The baby loon is growing quickly. It is diving now. It’s stomach feathers are white. Pretty soon we’ll see it flapping across the water, exercising it’s wings in preparation for flying this fall. I’ve gotten quite close to it a few times when I was out fishing, but I didn’t have my camera with me. I shot this picture as the youngster and a parent swam past my shoreline the other day.
Yearly Archives: 2017
Annual Meeting Reminder
The Annual Meeting of the Clary Lake Association is next Saturday, August 12th at 2:00 PM. The meeting is to be held at the home of Erin Grimshaw and Christina Bishop located at 739 Gardiner Road in Jefferson. Erin and Christina hosted the meeting last year and it turned out to be such a great venue that we’ve decided to hold it there again. Their home is located about 1/3 of a mile west of (towards Whitefield) the intersection of Route 126 and 215. You’ll know the place: this is the house at the foot of the old MacDonald hay field overlooking Clary Lake, and at the end of a looooong driveway. Andy Goss built the house a few years ago; Erin and Christina have owned it since 2013. Here’s a Google Map showing the location. If you need help finding the place George at 207-549-5991 for directions.
The rain date, on the off chance it is raining on Saturday, is the same time, same place, the next day. I can’t remember the last time the Annual meeting was rained out (though it got a little dicey last year). As usual, there will be a pot luck supper at the conclusion of the meeting so bring your favorite casserole, salad, desert, bread, dip, or what have you and plan to stay awhile and socialize.
Petition Announcement
This year the CLA Board intends to introduce for discussion and Membership approval, a petition to the Department of Environmental Protection requesting they take enforcement action in the matter of the Clary Lake Water Level Order. As most of you know, the Water Level Order was issued over 42 months ago on January 27, 2014 and a subsequent Notice of Violation was issued on September 28, 2015. Since then the Department has taken no further action. The order however is still in force and has not been stayed. We see no reason why they shouldn’t immediately initiate enforcement action. We hope you’ll be able to attend the meeting and sign this petition.
The Board will be collecting additional signatures and endorsements during the week following the Annual meeting and plan to submit the Petition to DEP on or about Monday August 21st. You do not need to be a Clary Lake Association member or a Clary Lake shore owner to sign the petition. If you can’t make it to the meeting but would still like to sign the petition, please contact George Fergusson at secretary@clarylake.org or call at 207-549-5991 and we’ll try to accommodate you.
Lincoln County News: Whitefield Public Library Opens Doors at Arlington Grange
My wife Margaret has been helping setup and run the new Whitefield Public Library at the Arlington Grange. This is a great resource for the town:
Central Maine Papers: David Pond Losing Water
One of our Facebook followers posted the following article to our Facebook page. An interesting read. There are some clear parallels between the situation facing David Pond shore owners and that facing Clary Lake shore owners, but there is a clear and distinct difference: Clary Lake shore owners and friends of Clary Lake (with 2 exceptions, who shall remain nameless) are united in their opposition to the dam owner’s water level management:
Fayette’s David Pond losing water, alarming property owners who want action
July 2017 Water Level Chart Archived
July 2017
I have archived the July 2017 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable feature of the July chart is how slowly the lake level fell especially considering how little rainfall we received over the month. We saw this same phenomena in June but it was even more pronounced in July. In July the lake level fell an average of only 0.21″ per day, falling a total of only 6.48″ over 31 days which is even more remarkable considering we only received 0.95″ of rain in July. For comparison, in June we the lake level fell only 0.38″ per day for a total of 11.4″ drop for the month during which we received only 1.88″ of rain. Average rainfall for July is 3.43″ so for the month we were 2.48″ low and for the year we’re 3.9″ shy of the average.
Back in June I was hard put to explain why the lake level was dropping so slowly, but the reason has finally become clear: the outlet channel is so full of plant growth that it’s impeding the outflow of water from the lake. Go figure. Continuing plant growth also explains why the outflow rate has continued to slow in July and will likely slow even further in August. Outflow at the dam is just a trickle now, and fully half of the daily drop in lake level is due to evaporation.
And Then There Was One: Loon Family Update
Loon Chicks, July 2017
Arolyn Antognoni used to call the southwest corner of Clary Lake the “l0on nursery” as the loons seemed to hang out in this area a lot with their newly hatched chicks. For whatever reason once the loon chicks arrive, the loon family does in deed seem to spend a lot of time in this area. This includes the cove on the west shore by Ron Rollins property south around what we used to call the “Erskine Swamp” and along the Fergusson property over to Ward’s Point. Yesterday they spent the morning hanging out right off my shoreline, at times approaching within less than 50′ of where I had my camera set up and their antics feeding the babies afforded me some wonderful opportunities to record their behavior.
