Acadia & Phillips Lake

Aug 10
3 min read

I just spent a long weekend exploring Acadia National Park and am excited to share some photos I took! The house I stayed at with my boyfriend's family was built in the late 1800's by a civil war veteran and it has remained in the same family for seven generations - how special! It was steps from Phillips Lake, about an hour from the park, and felt like glamping in a museum full of old artifacts and antiques. There was a hummingbird feeder on the patio that was pretty popular and my first opportunity to take out the Nikon. You can imagine how hard it is to capture these little guys - they can flap their wings up to 80 times per second while hovering and they are the only bird that can move backwards thanks to a unique rotator cuff. I love the idea of having a hummingbird feeder but it is a big commitment to do it responsibly - if you don't mix the sugar water correctly and keep it well maintained and clean, you can harm these beautiful little creatures by causing fatal tongue infections that lead to starvation. I believe this is a female Ruby-throated hummingbird, the most common species in Maine which shows up in the spring and summer to breed before migrating back to Central America.

There was also a falcon (or maybe two?) that seemed to be residences of this beautiful little corner of Phillips Lake. We frequently heard them nearby and caught occasional glimpses but they were pretty elusive and seemed to be constantly on the move. I loved waking up to their unique call and hoped to get lucky enough to capture them with the Nikon. We were packing up to leave and my boyfriend called me to tell me to come to the driveway with my camera - we were finally blessed with a rare still moment on a branch within sight and managed to get some great shots. I think this beautiful bird is a juvenile Cooper's hawk based on the sound clips from this Audubon site - this is surprising as he/she seemed quite large to me. This moment felt like it really completed my trip to finally get a good look through the lens at this beauty!

When we first got to the lakeside house, we watched some loons diving. I didn't have my camera and hoped I would have another opportunity to photograph their beautiful black and white paint job, but we didn't see them again other than on a hike from pretty far away. I managed to get one decent shot but it was too far away to really capture the coloration of the eyes and body feathers.

We also had a moment with a large buck a pretty good distance across a field. The Nikon p950 has an impressive zoom!

Another memorable wildlife encounter was watching seals but unfortunately I didn't wind up with any good shots of these guys. There are two species in Maine - gray seals and harbor seals. We enjoyed watching them hunt a fairly large school of fish during sunset at the Bass Harbor Head Light Station. We also saw some seals swimming while on a boat tour and again from a beautiful cliffside view point. I did manage to snap a few photos from the boat but they were far from blog worthy. The one we saw from the cliffside was pretty far away and was at the surface eating a fish. We didn't have our cameras (ugh!) so I ran back to the car but by the time I returned, the show was over. I guess the moral of this post is to always carry the camera for those unexpected moments. I am glad I went back for the camera even if I didn't get my seal photo because that Cadillac Mountain Granite shoreline really is fantastic!