Dear Katie,

This month we are sharing just a few of the posts from our Harpswell Nature Watchers Facebook group. Want to see the rest? Click here to join.

What are you seeing out there? We'd love to hear from you! Click here for more information about Harpswell Nature Watchers.

More Cormorants than I have ever seen gathered in Maine! This was yesterday at Orr's Cove (they were flying en masse up and down the cove the day before, they flew over this evening but rather high up). One got up on a mooring, but with the wind, it had a hard time, and they all just continued on past, so it jumped back in after a while. There were at least 150.

(Submitted by Gina Snyder. November 7, 2022)

While exploring Potts Point at extreme low tide we saw so many of these really large periwinkles clustered around the rocks. They about the diameter of a penny or a bit bigger, so much larger than the little (empty) ones that wash up in masses higher up on the shore. Can someone tell me about this? Do periwinkles shed and grow new bigger shells like some other species do? Thanks in advance.

Thanks to Melissa Stufflebeam for responding to this question! Periwinkles continue to grow one shell their entire lives, rather than shedding them and growing new ones. Empty shells washed up on the beach are from dead periwinkles, but can be picked up and used by hermit crabs for a second "life!"

There are also three species of periwinkle snails in the Gulf of Maine, each of varying size. Click here for more.

(Submitted by Anne Cauble. November 10, 2022)

As the leaves drop from the trees and shrubs and the ferns and other herbaceous plants die back, clubmosses, small evergreen plants that were always there, but perhaps overshadowed, become more visible in the forest. These plants, although they produce spores as ferns do, are not ferns. They are related, but are in fact in a class of their own—Lycophyta. Clubmosses are ancient plants that existed long before the dinosaurs roamed the earth, but were tree-sized at that time. They are called clubmosses because of their club-shaped fertile stalk that bears its spores. Spores have properties that repel water, so have been used in the past as powder for infants or to protect wounds. Clubmosses produce alkaloid chemicals that cause them to taste bad, so they may be one of the few things that deer won’t eat!

Thanks to Lynn Knight and Susan Hayward for the reminder that it takes 20 years for these plants to develop from a spore to a mature plant. The club moss shown here, also known as princess pine, has become rare in some areas due to overharvesting.

(Submitted by Lynn Knight. November 10, 2022)

I love these little guys!

(Submitted by Jess Marie. November 17, 2022)

These photos were taken on the west side of Devil's Back hiking area. I think the birds are long-tailed ducks and bufflehead ducks, correct me if I'm wrong!

(Submitted by Robert Rowe. November 24, 2022)