Anyone who has spent time around birds of prey knows what happened next.

Without warning, he leaned slightly forward.

Then came one final, unmistakable clue.

He defecated.

Falconers smile when they see it because they know what often follows. Raptors frequently lighten themselves immediately before taking flight, shedding a little unnecessary weight before launching into the air.

The next movement happened so quickly it almost felt unreal.

He exploded from the glove.

There was no hesitation - no circling back - no second thoughts.

He flew hard across the yard, threading past the familiar buildings where he had relearned to hunt after his injury. Within seconds he was beyond the property, still flying with the speed and purpose that has made peregrine falcons the fastest hunters on Earth.

Then he disappeared. Dramatically.

Not ceremoniously.

He simply became what he had always been.

Wild.

For several long moments, no one spoke.

We all watched the empty sky where he had vanished.

There was enormous joy in that silence.

And, if I’m honest, a surprising amount of sadness.

His caretakers looked forward to each training session. It was easy to wonder whether today would be the day he caught another pigeon. Easy to admire the quiet relationship that had developed between a wild falcon and the experienced falconers who had helped him reclaim his life.

Then, suddenly, the story was over. Or perhaps more accurately - our chapter in his story was over.

That evening I found myself watching the treeline. I couldn’t help wondering where he would spend the night. Would he find a favorite perch overlooking a river?

Would tomorrow bring another successful hunt?

Would he eventually reclaim a territory of his own?

Would he one day raise young on a cliff somewhere in Maine?

We’ll probably never know, and that’s exactly the outcome everyone hoped for.

Successful wildlife rehabilitation doesn’t create ambassadors.

It returns wild animals to lives that no longer need us.

If everything works as planned, this magnificent falcon will never again rely on a human hand for food or safety. He’ll simply disappear into the landscape, becoming one more swift shadow passing overhead—a bird that belongs entirely to the wind.

For me, that’s a perfect ending.

Or perhaps it’s simply the beginning of the rest of his life

Looking Ahead

As this falcon disappears into the Maine sky, another season is just beginning.

Raptor migration is already underway. Over the coming weeks I’ll be following hawks, falcons, eagles, and other birds of prey as they begin their journeys south, while also keeping one hopeful eye on the horizon.

Because every peregrine soaring overhead now carries the possibility—however small—that it might be him.

We’ll never know for certain.

But I like to think that somewhere out there, one falcon is flying with two healthy wings because a remarkable team of wildlife rehabilitators, veterinarians, and falconers gave him a second chance.

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Spring is exciting because everything is new. Fall dazzles with color. But August quietly rewards those who slow down enough to notice the details. It’s a month when nearly every creature is busy making a living.

The flowers are alive with pollinators. Shorebirds begin arriving from breeding grounds thousands of miles to the north. Young loons, warblers, foxes, and countless other animals are learning the skills they’ll need before winter arrives. Every walk seems to reveal another story.

This month’s Field Notes explores three of my favorite August subjects:

The hidden world of insects. We often think of insects simply as “bugs,” but every one has solved the problem of survival in a different way. Some hunt. Some gather pollen. Some wait patiently in ambush. Some work only after dark. We’ll explore how insects find food, shelter, and mates—and why watching their behavior can be every bit as fascinating as watching birds.

The incredible journey of migrating shorebirds. By early August, birds that nested on the Arctic tundra are already passing through Maine on their way south. We’ll look beyond identification and explore one of nature’s great migrations: why they leave so early, how weather and tides shape their journey, and what to watch for when you visit Maine’s beaches this month.

Growing up wild. Many of you saw my opening post about Henry, the young loon chick I’ve been photographing this summer. In this presentation, we’ll use Henry’s story as a springboard to explore the remarkable natural history of Common Loons—from nesting and incubation to the challenges young chicks face during their first weeks of life and their long journey toward independence.

This free presentation is an introduction to those stories—and I hope it encourages you to head outside and begin looking a little more closely at the world around you.

