Grebe Novelties

The two-acre quarry pond in Halibut Point State Park, being so close to the ocean shoreline, often hosts gulls and cormorants. The gulls come primarily for rest and fresh-water bathing. They're talkative and argumentative. We can imagine a social, newsy, kibitzing dimension to their gatherings. For cormorants the main draw seems opportunistic. They pursue fish.

Grebe and cormorant on the quarry pond

One day last month an entirely new bird appeared on the pond, small and mousy except for its boldly striped bill. That feature identified it as a Pied-billed Grebe. It stayed about a week. Being a pescivore like the rest of the grebe clan, it dove frequently beneath the surface to seek a share of the cormorant's minnowy mainstay.

The Pied-billed Grebe

Most mornings the grebe could be spotted as an unspectacular but fascinating novelty on the pond. Sometimes, confoundingly, it disappeared for long spells without flying away. Cornell University's Ornithology Lab calls it 'part bird, part submarine' with this description on their website:

Pied-billed Grebes can trap water in their feathers, giving them great control over their buoyancy. They can sink deeply or stay just at or below the surface, exposing as much or as little of the body as they wish. 

So perhaps it was there all along, submarining.

The Pied-billed Grebe's remarkable foot

While preening and stretching the grebe reveals that its outsized leg and foot are equal in length to its entire body. The enormous lobed toes that distinguish grebes from other ducks enable strong propulsion as well as great maneuverability. The thighs and 'drumsticks' powering those paddles from beneath the feathers must be unusually muscular. 

The grebe stretching its wings

Grebes get where they want to go primarily by swimming. An anatomical tradeoff has shifted their strength from wings to legs. I never saw this one fly.

A serene moment

The grebe's original arrival and final departure from the quarry happened through the air, unobserved. Whatever its own business here it provided another interesting focus in the ongoing diversity of life at Halibut Point.

Red-necked Grebe on the quarry

Several winters ago this cousin of the Pied-billed Grebe made an extended stay at the quarry.

The Red-necked Grebe with a fish

That bird seemed to be fishing successfully in the pond, but like the Pied-billed Grebe, it didn't take up long-term residence. Quarry life in the Park didn't suit it.

A Red-necked Grebe offshore in winter plumage

During winter Red-necked Grebes can occasionally be seen along our rocky shore in their customary salt-water habitat. Like loons, they exhibit subdued grayish plumage at that time of year. Until this week I'd never seen one in the striking breeding-season coloration that inspires its name.

A Red-necked Grebe in breeding plumage

The Red-necked Grebe's elegance at mating time captures the eye both of potential suitors, and of any observer fortunate enough to see sunlight glinting from its transformed feathers and refined silhouette.

Then there's Folly Cove

 

Great Egret against the cliffs

One sunny day after a slow morning in the Park I checked Folly Cove, the coastal indent that borders Halibut Point. Scoured, fractured granite cliffs on its rim show the price of opening northeast toward fierce ocean storms.

The Egret taking flight

Under calm conditions the arc of its rocky beach provides hunting habitat for occasional visits by Great Egrets.

Bufflehead male

The Cove's shallow water and sandy bottom attract diving ducks like this Bufflehead.

Red-breasted Merganser swallowing an eel

A Red-breasted Merganser is able to catch and hold an eel with its long serrated bill. Males change their plumage coloration into extravagant patterns for the courting season.

Common Loon

Common Loons also take on spectacular markings. The complete discard of their drab gray winter feathers leaves them flightless for a few weeks.

Two pairs of Long-tailed Ducks

A small band of Long-tailed Ducks floats conspicuously on the on the far side of the Cove, lingering in local waters later than most of their kind.

Male Long-tailed Ducks in diverse plumage
Detail of photo above

Male Long-tailed Ducks undergo complex seasonal molts. In the photograph above, one of them still retains the white head and rich facial patterns that have delighted observers on the winter shoreline. The upper bird has already switched to its near-black head coloring of summer, with a white facial patch. Both forms show the long, slender tail feathers.

Herring Gulls

These two Herring Gulls seem pleased to have pulled a prank on their audience as one descends noisily on the other. The normally feisty birds put forth a raucous but companionable duet on this fine day. It must mean that food is not an issue at the moment.

The Ronka boys' initials

The departing egret flew past ancient graffiti on the far cliff. Arne and Ensio Ronka carved their initials in the granite when their family boarded with the Seppalas, who managed Sunnyside Farm and its small dairy herd at the head of Folly Cove. Their father Samuel was the pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Lanesville from 1905 to 1913. Services were conducted entirely in Finnish.

