Yearly Archives: 2017

Plum Island, Massachusetts

Plum Island, Massachusetts . . . it’s work hard to find a North American birding spot with a more diverse and attractive birding habitat. A nine-mile-long peninsula which combines a residential community, an ocean facing barrier beach, an extensive salt marsh, dunes, low scrub, maritime forests, grassy fields, salt and fresh water ponds. In simpler […]

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Dunlins at Popham Beach

With warbler fall migration all but over . . . Ingrid and I returned to the ever-exciting world of shorebirds, with a morning visit to Popham Beach. Popham is one of Maine’s premier summer sand, sun and surf locations with towels inches apart on hot July afternoons. Even during the winter the parking lot usually […]

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Monhegan Island

Only 69 year-round residents live on Monhegan: a population of fishermen, artisans and retirees. The roads are dirt, personal autos are forbidden and cell signals are spotty at best. During the warm weather, Monhegan has a thriving tourist business, with inns, galleries and even a brewery playing host to the hordes of daily visitors. Birders […]

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Mute Swans

On a quick stop at Butler Head, we were thrilled to see three beautiful Mute Swans browsing in the marsh grass.  While they’re an invasive species and in some places considered a pest . . . they are very rare in Maine and a thrilling sight. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”310″ display=”pro_mosaic”]

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Lincoln’s Sparrow

Ingrid refers to this year as “The Year of the Common Yellowthroat”, as they are everywhere. I was running a course on the east side of Westport Island, so on my drive I decided to stop at a small lily pad pond and try my magical Yellowthroat phishing skills again. As expected, a Common came […]

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Juvenile Bobolinks

A 6:30 AM trip to Great Salt Bay made us realize that the nesting part of summer may be coming to an end. Red-winged Blackbirds were few and far between, warblers while still plentiful are now in different locations, and the Bobolinks were completely gone. Around 7:00, the high grass suddenly came alive with juvenile […]

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Scarborough Marsh

A doctor’s appointment in Portland provided a great excuse for Ingrid and me to hit Scarborough Marsh, one of the finest birding spots in Maine. A muggy, 88-degree day tempered our enthusiasm for long hikes in the sun, so we stopped at a few places where we could leave the air conditioned car nearby. Stop […]

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Indigo Bunting

5:30 this morning while Ingrid was training for an upcoming road race at nearby Singing Meadow, I spent some time trying to photograph the Indigo Bunting that has been eluding us recently. He is loud, but shy and stays high in the tree tops, appearing momentarily as he moves to a new location. After about […]

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Atlantic Puffins

Summer is short in Maine, and thus very sweet. We savor every moment, and sometimes those moments are particularly magical. This evening was one of those moments. Once a year, Maine Audubon partners with Hardy Boat Cruises in New Harbor and runs a trip to Eastern Egg Rock where Project Puffin has worked diligently since […]

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Pileated Woodpecker

Went out this morning to bird a “swamp” by a nearby town.  Unfortunately the mosquitoes were as bad as I’ve ever experienced.  After a couple of minutes I raced back to the car, grabbed my trusty can of Deep Woods Off and covered myself with it. While there were some birds high in the trees, […]

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Great Blue Herons

I’m not the biggest fan of business travel . . . in fact I hate it.  One is cramped into small planes, cookie cutter hotels and far from loved ones.  Over the years, my job has had me on the road a lot  . . . and I’ve learned to grin and bear it.  Since […]

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The End of Warbler Season

The first of June is the end of warbler season and time to look back at what we saw and what we missed. We’ll see them again when they come back through in the fall . . . but it’s not as much fun as their colors are duller and the migration is spread across […]

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Chipping Sparrow

As May comes to an end  . . . we wanted to way, with the weather so lousy, the feeders have been very busy.  The feeder bird cam took over 8 GB of photographs over the last 3 days . . . including this shot of a Northern Cardinal at dusk: A nice returning visitor […]

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A Day at the Feeder

A few weeks ago, Ingrid and I invested in a Birdcam, in hopes we’d catch a few rare birds on our platform feeder that we might miss while doing mundane tasks like earning a living, yard word and laundry.  We have a platform feeder on the third floor of our house outside our bedroom window and […]

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Cedar Waxwing

Today we had the annual “cemetery meeting”, where my family discusses the up keep of a community cemetery in my mom’s hometown.  Of course on the way home we stopped at a few of our favorite spots  . . . a pasture on the family farm and pond in Dresden.  While we saw no new […]

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Chestnut-sided Warbler

The Chestnut-sided Warbler was seen at nearby Green Point WMA, a top birding spot in nearby Dresden, Maine.  Sadly this is the first time we’ve been there because I’ve never been able to find the parking lot (yes folks, I write GPS enabled Apps . . . but can’t figure out how to use Apple […]

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Baltimore and Orchard Orioles

With spring migration in high gear we headed to Capisic Park in Portland, Maine hoping to add to out year list. Unfortunately, we were having an unseasonable heat wave (97 degrees) and the warblers that were so prevalent in the morning, were hunkering down until the weather cooled. Still we saw a Baltimore and Orchard […]

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Eagle Fishing for Alewifes

Each spring at several location along the Maine Coast, Alewifes . . . a small herring like fish migrate from the open ocean to fresh water ponds to spawn.  It is an incredible sight to see as millions of foot long fish move through streams and up fish ladders. Birds also find the alewife migration […]

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Wilson’s Warbler

I took the day off from work today to get a little spring migration birding in.  Unfortunately Ingrid had to work (curse you 4th graders) so I was on my own until her little cherubs headed home on their school bus. A rare Prothonotary Warbler had been reported at nearby Butler Head in Bath, Maine and headed […]

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The Masked Bandit is Finally Captured!

I like to photograph birds and unless I get a photo . . . I fear that I really didn’t see it what I think I saw.  While probably a quarter of the birds on my life list are on the “honor system” . . . I’m always trying to backfill those birds with photos. Anyone […]

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Return of the Bobolink

May each year we head to one of our favorite Maine birding spots: Great Salt Bay in Damariscotta, to see (and hear) a remarkable display . . . the return of the Bobolink!!! Great Salt Bay is acres and acres of meadows, abutting a salt-water lake and a fresh water pond . . . an […]

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Purple Finches

While their numbers are just a fraction of our ever present Gold Finches, there seem to be far too many Purples for just migrators. In my Grandparent’s time there were probably more Purple Finches than we see today.  In 1950 the similarly colored House Finch was introduced into New York’s Central Park and this invasive species […]

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Return of the Warblers

A couple weeks ago, Ingrid and I traveled to High Island on the Gulf Coast of Texas to watch the annual bird migration.  The warblers moving through the Bolivar Peninsular in the spring is legendary.  Unfortunately, one can’t predict the exact date birds actually migrate and our trip was a couple weeks early.  Not that […]

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the First Hummingbird of the Spring

We’ve had their feeders out for 6 days . . . we put them out last weekend when the Hummingbirds.net migration map showed them approaching our area. First female (about 9:00) and the first male arrived about noon. We hope the Baltimore Orioles arrive tomorrow. Late in the day I got a photo of the […]

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White-throated Sparrow Visits

Our Annual Migrating Visitor Arrives For about two weeks each Spring, White-throated Sparrows visit our feeders. On April 20, Ingrid heard the unmistakable “Sweet Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada” on a morning run. In the ensuing days we’ve seen two or three adults and juveniles hopping around under our holly and azalea bushes. If past is […]

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