Christmas tree pruning by mystery herbivore

Clearly, I've been remiss: months have passed with no blog posts! In that time Cynthia and Lucy and I have visited Cape Cod, Maine, Norfolk, and New Bern. We've caught mackerel, king mackerel, pollack, bluefish, and a swordfish. We've enjoyed oysters, mussels, steamers, littlenecks, and quahogs. We've sailed in fog, bright sunshine, still nights, and storm. We've seen dolphins doing tricks for us and large groups of little whales. We've even seen approaching walls of wind just in time to batten down enough that little fell over or leaked when the wind struck and shoved us roughly far over on our side and held us there for ten minutes. And we've dealt with engine troubles, made repairs on leaking bits of decking, made progress on re-coring the deck, and installed a pretty sweet lithium battery bank that allows us to make far better use of our available electrical power. Currently, Cynthia and Lucy are near Philadelphia beginning a new job there, the boat is in New Bern, and I am helping my folks out in Sonoma, CA.

What to mention first? How about Pickering Island, ME?

As we began working our way from Maine back toward Cape Cod, the winds were light and variable and the fog thick, but the tide swept us along.... until it turned. So we chose a nearby island, scanned it for habitation using Google maps to see if it would be a good place to take Lucy for a walk... and found interesting signs of old foundations (bottom left corner).

We motored in until we found a good spot to anchor, launched the dinghy, and rowed to shore, Cynthia casting for fish and pulling in a mackerel as I rowed.

On shore, we scouted around until we found a path to the ruins and followed it in, Lucy bouncing about, eager for any sign of squirrel or mouse. We came to the clearing and found numerous stone foundations,

old apple trees, hunting stands in a few trees, and this little "Christmas tree"... with a very poorly pruned top.

I found the tree fascinating. I'm sure no one pruned it, so the trimming was probably the product of some herbivores browsing on it. Deer are the most common, but the height of the pruned section (about 3.5') argued for a shorter critter... like goats or sheep. I've heard sheep will eat evergreens and that there are sheep on several islands in Maine and I believe that goats and deer would eat at least up to five feet from the ground, so I think we found pretty strong evidence of sheep on this island. I DO love a bit of deductive reasoning!

And here is a random pic from chilly Maine: