Early June each year, Ingrid and I drive to the famous Clam Bake restaurant in Scarborough, Maine early in the morning.  

The Clam Bake is an enormous, yet classic New England Fried Clam/Lobster Roll Restaurant catering to the thousands of tourists that descend on the coast of Maine in the summer.   The parking lot must hold a hundred cars, but when we arrive it is totally empty and we pull up along the side of the restaurant . . . next to the saltwater marsh.

I get out of the car and “pish” a few times . . . and sure enough . . . as has happened each year at this time . . . a beautiful Saltmarsh Sparrow flies out of the grass and poses a few feet from me . . . wondering what I’m up to.  I marvel at his stunning yellow facial streaking; snap a few photographs and bid him goodbye.  

See you next June I say.

Picked up five first of the year birds in the last couple days with only a little casual before work birding . . . feeling pretty good about that.