Continue the Journey

The full August Field Notes presentation is available to paid subscribers and expands each of these topics in much greater depth.

In the complete presentation, we’ll explore:

• Why insect anatomy explains the way different species make a living.

• How weather, tides, and habitat influence shorebird migration—and where to find them along the Maine coast.

• The complete story of a young loon’s first summer, from the nest to migration.

• Practical field techniques for observing wildlife without disturbing it.

• Wildlife photography tips for insects, shorebirds, and loons.

Paid subscribers also receive downloadable companion guides:

Naturalist’s Field Guide — practical tips for finding insects, shorebirds, and loons in the field.

Wildlife Photography Guide — camera settings, field techniques, and practical advice for photographing each group successfully.

Shorebird location guide - exactly where, when, and under what conditions to look for migrating shorebirds in Maine.

Most importantly, your subscription helps make this work possible.

Every photograph, every observation, and every story begins with long mornings in the field—often before sunrise—and many hours quietly watching wildlife simply go about its day. Sharing those experiences through Field Notes has become one of the most rewarding parts of my work, and your support allows me to continue creating these monthly presentations, writing new articles, and documenting Maine’s remarkable natural history.

If you’ve enjoyed these free Field Notes and would like to explore the full presentations each month, I’d love to have you join us as a paid subscriber.

Thank you for reading, for your encouragement, and for sharing this journey with me. I look forward to seeing you in the September Field Notes, when autumn migration reaches its peak and the natural world begins another season of change.

The beautiful and amazing Sphinx kalmiae

(Fawn Sphinx Caterpillar)

I wanted to share this beautiful caterpillar with you — and I absolutely love the incredible details as you slowly scroll down the body from the head.

This caterpillar is fleshy and green, but with an interesting mottled pattern to the surface near the prolegs. There is a black and white striped diagonal line running down both sides of its face. Its true legs (near the head) are black and white, and its fleshy prolegs have vivid tri-colored diagonal stripes: black-white-yellow on each segment. Most striking: a spiky blue horn at the rear end, covered in tiny black bumps. (I’m sorry that I couldn’t get that view for this article! It seems this caterpillar was a little bit shy about showing it’s hind end. :)

The naming irony:
The moth is called “Laurel Sphinx,” but it has been suggested that “Fawn Sphinx” is more accurate — the caterpillar doesn’t actually prefer mountain laurel. It feeds on ash trees, lilac, privet, and fringe trees instead. The common name comes from a naming accident: the moth was named after Finnish botanist Pehr Kalm, and his name happened to be similar to the Kalmia plant family’s Latin name, so the common name became “Laurel Sphinx” even though it’s misnamed.

Timing in Maine:
In Maine (northern part of the range), there’s one generation per year, with adults on wing in June and July — so if you’re seeing caterpillars now in early August, they’re prepping to pupate for overwintering.

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Please take this “bonus post” as my apology: July got away from me a little as I followed Henry, the peregrine falcon, and a remarkable number of late-summer stories in the field. Thank you for your patience—I think you'll find this month's Field Notes was worth the extra couple of days it took for me to get it out to you.

I may head out hoping to photograph one species, only to spend the morning fascinated by something entirely different. That’s one of the things I love most about being in the field. Nature rarely follows my plans.

This August has been like that.

I’ve spent quiet mornings wat…

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One of the questions I’m asked most often at art shows is, “How do you find all these wildlife moments?”

The answer usually surprises people. Travel photography really isn’t my “thing”. I enjoy getting to know my local creatures more than just getting snapshots of those that live elsewhere. More often than not, I simply stop and watch.

Sometimes that means sitting beside a pond waiting for a loon to surface. Other times it means standing in front of a single flower a little longer than most people would.

That’s exactly what happened during a recent visit to a botanical garden.

One plant stopped me in my tracks.

At first glance, it was simply an unusual looking ornamental flower. But after watching it for a minute or two, I realized it wasn’t just growing in the garden.

It was supporting an entire community.

The plant was sea holly (Eryngium), a striking ornamental with silvery-blue leaves and globe-shaped flower heads.