I’m a little (OK, a lot) late on this loon update. I started it back on the 4th of July when we had 2 loon chicks (above). By the next day we were down to one: it appears as has happened in the past, one loon chick out-competes the other for food and attention and ends up being killed by the more dominant chick, while the parents look on. Harsh yes, but the chances of the survival of the remaining chick are greatly increased. It doesn’t always happen, but if often does.
Last Saturday was the annual Audubon Loon Count which takes place from 7:00 AM to 7:30 AM on the third Saturday in July. Mary Gingrow-Shaw and her husband Ernie went counter clockwise around the lake in their boat while I in mine, accompanied by my wife Margaret, went the other direction. 4 loons in all were sighted including the one loon chick (picture at left) Both parents were down in the southwest end of the lake and a lone adult loon was spotted off of Hodsdon Lane, not too far from the State boat launch.
The next morning Tom Vigue called to tell me that a dead adult loon had washed up on his shoreline. He said he’d drop it off later, which he did. It is now in my freezer waiting pickup by an IF&W Wildlife Biologist. It will be sent off to Tufts University which has an ongoing loon mortality project (http://www.tufts.edu/vet/
That’s all for now.
June 2017 Water Level Chart Archived
June 2017
I have archived the June 2017 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable feature of the June chart is the slow steady decline in the water level on the one hand, and how little the lake level actually fell over the course of the month. The water level fell or remained unchanged every day except the last day of the month when it rose a small fraction as the result of 0.46″ of rain received. That said, the lake only lost a total of 11.4″ in 30 days for an average drop of 0.38″ per day. With the lake at this general level, with the gate wide open, and with so little rain having fallen, I would have expected the lake to have dropped more like 22″ to 24″ over the course of the month- twice as much as it actually fell. I am at a loss to explain this except to speculate that either a) there was considerably less water leaving the lake than expected or b) there was a lot more water entering the lake than expected or c) a combination of both a and b. This bears investigation. Continue reading
30 June 2017 Video: Baby Loons on Clary Lake
I was able to make a short video of the loon family today:
It’s not the greatest video but what the heck! They’re loon babies!
Here are a few pictures:
29 June 2017: We have Baby Loons on Clary Lake!
We have baby loons on Clary Lake! For the first time since 2008 our resident Loon family has successfully nested, despite a falling water level that has threatened to strand the nest too far from the water. Yesterday afternoon there was a loon sitting on the nest, so the eggs must have hatched sometime today. I first spotted the nest back on June 7th and I estimated at that time that the eggs had been laid on or about May 31st. That date turned out to be right on the money. Fortunately, and no thanks to the dam owner who left the dam gate wide open all month, the lake level has not fallen as fast as expected, having dropped only about 11″ (0.36″ per day) since the nest was started. Given the lack of rain in June and with the dam’s gate wide open, I expected the lake to have dropped twice as much or about 3/4″ per day. I’m still struggling to explain that discrepancy. Continue reading
25 June 2017: Nesting Loon Update
June 2017 Loon Nest
I’ve been meaning to post an update on our nesting loons for more than a week, but I’ve been a little busy! As of this morning there was a loon sitting on the nest. I first spotted the nest 19 days ago, on June 6th but it is likely that nesting had been underway for about a week earlier. This would make the eggs 25-26 days old. The gestation period for loon eggs is 28 to 30 days so with luck they’ll hatch in 3-5 days. The nest is abandoned shortly after the chicks hatch.
The lake level has fallen 10″ or more since the nest was started. The net effect of this drop in lake level has been to increase the distance between the nest and the water. If the distance to the water becomes too great, they’ll abandon the nest however it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen this time. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
The last time a loon family successfully nested on Clary Lake was in 2008.
Summer 2017 Newsletter Now Online.
Typical Clary Lake Sunset, photograph by Craig Brann, used by permission. Taken at the State boat launch, August 2016.
The Summer 2017 Newsletter went in the mail early last week. It is now available for download from our Newsletter Archive. Please feel free to share it with your friends.
This year’s featured picture is a stunning sunset photograph (at left) taken by Craig Brann. He recently posted it on the Clary Lake Association Facebook Page.
