During our winters,  the Dickcissel travels to South America and gathers into enormous flocks of thousands of birds.  Then during the summer this Sparrow-like bird returns to the North American grasslands to breed.

Today I photographed a Dickcissel, loosely associating with a flock of House Sparrows in the Potts Point neighborhood at the very tip of Harpswell.   Apparently it has been visiting neighborhood residential feeders throughout the winter.

While a community surrounded by water in the middle of Casco Bay is lovely . . . for a bird that should be in Columbia or Venezuela . . . this must have been a brutal winter.