Within moments, the visitors began arriving.

A honey bee landed, methodically working from flower to flower.

A bumblebee pushed its way into the tiny blossoms, its fuzzy body collecting pollen as it searched for nectar.

Then came a yellowjacket.

Several solitary thread-waisted wasps stopped briefly to feed before continuing on its way.

Even more insects arrived that I couldn’t immediately identify.

At times, five or six different insects occupied the same flower head, each going about its own business.

No fighting.

No competition.

Just a remarkable example of nature making room for everyone.

The reason becomes clear when you look more closely.

What appears to be a single flower is actually hundreds of tiny flowers packed tightly together.

Each little blossom offers nectar.

Each opens over time rather than all at once, extending the buffet for days or even weeks.

Some insects have long tongues that reach deep into the florets.

Others feed from the exposed nectar.

Small insects and large insects can forage side by side because there isn’t just one place to land—there are dozens.

To us, it’s one flower.

To an insect, it’s an entire neighborhood.

One of the biggest surprises for many people is the wasps.

Yellowjackets have earned an unfortunate reputation because of their persistence around summer picnics. Yet for most of the year, they’re important predators. Workers spend their days hunting caterpillars, flies, and other insects to feed their developing larvae. The adults, however, need sugar to fuel all that flying, and flowers provide an essential source of nectar.

The solitary thread-waisted wasps have a different story. They don’t live in colonies, and they’re remarkably gentle around people. A female spends her life hunting caterpillars or other insects, placing them in an underground nest as food for the single larva she’ll never meet. Before returning to the hunt, she too pauses for a drink of nectar.

Different lives.

Different strategies.

The same flower.

As I watched the activity, I couldn’t help thinking about another photograph I’d made just days earlier.

A monarch butterfly feeding on milkweed.

Not long afterward, I found a crab spider hidden among the flowers, waiting patiently for an unsuspecting visitor.

That’s the part we often miss.

Flowers don’t simply feed pollinators, they feed predators which help control insect populations. Then birds arrive — and feed on both.

One flowering plant doesn’t support a single species - it supports a food web.

I left the botanical garden with far more than photographs, but I left with another plant on my wish list.

Sea holly may not be native to Maine, and I still believe our native plants should form the backbone of every wildlife garden. But seeing the diversity of insects gathered on a single flower reminded me that thoughtfully chosen ornamentals can also contribute to a vibrant landscape. Although they won’t ever dominate my garden at home, a few non-invasive ornamentals can be welcomed.

Perhaps the best gardens aren’t the ones with the most flowers.

Perhaps they’re the ones with the most life.

Field Notes

Sea Holly (Eryngium spp.) is a favorite of many gardeners for its unusual blue flowers and long bloom period. Each rounded flower head is actually made up of hundreds of tiny florets that open gradually, providing nectar over an extended season.

During just a few minutes of observation, I watched honey bees, bumblebees, yellowjackets, solitary thread-waisted wasps, and several other insects feeding on the same plant. While they all visited for nectar, each played a different ecological role. Bees were gathering food for their colonies or offspring, while the wasps were refueling before returning to hunt insects that would feed the next generation.

It’s a reminder that when we plant flowers, we’re not simply attracting pollinators—we’re helping sustain an entire community of wildlife.

I’m so glad you’re here. Whether you’ve been following these stories for months or just subscribed after meeting me at a recent art show, I hope this newsletter helps you discover something new about the natural world each week. My goal has always been simple: to slow down, look a little closer, and share the remarkable stories hiding in ordinary places.

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There are some assignments that arrive with a little more responsibility than usual.

Recently, I was asked by a wildlife biologist with the state to photograph a Peregrine Falcon nearing the end of an extraordinary journey. At first, I assumed it would simply be another wildlife photography assignment. The reality was far from it.

This magnificent adult peregrine was found injured along Maine’s mid-coast in February - the coldest and harshest part of the winter. X-rays eventually revealed a fractured wing—a devastating injury for a bird whose entire life depends on speed, precision, and the ability to catch other birds in flight.