07 June 2017: Loon Nest Spotted on Clary Lake
The Loons are once again trying to nest on Clary Lake. This year’s nest is located in more or less the traditional loon nesting location, in the cove over by the floating bog on the north shore, just east of the outlet. The loons haven’t faired too well in recent years and I truly hope they succeed this time around. The last time they successfully hatched some eggs was back in 2008. We’ve documented numerous failed nesting attempts since then, and severe variations in water level has been the primary cause of nest failure. Last year, their eggs turned out not to be fertile.
Typically the male and female loons build the nest together over the course of a about week in late May or early June and lay eggs shortly thereafter. Gestation is 28 to 30 days. Since they can only walk on land with great difficulty, they try to build their nest just a few inches above the water surface to facilitate getting on an off it. I don’t know when they started sitting on this latest nest, but it appears to be a good 8″ to 10″ above the water surface indicating the lake may have already fallen as much as 5″ or 6″ since being built. Therefore I’d guestimate they started sitting on the nest around the 1st of June, give or take a few days. With a lot of luck, we might see babies somewhere around the end of June. This however depends on the lake level staying relatively stable for the rest of this month. It is currently falling about 3/4″ per day, and it won’t take long to strand the nest at that rate.
The lake level is currently -38″ below the high water mark and falling. I challenge Mr. Kelley to shut the dam’s gate to maintain the current water level for the next month to give the nesting loons a chance to raise a family. Continue reading
CLA Spring/Summer 2017 Newsletter is in the mail!
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] will be dropping off 200+ copies of our 2017 Summer 2017 Newsletter at the Whitefield post office tomorrow morning. Expect a copy in your mailbox in a couple of days! Next weekend I’ll post it in our Newsletter Archive here on the site so you can download a copy and share it with your friends. We send the newsletter to all Clary Lake shore owners regardless of whether they’re a CLA member or not. We also send it to a number of Friends of Clary Lake. If you’d like to be added to our mailing list, please email me your contact information and I’ll add you.
Gone from this newsletter is the original “tear off the bottom half of the page” membership renewal form that we’ve been using for years; it has been replaced with a handy remittance envelope. Going with a remittance envelope has the added benefit of freeing up some valuable space. You can still download a copy of the old membership renewal form, print it out and mail it in if you lose your envelope or didn’t get one, or you can sign up online via Paypal. There is no shortage of ways to become a member!
[UPDATED]: May 2017 Water Level Chart Archived
May 2017
I have archived the May 2017 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable feature of the May chart is how much rain fell on us during the month. Most of you will agree that May was a cold, wet month. Average rainfall for May is 3.7″ and we received just over 5.1″ or 1.4″ more rain than usual. This brings us to 16.24″ for the year which is only slightly more than the average rainfall of 15.91″ for this date. As a result of the extra rainfall, on average the lake level fell only 0.4″ per day rather than the expected 1″ per day, resulting in a total drop for the month of only 13.56″: we started the month at -20.5″ below the high water mark, and ended the month at -34.1″ below the high water mark.
Not much else to say about this.
[UPDATE]: Revised to show additional rainfall received when some late evening thunder storms rolled through. As a result of that extra rainfall, the lake level this morning is unchanged from yesterday morning’s reading.
The Mill at Freedom Falls – Freedom, Maine
The Mill at Freedom Falls, site of The Lost Kitchen.
[dropcap]The[/dropcap] other day I came across the following article about a fine dining establishment called The Lost Kitchen located in the Mill at Freedom Falls, Freedom Maine. I decided to post the article here as an example of how a well thought-out and executed development plan can lead to a wonderful local resource that enriches both the town and the lives of the people that visit it. When juxtaposed with our own Clary Water Mill, it allows us to see just how badly Paul Kelley and his partner Richard Smith botched their own attempted development project. While it is to their credit that these two men saw the historic beauty of the old Clary water mill site and recognized it’s nascent development potential, it is unfortunate that they failed to come up with a viable plan to develop it. It is even more regrettable that they chose to blame their failure not on themselves and their ill-conceived plans but instead on the Town of Whitefield and the Clary Lake Association, and to take their revenge against Clary Lake itself and the People of the State of Maine. Why would they try to destroy that which gives their property it’s value?
