Maine Outdoor Journal

Even when I am expecting a huge flight, I am rarely as excited to get to Sandy Point as I was on Monday morning. I just couldn’t wait to apply my recently-acquired knowledge down in Cape May, and put some hypothesis to the test. Overnight, on clear skies, a light northwesterly wind was blowing. At dawn, a light west-northwest breeze.

I expected big things when Glenn, visiting from Michigan, and I arrived at the bridge at dawn. Unfortunately, the birds had other ideas. No big flight was to be had. Here’s the minimal tally:
7:05am to 7:45am. Clear. Lt-mod WNW.
9 Dark-eyed Junco
5 Bufflehead
5 American Robin
3 White-throated Sparrow
2 unidentified merganser
2 Golden-crowned Kinglet
2 Ruby-crowned Kinglet
2 Song Sparrow
2 American Goldfinch
1 Blue Jay
1 Yellow-rumped Warbler
1 Unidentified

So, what happened? Well, overnight, the winds were actually registering as calm from 11pm through 3am, at least near the surface. That’s the period that most migrants are on the move, and that, coupled with an overall rather light flight, was likely the reason for the limited dawn reorientation flight. Here are the 10pm and 2am radar images, for example:




The rest of the morning’s birding was more productive. Yesterday, Lysle found a Long-billed Dowitcher in the Cousin’s River marsh off of Route One on the Yarmouth/Freeport border. Glenn needed that for his Maine list, so we went in search of it. At the last salt panne that we had to check, we found it – along with a decent tally of 16 Greater Yellowlegs, 5 Lesser Yellowlegs, 5 White-rumped Sandpipers, 4 Semipalmated Plovers, and 1 Dunlin.

Then, while we were enjoying the shorebirds, the call came in – The Pink-footed Geese were back. Glenn had flown in from Michigan yesterday, primarily to twitch the geese, and – much to his consternation – yesterday was the first day that they had not been seen in almost two weeks. Luckily, this morning, they reappeared along Greely Road, where we were soon racing off to.

And low and behold, there they were . . . along with 267 Canadas.


While we were enjoying the geese, I kept hearing two different calls that I simply could not place. Finally, the producer of the call perched atop a field-edge tree: my first Northern Shrike of the season, a “gray” immature.


After a quick check of the Thornhurst Farm fields (456 Canada Geese, no Cackling), Glenn and I headed up to the Mayhall Road fields in New Gloucester, hoping for pipits and Snow Buntings. No luck on either of those, but we did have a nice flock of 45 Horned Larks, along with 185 more Canada Geese.

On clear and calm conditions Monday night into Tuesday, birds were on the move again. In fact, I thought that this was a fairly impressive flight for this late of a date. I wonder how many of those were juncos!? Here are the 10pm, 12am, 2am, and 4am radar images:








However, easterly winds developed by the morning, pushing birds away from the coast. In fact, take a look at the coast south of Portland – barely a blip on the radar image. Hence, Jeannette and I encountered painfully few landbird migrants as we birded Cape Elizabeth.

Now, if we had checked the radar in advance of our birding, we could have expended our energy elsewhere (my guess is inland, perhaps along the shores of Lake Auburn, i.e. the Whitman Spring Trail and Sebago Lake, i.e. Sebago Lake State Park) would have been more fruitful. But, we were heading to Cape Elizabeth more in search of state birds for Glenn and rarities for ourselves!

Other than American Robins, landbird migrants were hard to come by. Sparrows in particular were few and far between. In fact, our only decent concentration of sparrows was at Maxwell’s Farm, with 15 Savannah, 6 Song, and 2 Field, plus two tardy Red-winged Blackbirds, and oh yeah, a Sandhill Crane! Present for at least a week now, this bird – the second in late fall to grace Maxwell’s – has been attracting quite a bit of attention, and deservedly so. On our way home, Jeannette and I decided it was time to join the festivities and pay it a visit. A Merlin cruised over as we were departing; a nice way to end the day (or at least end our birding day, we then had to go snowblower shopping – yup, it’s that time of year!)

Besides the crane, highlights were few. We didn’t find Glenn any of the state birds that we had hoped for, and none of the vagrants were thinking of. Really, the only productive birding was seawatching from Dyer Point, which was actually quite productive. Glenn didn’t have much time before catching his flight, and none of us were dressed as warmly as need be, so we only spent a half-hour scanning the seas. Lots of Northern Gannets and southbound Common Eiders, all three scoters, 21 Red-throated and 2 Common Loons, 18 Long-tailed Ducks, 17 Red-breasted Mergansers, and my first three Razorbills of the fall (a good sign for Saturday’s pelagic!) made for a very productive short bout.

With light easterly winds continuing through the night into Wednesday morning, as a low pressure system developed to our south, the nocturnal migration was expectedly very light. Here’s the midnight radar image for example.


And, therefore, there were expectedly few migrants around Hedgehog Mountain Park this morning, although the scattering of Dark-eyed Juncos (23), small flocks of American Robins and American Crows moving south overhead, 3 Song Sparrows in the brush, a single Yellow-rumped Warbler, and one flock of 6 Eastern Bluebirds helped to prove that the migration season continues in earnest. But, for me, the highlight of the stroll was a very active and vociferous pair of Pileated Woodpeckers that were putting on a very good show today.