Peregrine Falcons are among the fastest animals on Earth. During their spectacular hunting stoops, they can exceed 200 miles per hour, striking prey in midair with astonishing accuracy. They can’t survive by scavenging. Ambush predation isn’t an option. Every meal depends on a successful hunt and requires significant coordination and skill. A wing injury isn’t just painful—it can mean starvation, a slow and lingering death for an animal whose prey is fast and wily.

The odds were not in this bird’s favor.

Over the months that followed, a dedicated team of wildlife rehabilitators and an experienced avian veterinarian patiently gave him something he couldn’t provide for himself: the fracture repair his bones needed and the time to heal.

But healing the wing was only the beginning - a healed falcon is not necessarily a wild falcon. The goal was not for this bird to simply live - but for him to return to nature.

Long before this bird can be released, he has to prove that he can fly with strength, maneuver with precision, and once again catch prey on his own. His life will depend on it. Any weakness in the injured wing will mean failure.

That’s where another remarkable group of people enters the story.

When I arrived to photograph him, a flight session was planned with experienced falconers - something that had been happening daily to rebuild his strength. These sessions take place in a large field with some outbuildings, and there is no guarantee that the falcon will return to the falconer. It is his option with each training to go back to his former wild life simply by not returning to the glove.

That may sound surprising.

Most falconers begin with young birds or captive-bred falcons, developing a partnership built on months of careful training and mutual trust. Working with an adult wild peregrine recovering from injury is something entirely different.

This bird has no interest in belonging to anyone, and that’s exactly the point.

Every interaction is designed to prepare him to leave.

As I watched, what struck me most wasn’t obedience. It was respect.

The falcon watched the people around him with bright, intensely focused eyes. There was trust, but also a wild reservation.

The falconers watched him just as carefully.

Neither underestimated the other.

Trust, it turns out, doesn’t always require domestication or the requirement of obedience. Sometimes it simply requires consistency, caring, and an open heart.

Then came the moment I’ll never forget. The peregrine launched into flight.

A few moments later, after taking some time to evaluate the landscape and sum up his options, he caught a bird entirely on his own. An unwary young pigeon not quite as fast or smart as the other birds in the wild, open field in which the falcon was training.

His first successful hunt since February.

It happened so quickly that, had I blinked, I might have missed it.

For the falcon, it was simply another meal. One that he was exceptionally proud of, I might say.

For everyone who had invested months helping him reach this point, it represented something much larger.

Proof.

Proof that he remembered.

Proof that instinct had survived.

Proof that he still COULD.

Proof that the possibility of returning to the wild was becoming real.

Now comes the hardest part.

Soon, perhaps in a matter of days, the peregrine will make the only decision that truly matters.

He will leave.

No one will tell him when.

No one will open a cage and send him on his way.

When he is ready, he will simply fly and return to nature as if the 6 month recovery was only a speedbump.

And if everything has gone according to plan... he won’t look back.

I’d love to bring you along for the rest of his journey.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about this remarkable bird, the people working quietly behind the scenes to give injured raptors another chance, and the ancient art of falconry that has played an unexpected role in preparing one wild hunter to return where he belongs.

I have a feeling the next chapter may arrive sooner than any of us expect.

I’d love to hear what you are most curious about - the falconry training? His medical needs? The natural history and challenges he will face returning to nature? I find all of this fascinating. What resonates with you?

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Well, I know that this is a mistake - and so do you. He has a name.

In fact, his name is Henry. And at the time I took these photos, he was 6 days old.

Every wildlife photographer knows that’s a terrible idea. And so does every naturalist.

The moment you give a wild animal a name, you begin rooting for it instead of simply observing it. You start worrying about it. Every small slight becomes personal, and those thoughts and worries keep you up at night during thunderstorms.

This little loon chick is all oversized feet, soft brown down, and impossibly determined, and seems to be fighting some tall odds.

