Category Archives: Vireo

Bustin’ Out for Birdathon

The Wings Across the Big Sky Festival is less than two weeks away and Braden I look forward to seeing some of you there. It’s not too late to sign up. Just click here for what promises to be a terrific weekend of birding Montana’s stunning northwest corner. Braden and I will be leading two field trips, one to Tally Lake and the other to the CSKT Bison Range. Even if you’re not on those trips, please say hello! Meanwhile, we are happy to share another recent big birding event—an exhilarating day of Birdathon to raise money for our local Audubon chapter!

On Friday, May 15^th, I woke at 4 a.m., excited to be devoting a full day—and I mean FULL—to birding. Unlike most days of birding, however, I and my team of Braden, Susan Snetsinger, and her son Eli would be dedicating our day to raising money for a good cause under the auspices of Birdathon.

Birdathon is an annual event put on by many different bird-related conservation groups, and it works much like those death marches you probably got suckered into as a youngster in which you would commit to walking twenty miles and sign up sponsors to pay you for each mile walked. Birdathon, though, is MUCH more fun than those blister-packing marathons of yesteryear because birding teams get to raise money by BIRDING!

**I find it impossible not to photograph Black-necked Stilts when I see them and, indeed, the birds showed up aplenty for Birdathon.**

In the spirit of healthy, fund-raising competition, we dubbed our team Bird Domination, but none of us had ever actually participated in a Birdathon. Undaunted, we coerced an assortment of family members and friends to donate money for each bird that we might find, deceitfully telling them that we probably would see about 100 birds during the day—even though we harbored much higher aspirations. Our donations would go to support the wonderful conservation and education work of our local birding chapter, Five Valleys Audubon, and Braden and I diligently crafted a route that would net us the most birds in a single day.

**Team Domination: (L to R) Sneed, Braden, Eli, and Susan.**

Braden and I decided to start at dawn with a quick trip up Rattlesnake Creek in our own neighborhood to pick up a few birds we might not see anywhere else. Arriving at the trailhead at 5:30 sharp, the birds did not disappoint. In the parking lot, we immediately heard Nashville Warbler and Hammond’s Flycatcher, and walking up the main trail, an American Dipper popped out onto the trail. Turning up a side creek called Spring Gulch, we heard our last two targets for here: Townsend’s Warbler and the boom boom boom of a Ruffed Grouse! Then we hurried back to the car to collect the rest of our teammates so that our proper Birdathon could launch.

It would take way too many words—and probably bore the heck out of you—to give you a blow by blow of the entire day, but to give you the scope of our endeavor, here are the basics and highlights.

**Three distant American Bitterns (!) above Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh.** **Unimpressed, two Osprey watch from a nest.**

Our route took us from Missoula to Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh and past the CSKT Bison Range to Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge. From there, we drove to Bigfork, down the Seeley Swan Valley and then over to Browns Lake. Our last big push carried us across the Continental Divide to Great Falls and our final destination—Benton Lake National Wildlife Refuge—before making the long return trip to Missoula.

Total time elapsed: 17-1/2 hours.

Total miles driven: 552.

**Swainson’s Hawk perched high on our list of desired raptors and we saw four at Benton Lake NWR.**

Before getting to our actual bird highlights, I must say a few words about how much gasoline we consumed. As I’ve continued birding, I’ve been more and more reluctant to drive a lot, even to chase birds since burning gas contributes to climate change and directly impacts the creatures we love. Birdathon, however, coincided with birding destinations Braden and I had planned to visit this spring anyway. I especially wanted to make sure I got over the divide at least once to see some of Montana’s eastern species. So in addition to raising money, Birdathon allowed us to “double dip” on a lot of things we were going to do anyway—and it was a bonus to “carpool” with Susan and Eli, making it a relatively energy-efficient trip overall.

**Sandhill Cranes have a habit of nesting right under our noses and, indeed, we discovered one nesting only a few yards away at one of our stops near Browns Lake.**

Speaking of energy, I also have to add that while Braden and I drove and planned the event, Susan and Eli kept us energized with homemade egg sandwiches, 18-inch torpedo sandwiches, caffeinated beverages, and an unlimited variety of snacks. In other words, Team Bird Domination set out perfectly prepared to have an epic day. And with that, here are but a few of the day’s incredible highlights:

**A fun shorebird assortment at Benton Lake NWR. Can you name them all?** (Answer at the bottom)

Watching three American Bitterns flying over Sčilíp (formerly Dixon) Marsh. For context, we had never even heard an American Bittern here—and seen and heard only three or four in the entire state. At first, in fact, we thought the three birds might be Great Blue Herons, but Braden’s astute eyes picked out the brown color and dark ends of the wings. WOW!
A surprise Short-eared Owl at Ninepipe. Usually, these critters “bed down” a couple of hours after sunrise, but overcast skies probably helped this one keep hunting until we arrived. THANK YOU, OWL.
A Long-billed Curlew at Ninepipe—a curlew that turned out to be a WHIMBREL, again, thanks to Braden’s keen ID skills. Only a handful of whimbrels end up in Montana each year, and almost never west of the divide. This was the first one recorded at Ninepipe in six years—a truly rare find that helped render the entire day a spectacular hit, even though it wasn’t half over.
A clean sweep of large prairie-dwelling shorebirds at Benton Lake NWR, including Upland Sandpiper, Long-billed Curlew (that didn’t turn into a whimbrel), Willets, and Marbled Godwits.

