The doldrums are over. July’s boring birding has given way to renewed vigor in August. Local songbirds are stirring. Most are done family-raising. Some are replacing their feathers in preparation for the long flight and a tropical winter.
Soon, these songbirds will gather in mixed flocks, foraging together, fattening up for the flight. Foraging flocks are often noisy and easy to find. It’s an odd time. You can walk for a mile and hear nothing, and then chance upon a whole passel of different species enjoying the increased safety of feeding together.
Migration is already underway, even a reverse migration. At Essex Woods — Bangor’s wetland adjacent to the Interstate — at least a dozen great egrets have come north to feed after nesting farther south. Canadian breeders are starting to arrive. On my visit Wednesday morning, I spotted two solitary sandpipers — the vanguard of more to come. Conversely, many of the swallows have departed.
During my visit to Essex Woods, I joined a crowd of birders who were seeking a family of celebrities that had been discovered recently. Least bitterns are so unusual in Maine, they are on the state’s endangered species list. These small wading birds breed in local marshes, but they are secretive and not often spotted. Yet here was a new family on the edge of the cattails, in plain view of 15 delighted birders.
The fledgling bitterns were awkward, barely able to fly, and then only for a few feet. One swam clumsily across a patch of water to reach its sibling in an adjacent flower patch. Mostly, they hid in the reeds, but ventured into view whenever they found enough courage.
Essex Woods illustrates a truism. Everything changes by the week at this time of year. Birds come and go. Numbers rise and fall. Waterfowl gather in places of safety, especially in wetlands protected from hunting. The Penobscot Valley Chapter of Maine Audubon plans to exhibit this phenomenon with two walks around the wetland, one on Aug. 28, the next on Sept. 25. Both Sunday morning walks will meet at 8 a.m. at the Garden Way entrance off Drew Lane, near the Bangor Mall.
The Caribou Bog Conservation Area — the former Taylor Bait Ponds site — is a migration hotspot in Orono. The Penobscot Valley Chapter offers two walks to highlight early and late migration here. Those walks are scheduled for Sept. 11 at 8 a.m. and Oct. 9 at 9 a.m. From Forest Avenue in Orono, follow Taylor Road 0.3 miles to the trailhead. Local Maine Audubon members will find more info in the fall newsletter. Everyone else can just clip this column, and stick it on the refrigerator.
Shorebird season is about to peak. During the last two weeks of August, Maine’s mudflats are covered in birds that nested near the Arctic Circle. Least and semi-palmated sandpipers make up the bulk of the congregation, joined by thousands of semi-palmated plovers. Sharp-eyed observers may be able to pick out a few slightly larger white-rumped sandpipers among them, and maybe one of the rarer Baird’s sandpipers. Larger shorebird species — short-billed dowitchers, black-bellied plovers and a few red knots — will be scattered among the peeps. It’s like a treasure hunt.
I look forward to searching through all the mudflats from Steuben to Lubec in the next several weeks. If you see an older gentleman who is gaining weight but losing hair, tromping around the shoreline adorned in boots and a ballcap, armed with Swarovski binoculars and a Zeiss spotting scope, feel free to say hi.
The shorebird migration persists throughout September. Most of the adult sandpipers come through in August, with the youngsters peaking closer to Labor Day. After the holiday weekend, the overall numbers dwindle, but the possibility of unusual shorebirds increases, and a few oddballs often wander around.
Meanwhile, ocean birds are making things interesting. There’s a good crop of northern gannets out in the Gulf of Maine this year. As the season wears on, they tend to fly closer to land, easily seen just offshore. Great shearwaters are up from the Indian Ocean. Sooty shearwaters and Wilson’s storm-petrels are up from Argentina. A few pomarine and parasitic jaegers are down from northern Canada, and a few south polar skuas from Antarctica have been sighted on whale-watch tours.
Local salt-water breeders, such as great cormorants and black-legged kittiwakes, are leaving their nesting islands and moving closer to shore. Tens of thousands of gulls are gathering off Eastport. It’s getting lively out there. You’ve been warned.