His parents nested unusually late this summer, and only one of their two eggs hatched. The second egg still sat in the abandoned nest long after Henry had entered the water. Perhaps their first nest failed, or perhaps they just couldn’t settle on the right spot. Either way, he didn’t hatch out in a timely fashion.

Since then, I’ve spent several mornings with this little family.

And, if I’m honest, I’ve questioned nearly everything the adults have done.

Each morning, often before sunrise, one adult leaves. Not as in swims off to fish - but rather, flies off and totally leaves the pond. I don’t know whether it’s the male or the female—Common Loons are nearly impossible to distinguish in the field—but one bird disappears while the other stays with Henry. I’ve not seen this before in a loon family, where chores are usually shared.

Then there are the feedings - or, more accurately, the lack of them.

I’ve watched for hours at a time without seeing either adult offer him so much as a tiny snack. At first I was convinced something was wrong. But then Henry disappeared beneath the surface.

Six days old, barely able to break the surface with his buoyant down.

He resurfaced a few moments later looking rather pleased with himself.

Loon chicks begin learning to feed themselves astonishingly early. Their parents continue bringing fish for weeks, but the lessons in independence begin almost immediately.

Even so...

I still worry.

Whenever a disturbance approaches, Henry climbs onto an adult’s back. That’s exactly where he should be. However, more than once, I’ve watched the adult slip him off again before swimming away.

Everything in me wants the opposite. Pull him closer. Shield him. Don’t let him out of your sight.

Maybe there’s a reason I don’t understand.

Maybe keeping him moving is safer than keeping him hidden.

Nature often refuses to follow our expectations.

And then there’s their questionable choice of neighborhood.

The family spends much of its time near a shallow shoreline where enormous snapping turtles regularly haul themselves onto the warm rocks to bask. Just around the bend, an otter is raising three energetic kits. The only thing missing are eagles, which seem to enjoy loon babies as you or I might eat potato chips. They hang out on the next door pond, and hopefully aren’t aware of Henry yet.

Neither would hesitate to take advantage of an unwary loon chick.

It’s a difficult world to be six days old.

The odds are not especially kind to young loons. Predators lurk above and below the water. Sudden storms chill tiny bodies that can’t yet regulate their temperature well. Food must be found. Lessons must be learned.

Many chicks never make it to autumn. In fact, the “average” is a 50% mortality rate in chicks.

I know all of this.

But knowledge doesn’t stop me from hoping.

In the coming mornings before dawn I’ll probably find myself back at the lake.

Looking for one very small head riding low in the water.

Still determined.

Still learning.

Still called Henry.

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If we met at the Camden Arts & Books Festival or the Yarmouth Clam Festival, there’s a good chance we talked about Romeo.

He was the large red fox with the snaggle tooth hanging on the wall of my booth—with a look that has melted the hearts of many. Romeo is one of my favorite foxes that I’ve photographed over the years, both because of his striking looks but also his larger than life personality.

Recently, I met someone who reminded me of him.

Only much smaller.

I noticed the little fox beside the road, completely absorbed in something on the ground.

At first I couldn’t tell what had captured its attention. It might have been the remains of a meal, a forgotten feather, or simply an object that seemed worth investigating. Whatever it was, the young fox had no intention of giving it up easily.

It pounced.

It tugged.

It wrestled the mysterious prize across the grass.

For a few minutes it looked exactly like a puppy discovering a favorite toy.

Then, as suddenly as the game had begun, it ended.

The fox abandoned its treasure, stretched into that effortless, long-legged lope that only foxes seem to possess, and crossed a sunny field into the shade of a stand of trees.

There it flopped onto the cool ground.

For several minutes, it simply existed.

Resting.

Watching.

Occasionally rolling over before wandering off to investigate something else that caught its attention.

Eventually, the little fox disappeared into the woods, leaving me smiling behind the camera.

Watching a fox kit is a reminder that growing up in the wild isn’t all hunting and survival.

There is time for play.

Time for exploration.

Time for making mistakes.