Enough of that. Please check out the article. I intend to visit the Mill at Freedom Falls this summer, and to dine at the Lost Kitchen:
This Remote Restaurant In Maine Will Take You A Million Miles Away From Everything
There are actually 2 stories here. One is about The Lost Kitchen and the other is about the old mill building that houses it. There is a great site documenting the history of that structure, and it’s restoration:
2017 Season Lake Water Quality Monitoring Resumes
Last Friday morning, May 12th, David Hodsdon and I resumed water quality monitoring on Clary Lake for the 2017 season. Jack Holland usually joins us but was unable to join us for this first data gathering session. Normally we venture out onto the lake every 2 weeks from May through September to the “deep hole” (30′ deep when the lake is full) where we anchor and collect data which we periodically send in to the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program. The data collected includes water depth, secchi disk (transparency) readings, water temperature and dissolved oxygen data at the surface at every meter down to the bottom, as well as air temperature, current weather conditions, wind speed, etc. You can view a subset of the collected data for recent years on our Clary Lake Water Monitoring Data page.
In addition to periodically submitting water quality data to the VLMP, secchi disk readings are also added to the Near Real-Time Lake Data site. Clary Lake has been participating in the VLMP since 1975.
10 May 2017 Lincoln County News: Despite Bankruptcy, Clary Lake Dam Situation ‘Status Quo’
Lincoln County News staff writer Abigail Adams attended the May 1st bankruptcy meeting of creditors and has written an article about it appearing in this week’s Lincoln County News. It’s a good, factual article but like the recent article in the Central Maine Papers, it incorrectly states that “Medius L3C foreclosed on the dam and held an auction for it in January 2016.” It would be more accurate to say that Medius L3C tried to foreclose on the dam, but failed. Had the foreclosure been successful, someone other than Pleasant Pond Mill would own the property now.
This confusion over foreclosure does nothing to detract from an otherwise accurate and well written article, and I am grateful that the Lincoln County News and the Central Maine Papers are helping keep this slow-motion train wreck in the news:
April 2017 Water Level Chart Archived
April 2017
I have archived the April 2017 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable feature of the April chart is that the lake level rose above the -2 foot mark on April 7th and stayed above that level for the next 24 days, until the end of the month. It also reached -8.76″ below the high water mark when the ice went out on April 13th, which is the highest level I have recorded since I starting making water level measurements back in December 2011. However, the Clary Lake Water Level Order calls for the lake level to be maintained at the normal high water mark from ice out until August 1st and that “at no time during this period shall the lake level be artificially manipulated to be lower than the established normal high water line” so as high as it was, it still fell short of the requirements of the Order. No soup for you, Mr. Kelley.
We received 4.20″ of precipitation during the month of April or about 0.42″ more than the average of 3.78″ bringing us to 10.18″ for the year, or about 2″ below normal. The drought conditions we experienced last summer and fall have been fully relieved with ground water supplies back more or less to normal.
It remains to be seen what the lake level will be like this summer.
18 April 2017: Spring Musings and a Look Ahead
Isn’t it time to get a dry fire hydrant installed at the inlet of the lake on Route 126?
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] try to keep this news forum factual and informative and not all that speculative. From time to time however I am compelled to offer up some commentary on what has been happening, where we are and where it looks like we are headed. This is one of those times. My goal is to bring some perspective and commonality into our lives where they intersect with Clary Lake and the travails that have assaulted it for so long. Spring is a good time for this kind of musing: it’s a time to wake up, gear up, get in shape, and get ready for another season. I feel this is going to be an important year, that a lot is going to happen. We may not see a resolution of our water level crisis this year but then again we might, the problem being that I really have no idea what a “resolution” might look like. Certainly we’ll see some real progress towards a resolution. Not only am I prepared to be surprised, I expect to be. If one thing has been proven time and time again it is that we have no idea what lies around the next corner. Continue reading
Membership Matters
The other day I had the pleasure of adding a final Clary Lake shore owner to our current year membership rolls, bringing the total Membership for the 2016/2017 year to 118. It is unusual for people to be sending in dues this late for the current year. Given that our membership year runs from Annual meeting to Annual meeting and with only 4 months left in this membership year, I decided to contact the person to ask if they intended their dues to apply to this year, or the upcoming year? Their response was heartening: they apologized for being late in renewing and said the dues were for this year, and that they’d be paying their 2017/2018 dues shortly. And they did. Well alright. I like that. Because Membership Matters.
Before going any further, I wish to thank everyone who saw fit to join the Clary Lake Association this year. To give you an idea of how amazing it is to have 118 members, consider that last year we had 81 which was the most members, ever. That’s an increase of 45% in one year. Here are our membership numbers for the past 6 years. As you can see, there has been a steady increase from year to year: Continue reading