We rented a different house this year. It was a renovated house built in 1765 making it the 2nd oldest house in the area. It is the yellow house on the way to the beach with the wrought iron fence around it. 6 bedrooms and 6 ½ bathrooms. 3 car detached garage with a flag on one side, mountain bikes, kayaks, and a canoe with property going right to the Kennebec River so we could launch and have fun on the water. Interesting fact … hundreds of years ago the cove was dredged and the current backyard was water 30 feet deep. They had schooners tied up there for protection from storms. It was filled in and is all grass now. We really liked the location being a 7 minute walk to town and a 15 minute walk to the beach. Location … Location … Location … It was ideal.
I headed to Cape Porpoise several times. It can be beautiful when the sun sets. Not sure what color the sky will be. I was able to take pictures of a pink, yellow and an orange sky.
Each time I was there I saw Arctic Turns cruising by. Seemed to be in pairs mostly. I saw striped bass cruising by below the doc when the tide was coming in. At one point I saw huge schools of the small silver fish. They seemed to migrate to the shade when possible. Every few minutes I would see a striper attack the school and they would scatter.
I did see something I thought was unusual. There were lots of little silver fish being pushed around in frenzy by the stripers … then the Arctic Turns showed up. Not a couple, or a few, more like 50. It was like a big swarm making all sorts of noise. I was on the end of the peer when they started feeding. I had never seen that before so I started taking pictures. 
They were flying everywhere. Multiple birds would hover … the fish would get pushed to the surface … then in waves the birds would dive into the water. All the noise they were making was probably instructions for the controlled attack. I also noticed a couple birds with black beaks instead of a red-colored beak. I looked it up and young terns can have black beaks and legs.
It was hard to focus because of their movement. Which bird do you focus on? It seemed like the best thing to do was pick a spot to focus on and take pictures. As it was happening I didn’t look at the pictures I was taking. I should have payed more attention to the shutter speed. Bird bodies and heads were in focus with wings blurry because my shutter speed was to slow. I was caught up in the moment and didn’t think about playing with my settings. I will think of that next time if I get lucky enough to see something like that again.
We went to the beach quite a bit. We walked to the jetty, the cove, and the rocks. Swimming, body surfing, boogie boards, and a ladder toss tournament on the beach. Eating pizza on the beach Friday night is our tradition also.
George HW Bush was in town. I saw a lot of activity on Walkers Point but didn’t see them out and about like in years past. I did see his boat coming out of the river and going out to sea. 
I was only sitting in 18 inches of water ... with my camera around my neck. I found out "Cameras don’t like being dunked in saltwater" … I pulled my camera out of the water as fast as I could and start shaking it. Water … water … water … within about 20 seconds the timer light goes on as I am removing the battery and the card. The equivalent of a blue screen on your computer. Water is bad … Saltwater is worse … The SD card made it … My camera was dead … NUTS …
No pictures the remainder of the week. My backup camera was at home. Ironically, before we left one of the girls asked if I was going to bring it also … I said "No … don’t need it …" If I had my backup I may have thought to take that in the canoe … Now I’m on the market for a camera. What to buy … what to buy … Canon or Nikon?? Let the games begin ... Go to: "Search This Blog" at the top of my page and type in Kennebunkport or Cape Porpoise to see past posts.
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