Those seemingly carefree moments are anything but wasted.

Young foxes learn through play. Tugging, pouncing, chasing leaves, wrestling with siblings, and investigating every unfamiliar object are all ways of developing the coordination and instincts they’ll need as adults. What looks like simple entertainment is actually practice for catching mice beneath winter snow or avoiding dangers they have yet to encounter.

Every game is a lesson.

Every lesson increases the odds of surviving another season.

As I watched this youngster disappear into the trees, I couldn’t help but think of Romeo.

The resemblance was unmistakable.

The same alert ears.

The same impossibly fluffy tail.

The same elegant movement. OK, perhaps not so elegant for the kit - but the underpinnings were obvious.

It was like watching a smaller, fuzzier version of an old friend, just beginning a journey that—if fortune smiles—may one day lead to the confidence and character of the fox that so many of you admired at my art shows.

Nature has a wonderful way of reminding us that every magnificent adult animal was once an awkward youngster, learning the world one small adventure at a time.

Field Notes

Red Fox Kits (Vulpes vulpes)

Red fox kits are born in spring and spend their first weeks hidden safely in a den. By early summer they’re venturing farther afield under the watchful eyes of their parents. Much of what appears to be play—stalking insects, pouncing on leaves, tugging at sticks, or wrestling with siblings—is actually essential training. These playful behaviors develop the coordination, strength, and hunting skills that will help them become successful adult foxes.

Young foxes are intensely curious, and that curiosity is one of their greatest teachers.

One of the greatest pleasures of photography is slowing down long enough to notice these quiet moments. That’s what you’ll find here each week—not just photographs, but the stories behind them and the remarkable natural history that often unfolds when we pause to watch.

Thank you for being here. I’m looking forward to sharing many more moments from the wild with you.

And congratulations to Brien R. — the most recent winner of my summer print raffle! I’ll email you to make plans to get you the print of your choice. And if you aren’t already a subscriber to my newsletter — or have friends that aren’t — pass along this substack with an invite to subscribe. My raffles include all new subscribers, regardless of how you found me. The next will be in approximately 2 weeks.

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At first, I thought I had found a poorly hidden spider.

She was sitting in the middle of a purple spiderwort blossom, white against violet. Crab spiders are masters of camouflage, but this one seemed almost conspicuous. Surely any insect visiting the flower would notice her.

I raised my camera, it was still a lovely sight.

Only a few moments later, a bumblebee drifted into view.

Not just any bumblebee, but a hardworking female already dusted with pollen from a morning of visiting flowers. The bright yellow baskets on her hind legs were nearly full—a clear sign she had been collecting food for the next generation.

As the bee approached, something changed.

The spider lowered herself slightly and spread her front legs.

She looked ready.

The bee landed.

For a moment, predator and prey occupied the same flower.

Then...

Nothing.

The spider relaxed.

The bee continued gathering nectar and pollen, completely unaware that she had just escaped what might have been an ambush.

Or had she?

Most of us imagine predators as opportunists. If prey comes within reach, they attack.

Nature is often more selective than that.

The spider I photographed is a crab spider (Family Thomisidae), one of the most remarkable ambush predators in our gardens. Unlike orb-weavers, crab spiders don’t spin webs to catch insects. Instead, they rely on camouflage and extraordinary patience, waiting motionless on flowers for visiting pollinators.

When an unsuspecting insect lands, the spider strikes with astonishing speed, gripping its victim with powerful front legs before delivering venom.

But not every opportunity becomes a meal.

Scientists have found that many predators appear to evaluate whether a hunt is worth the risk. A small fly is easy prey. A large bumblebee, however, is another matter entirely.

A bumblebee isn’t defenseless.

She’s heavier than the spider.

She’s immensely strong.

She can bite.

She can sting.

If the spider misjudges the attack, she could be thrown from the flower or seriously injured. For a predator that may spend hours—or even days—waiting for the next opportunity, a failed attack can carry enormous consequences.