Meditations at the Power Plant (5) - PERCEPTIONS AND TENSIONS

By the height of quarrying operations in 1909, the Halibut Point landscape had been rendered into a desolate, open-pit mine. It supported a thriving if troubled granite industry.

The Power Plant amid derricks, 1909
Charles Cleaves photo, Sandy Bay Historical Society

Since colonial times much of the native vegetation had been cleared for agricultural development and livestock grazing. Exploitation of the stone outcroppings now began in earnest. A keen eye noticed parallel scratches from northwest to southeast, in the ledges where glaciers had recently dragged their crystal inclusions across the surface of the land.

An automobile and a stylish lady, 1909
Detail of the photo above

Suddenly the marginal acreage and shoreline of Yankee subsistence farmers and fishermen was valuable. There was money to be made by extracting, rendering, and delivering the obstinate granite to a modernizing world.

Drilling holes for splitting stone
Robert Phelps photo, Cape Ann Museum

The enterprise drew immigrants from abroad to work at arduous jobs while aspiring to a better life. It didn't take long for them to recognize that, if they were going to survive, let alone prosper, they had better learn English and develop mutual aid strategies.

"Stalwart quarry laborers" in 1892 with large pneumatic drill
The Nickerson Collection
Courtesy of John and Betty Erkkila, Souvenirs of Pigeon Cove, 2014

Workers in the more skilled trades successfully formed local chapters of the Granite Cutters Union (1874) and the Paving Cutters Union (1887) to improve their working conditions and compensation. Collective action by the Quarrymen's Union (1889) to seek similar status from the manufacturers came to a head in a protracted but unsuccessful strike in 1892. 

Louis Rogers, Treasurer of the Rockport Granite Company,
inspecting operations at Halibut Point
Sandy Bay Historical Society photo

Owners turned to the recruitment of laborers from Finland for a (temporarily) more malleable labor force.

Strikers on the Rockport Granite Company wharf, 1899
Louis Rogers photo from the Barbara Erkkila Collection
Cape Ann Museum

When Italian laborers from Boston were brought in to thwart a Stone Cutters strike in 1899, they were confronted by a mob of Finnish workers who then menaced Rockport Granite Company officials at the shipping wharf. Harry Rogers drew his pistol and his brother Louis took this photograph as they were being backed to the water's edge.

Remnants of the Power Plant foundation

Inequities drive the migrations of people from their homelands abroad, and their efforts to share in the prosperity of America. The motive forces of this history revolve around perceptions and tensions rather than absolutes. The outcomes shape our society somewhat the way weather conditions the land, wind and rain redistributing solar energy over a spinning planet even while its features appear to remain intact. But in the long run everything changes. New forms and concentrations of energy appear. Old foundations adjust or disappear.

Meditations at the Power Plant (4) - TRANSPORTATION

Standing today at the site of the Power Plant one can't help wondering how they did it, and where did all that stone go?

Granite quarrying reached industrial levels in the Age of Sail, primarily at coastal locations capable of shipping its enormous weight and bulk to markets. Much of the necessary mechanics had to do with getting the stone to the waterfront and aboard vessels.

The Babson Farm Quarry, Halibut Point 1909
Power Plant at center
Robert Phelps photo, courtesy of Cape Ann Museum

Splitting stone with pneumatic drills
Detail of photo above

The Power Plant's boilers converted fuel, probably coal, into useful energy for the lifting derricks and working tools employed in the quarry. The energy was distributed by pipes and hoses as compressed air. Previous technologies that directed steam from the boilers to the work stations utilized a much more hazardous medium.

Granite blocks carted to Folly Cove pier
Photo courtesy of Sandy Bay Historical Society

In the early stages of development at Halibut Point, finished blocks were transported to the waterfront by ox-drawn carts.

Locomotive "Nella" at the Folly Cove pier
Charles Cleaves photo 1909, Sandy Bay Historical Society

As the enterprise developed greater contracts and capitalization it invested in a rail line to ferry stone around the quarry site and down to the wharf at Folly Cove. By the late nineteenth century everything was owned by the Rockport Granite Company.

Granite Street at Folly Cove:
electric trolley tracks (l), railroad trestle (r), and piles of paving stones
Charles Cleaves photo, 1915 Sandy Bay Historical Society

The locomotive was brought to Halibut Point on trolley tracks from the Rockport railroad station.

Note the paving stones stacked at the intersection beside the pier. These probably came from smaller-scaled manual operations in the neighborhood to be shipped from the pier.

Pavers on Broad Street, New York, 1919
Sandy Bay Historical Society photo

Paving stones had been a backbone of the Cape Ann granite industry, but the twentieth century revolution in transportation rendered them obsolete. Automobile owners valued smooth surfaces over the jointed roadways that had given better traction to horse-drawn vehicles. The above photograph of pavers at work was taken at the time of transition to the era of rubber-tired cars like the one seen at right.

Unloading stone for the breakwater at Folly Cove
Photo from the Nickerson Collection
John and Betty Erkkila, Souvenirs of Pigeon Cove, 2014

Some of the quarry rubble was economical and useful in marine construction. Their irregular angular shapes locked together for structural strength and wave resistance. Granite sloops handled them with a loading boom footed to the mast while the sailing boom was held aside.

Placing capstones on the Sandy Bay Breakwater
Sandy Bay Historical Society photo

Large pieces of quarry rubble formed the bulk of the foundation for the Sandy Bay Breakwater. Many local companies contributed to it, glad to earn the $1.15 per ton being paid by the federal government in 1894 for detritus transported off their premises to the offshore dumping area.* The Breakwater was capped by carefully fitted stone from Halibut Point's Babson Farms Quarry whose geologic features and fissuring facilitated the production of massive rectangular blocks.

This ambitious public works project was begun in 1879 to develop a national harbor of refuge for coastal sailors and naval vessels at a time when storms and shipwrecks made maritime life perilous. The deep water within Sandy Bay, the good anchoring ground and, above all, the lack of a large harbor between Portland and Boston brought favorable attention to the location off Rockport.

The course, as laid out, provided for a V-shaped wall extending one mile north west by west toward Andrews Point, where a northern passage is left two thousand feet wide. Southerly, the breakwater extends a little less than three quarters of a mile to Avery's Ledge. Here is a southeastern entrance measuring one thousand five hundred feet. The harbor thus enclosed is of more than one thousand six hundred acres, with a depth of sixty feet of water and excellent holding ground.*

Granite sloop Albert Baldwin and the North Atlantic squadron, 1905
Library of Congress photo

The fortunes of the Babson Farm Quarry waxed and waned with the level of government construction appropriations authorized sporadically over the next three and a half decades. The fiscal priorities of World War I brought a final termination to the project.

Even more profoundly, maritime craft in this period were transitioning from the Age of Sail to the Age of Steam. The emerging engine-powered boats were less vulnerable to storms and more able to get to port in heavy weather. The highliner granite sloop Albert Baldwin, pictured above saluting the North Atlantic squadron in 1905 at Sandy Bay, was soon to be outmoded by new technologies.

A powerful series of transportation innovations enabled the granite industry at Halibut Point. Succeeding series ultimately left the quarry behind.

 

* Herman Babson, "The Building of a Breakwater", New England Magazine, October 1894.

Meditations at the Power Plant (3)

 EVOLUTION

Queen Anne's Lace flower, opening

Early in nature's reclamation of the Power Plant site, wind-blown seeds of Queen Anne's Lace pioneered the return of vegetation to this forlorn terrain.

Common Blue Mud-dauber Wasp (left)
Silky Field Ant (right)
Cuckoo Wasps (top and bottom)

Insects followed to feed on their nectar and pollen. The sensory abilities and mobility of these animals distinguish them from plant life, in what may be seen as an evolutionary advance. Even small insects are remarkably sophisticated in their skills and determination.

The Silky Field Ant
(detail from photo above)

Plants are the foundation of life, though they lack the musculature and neural developments of animals. But all animals are dependent on the ability of plants to create organic life from the sun's energy, certain elements, and water.

Hummingbird Clearwing Moth
feeding on Pickerelweed

When a pond formed beside the Power Plant site tremendous varieties of plants were able to colonize it and attract animals into the niche, including this highly developed insect, a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird lent its name to the lookalike moth with remarkable hovering endurance. Perhaps they had to develop similar body proportions to make this feat possible. As a feathered warm-blooded vertebrate the bird has a much longer lifespan potential than the cold-blooded insect living within an exoskeleton.

Green Heron in the Pickerelweed

The pond's developing ecosystem offers an increasing variety of food and habitat to carnivorous birds like this Green Heron hunting for tadpoles, minnows, and insects.

Merlin, a small falcon

A Merlin surveys the arena around the Power Plant for prey with the large bulging eyes of a high-speed raptor on the wing. Its species has taken the power and agility of flight to a consummate level.

A Blanding's Turtle and a Painted Turtle

Turtles, having evolved protective shells mainly from the bony material of their ribs, don't need to rely on speed but often seek safety in water. They are reptiles born on land with scaly skin, distinct from amphibians born in the water with mucous-coated skins to keep from drying out when they emerge from the aqueous environment. Being cold-blooded, they have developed hibernating strategies to keep from freezing in cold climates like ours. Evolutionary evidence shows that birds have descended from ancient reptiles, their feathers deriving from specialized scales.

White-tailed Deer

Mammals lead wary lives. They generally hear, see, and smell you approaching the Power Plant before you are aware of them.

A young Coyote 

Rocky grout piles surrounding the former Power Plant present good denning locations for coyotes and foxes. Youthful curiosity occasionally brings them into contact with people.

Raccoon kits

Raccoons are among the most clever and adept of wild creatures, climbing trees with ease. Their long-fingered paws approach the maneuverability of our hands but they lack opposable thumbs to match human dexterity. Their shrewdness at times seems not far behind our own.

Surfacing granite blocks with a pneumatic hammer
(detail of photograph below)

Our species' shrewdness, dexterity, and tenacity drove the industry that so radically altered the landscape of Halibut Point.

Granite inspectors and workers at the Power Plant
Charles Cleaves photo, 1909
Courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

To accomplish it people converged in patterns shaped not just by physical but by social evolution. Aspiring immigrants bore the brunt of the arduous labor. Well-dressed supervisors organized the industry. Capital investors masterminded its integration to the burgeoning economy.

The trail today to the Power Plant

Evolution in its longest earthly timeline accounts for the geologic processes that create and decompose granite.  The stone originates in a superheated molten state near the planet's core, crystallizes below the crust, surfaces in the formation of continents, then erodes and eventually is subducted back to the interior in a vast recycling operation.

By this scale the colossal quarrying industry at Halibut Point is a highly accelerated but miniscule adjunct to the natural forces of granite decomposition. And so it is with the Power Plant, created, dismantled, and overgrown by shifting timelines.

Meditations at the Power Plant (2)

TRANSFORMATION

Site of the power plant today, at center

 Little remains today of the building that powered the granite industry at Halibut Point.

Lichens and blooming shad bush, early May

Natural elements have transformed the barren landscape. Bacteria and lichen spores carried through the air extend their colonies over sterile surfaces. The acids they release, and those from falling rain, make nutrients available to organic life. The physical forces of freezing and thawing, solar radiation, and weather break up stone into particles of sand and clay. Humus accumulates to improve water retention and soil texture. Pathways develop for the arrival of herbaceous and woody plants as the process accelerates.

The power plant c. 1909, center
Photo courtesy of the Sandy Bay Historical Society

The transformation of this lifeless terrain in the last century recapitulates the planetary development of the biosphere that evolved over billions of years.

Oxeye Daisies growing on the foundation

With favorable moisture in June daisy flowers blanket the power plant's remaining fragments of brick and concrete.

White-tailed deer browsing in the shrubbery

Reforestation proceeds by pioneering plants in the surrounding grout piles.

Cranberry blooming at the water's edge

The large cavity blasted out of the ledge beside the power plant fills continuously with ground water to sustain novel vegetation delivered by seeds from near and far.

Garter Snake closing in on a Bullfrog

The development of this little Eden draws diverse life, including the wily serpent.

The frog's narrow escape

Familiar Bluet damsel fly on lily pad

Once they arrive at the pond, certain damsel flies and dragonflies perpetuate themselves in the aquatic environment as egg and nymph stages beneath the water surface, to emerge as winged adults into our familiar world.

Painted Skimmer dragonfly on Loosestrife flower

Dragonflies use flowers as hunting perches for preying on smaller insects. Everything about their metamorphosis, their appearance, and their fast, agile flight mesmerizes observers of all ages. 

Spicebush Swallowtail on Pickerelweed

Butterflies seek out flowers to exchange pollination services for nectar. These progeny of different kingdoms are crucial to each other's needs.

Great Blue Heron foraging in Pickerelweed colony

Birds are the apex visitors both in creation and harvest of the pond. Quite possibly, and by chance, they have introduced varied germs of biologic life to this isolated spot as those species cling to, or pass through the digestive tract of, these boundless creatures that ultimately benefit from maturing ecological niches. 

*  *  * 

In last week's meditation I traversed from the currently blooming Japanese Andromeda through photographs of plants blooming successively later in the spring, without adequately noting that those flowers are not yet on display in the local landscape. So no, the site of the erstwhile power plant, while extraordinary in many ways, is not seasonally precocious. My meditation leaned to  mood rather than clarity.