From my vantage point behind the camera, it looked as though the spider reached the same conclusion.

She prepared.

She assessed.

Then she chose not to strike.

Of course, we can’t know exactly why she hesitated. Perhaps she wasn’t hungry. Or perhaps, as research suggests, she recognized that this particular meal simply wasn’t worth the gamble.

Either way, the result was the same.

The bee flew away.

The spider waited.

What Makes This Even More Remarkable

The flower itself was part of the story.

Spiderwort (Tradescantia spp.) produces blossoms that last only a single day, yet during those few hours they become busy landing pads for bees and other pollinators. Every flower is both a restaurant and, occasionally, a hunting blind.

To the bee, it was breakfast.

To the spider, it was a potential opportunity.

To me, it became a reminder that every flower hosts dramas we almost never notice.

Field Notes

Flower: Spiderwort (Tradescantia species)

Predator: Crab Spider (Family Thomisidae)

Visitor: Bumblebee (Bombus species)

Crab spiders are among nature’s most accomplished ambush hunters. Many species can slowly change color over several days to better match the flowers where they hunt. Rather than chasing prey, they rely on camouflage, patience, and split-second timing. Yet they don’t attack indiscriminately. Larger prey can fight back, and many researchers believe crab spiders weigh the risks before committing to an attack.

A Quiet Lesson

We often admire boldness, but nature reminds us that wisdom sometimes looks like restraint.

Not every opportunity should be taken.

Not every battle should be fought.

Sometimes survival depends less on knowing when to act than on recognizing when not to.

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Most visitors to my booth in Camden this weekend stopped because of the loons.

Or the puffins.

Or the fox.

Very few paused for the bees.

That isn’t surprising. We’ve been taught to notice wildlife when it’s large, colorful, or rare. Yet one of the most remarkable animals in Maine weighs less than a paperclip and spends her entire life quietly holding ecosystems together.

I photographed this little bee on a common daisy.

She’ll probably never make a calendar.

She won’t appear on a tourism brochure.

Most people would walk past her without a second glance.

But once you know her story, it’s hard to look at a flower the same way again.

The bee in this photograph is almost certainly one of Maine’s native solitary bees—a female that lives a life completely different from the honey bees most of us know.

That surprises many people.

When we hear the word bee, we picture a hive full of thousands of workers surrounding a queen. But honey bees are the exception, not the rule.

Maine is home to more than 275 species of native bees, and the overwhelming majority live alone.

No queen.

No workers.

No hive.

Just one female.

She digs a tunnel in sandy or well-drained soil, sometimes only a few inches deep. From that tunnel she excavates a series of tiny chambers. Then the real work begins.

Every day she visits flower after flower collecting nectar for energy and pollen for her future young. She mixes them into what scientists sometimes call “bee bread,” places a single egg on the food supply, seals the chamber, and begins another.

She will repeat that process dozens of times.

She’ll never meet her offspring.

By the time her young emerge the following season, she will have been gone for months.

That yellow dust covering her legs isn’t dirt.

It’s pollen.

Every fuzzy hair on her body acts like Velcro, grabbing pollen grains from one flower and carrying them to the next. She isn’t trying to pollinate plants. She’s simply trying to feed her family.

Pollination is an accidental masterpiece.

Nearly ninety percent of flowering plants depend, at least in part, on animal pollinators. Blueberries, apples, raspberries, squash, tomatoes, wildflowers, and countless forest plants owe much of their success to insects like this one.

Entire landscapes depend on animals most of us never stop to watch.

One of my favorite things about photographing nature is that the camera slows me down.

Standing over this flower, I noticed something I probably would have missed while simply walking by.

The bee never seemed frantic.

She moved deliberately.

She rotated around the flower head.

She cleaned pollen from one leg to another.

She paused.

Then continued.

The entire performance lasted only a minute or two, but it represented the culmination of millions of years of evolution.

Everything she did had a purpose.

I often hear people say they want to spend more time in nature.

I don’t think what most of us need is more time.

I think we need a different pace.

Nature rarely hides her best stories.

She simply tells them slowly.

This tiny bee has probably visited hundreds of flowers today. Tomorrow she’ll do it again, unnoticed by almost everyone she passes.

Yet if she and thousands like her disappeared, our fields would grow quieter, our gardens less productive, and our forests less vibrant.

Sometimes the smallest creatures are carrying the greatest responsibilities.

And sometimes all it takes to discover them is stopping for one flower.

Field Notes

Likely subject: A female native mining bee (Andrena species)

Did you know?

• Maine is home to more than 275 species of native bees.

• About 95% of North America’s bee species are solitary, not social like honey bees.

• Many native bees are active for only a few weeks each year, often synchronized with the blooming of their favorite flowers.

• Native bees are among the group of most efficient pollinators of blueberries—one of Maine’s signature crops.

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Our day started in near darkness.

There was just enough pink on the eastern horizon to hint that morning was coming as we climbed aboard the boat in Milbridge Harbor. Engines rumbled softly to life, and we slipped away from the dock, weaving quietly among lobster boats that still slept peacefully at their moorings.

The harbor was almost silent.

Only the gentle hiss of the hull through calm water broke the stillness.

As we rounded the islands, the world slowly emerged from the darkness. Lobster buoys became visible one by one, their bright colors reflected in the glassy sea. The eastern sky glowed brighter by the minute until the first rays of sunlight painted both the water and scattered clouds in brilliant shades of orange and pink.

It was one of those mornings when you almost forget why you brought a camera.

Simply being there was enough.

When we reached the seabird colony, the island itself was just beginning to wake.

At first, the activity was surprisingly relaxed. A few puffins arrived carrying fish. Arctic Terns drifted overhead with silver prizes dangling from bright red bills. Black Guillemots skimmed low across the water carrying long, slender sand lance to hungry chicks hidden among the rocks.

The slower pace was a gift.

It gave everyone time to find their footing on the gently rocking boat, experiment with camera settings, and simply enjoy one of Maine’s great wildlife spectacles without feeling rushed.

Then, almost as if someone had thrown a switch...

Everything came alive.

Puffins began circling the boat from every direction, their bills packed with tiny sand lance, each fish carefully lined up crosswise in those colorful beaks. Terns darted overhead in every direction, calling constantly as they hurried breakfast home. Guillemots appeared from behind the swells carrying yet another fish toward nests tucked deep among the granite boulders.

One puffin even landed nearby and treated us to an unexpected bath, splashing enthusiastically while the cameras fired away.

For the next few hours we drifted quietly from one vantage point to another, positioning the boat to make the most of changing light, bird behavior, and photographic opportunities. There was never any need to hurry. The colony provided an endless procession of moments if we simply remained patient enough to watch.

Eventually, though, it was time to head home.

Reluctantly, we left the island behind.

Our return journey was every bit as enjoyable as the trip out.

A group of Harbor Seals lounged on wave-washed ledges that barely remained above the rising tide. Every few moments, an incoming swell splashed over the rocks, sending spray into the air while the seals barely acknowledged the interruption.

Our final stop brought one last surprise.

An Osprey circled above the harbor, then folded its wings and plunged feet-first into the water after fish that had likely been pushed toward the surface by feeding seals. It emerged moments later, shaking water from its feathers before climbing effortlessly into the morning sky.

One final photograph.

One final memory.

I often tell people that a puffin trip isn’t really about puffins.

It’s about witnessing an entire ecosystem waking up.

The first hint of dawn.

The changing colors on the water.

The rhythm of birds returning with fish.

The smell of salt air.

The sound of thousands of wings and voices greeting another day.

The photographs are wonderful, and I hope everyone aboard captured images they’ll treasure.

But long after those photographs have been edited and printed, I suspect we’ll all remember something even more valuable.

For a few hours on a calm July morning, we weren’t simply watching nature.

We were part of it.

All images taken during the recent Puffin Workshop class.

I’d love to hear about your favorite dawn memory!

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