**Grabbing Bird of the Day honors, we caught this rare-for-Montana Hudsonian Whimbrel hanging out with some distant Canada Geese!**

Speaking of Benton Lake, this was the first time we’d birded there in mid-May and it was interesting to note who was home. Usually, for instance, there are thousands of breeding Franklin’s Gulls, but we saw only a couple of dozen. Ditto for Eared Grebes which can dot the lake in the many hundreds. We counted fewer than one hundred, though couldn’t accurately assess the far sides of the upper lake where they mostly hang out. On the other hand, we saw more White-faced Ibises than we’d ever seen—about seventy. It’s hard to make any generalizations from this since the bar charts show that all of these birds should be there in strong numbers now, but we did feel that some of the birds are arriving a bit late this year.

**A great bonus to birding this time of the year was witnessing several species courting and mating, including these Western Grebes.**

Other great birds we saw or heard included Yellow-breasted Chat, a lagging Snow Goose, a Horned Grebe, Cassin’s Vireo, Chestnut-collared and Thick-billed Longspurs, Wilson’s Phalarope, Swainson’s Hawk, and the marsh trifecta of Sora, Virginia Rail, and Wilson’s Snipe. We definitely had a few misses, such as Common Loon, Golden Eagle, Black Tern, and Black-crowned Night Heron but we all agreed that the birds really came through for us, perhaps having heard that our efforts were going to help birds!

Our final tally came in at a mind-blowing 135 species—enough to bankrupt our sponsors and ensure that we will participate in Birdathons far into the future!

**Photography did not rank high on our list of priorities during Birdathon, but this Dark-eye Junco with prey did pose for my best ever DEJU shot.**

Bird ID Answers: Long-billed Curlew (1), American Avocets (2), Marbled Godwits (5).

Black-chinned Sparrow: Bird #14 on Braden’s ABA Life List Countdown

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Today, we continue Braden’s countdown of the remaining birds he needs to complete his American Birding Association life list. For more information on this journey, check out his post, Lower 48 Life List Countdown: Crissal Thrasher. As always, if you’d like to support FatherSonBirding, consider buying new copies of some of Sneed’s books shown to the right. If you already have them all, why not buy a copy for a friend? As always, thanks for reading!

On April 4th, 2026, I left my job of eight months, with my internal compass pointing home. I’d lived and worked in Running Springs, California since late August of 2025, as an educator and camp counselor at Pali Institute for Outdoor Education. I’d seen so much of the country during this time, and met some really cool people, but on April 3^rd I finished my last work shift. The next day, I moved out of staff housing and drove south to Ramona near San Diego to stay with my cousins. That night would be the first of many on a twelve-day road trip I’d planned across the American West on my way back to Montana. Though I looked forward to seeing many birds (see my Crissal Thrasher blog) on the trip, I especially set my sights on the last US sparrow that I’d never laid eyes on: Black-chinned.

Black-chinned Sparrows are classic chaparral birds found in canyons and hillsides across much of California, Arizona and New Mexico. They’re particularly drawn to post-fire habitats—the dense shrubbery that rises from the sooty ground five to ten years after a burn. Outside the core of its range, the species can be quite local, which might explain why I hadn’t bumped into one so far. While I have spent extensive time in both central California and southeast Arizona, a lot of the birding I’ve done in these locations is either too wooded or too deserty for Black-chinned Sparrows. The one concentrated effort I made for the species was both at a bad time of year and a bad time of day for the species, when a friend and I had driven up a random road south of San Francisco where a single singing bird had been reported weeks prior.

When planning my route home from Running Springs, I had several goals in mind: to explore parts of the West I’d never before visited and to target a few bird species that would either be lifers, or living in new locations I’d never explored. With all of this in mind, I left my cousin’s house in Ramona on April 5th and drove six hours through the Mojave Desert, arriving at a location known as the Beeline Highway an hour or so after sunset. This section of the highway ran through Sycamore Canyon, a middle-elevation canyon that stretched from the saguaro-covered foothills north of Phoenix up towards 7,000-foot Mt. Ord. No longer a through road thanks to a closure on the lower section, it was known to be one of Phoenix’s top birding locations.

As I began to set up my tent, thinking about all the fun canyon country birds I might see tomorrow, a barking echoed from the creek a couple hundred meters away. I recognized it as a sound I’d only heard a few times: an Elf Owl! Deciding my tent could wait, I grabbed my flashlight and camera, walking towards the sound. When I got to the tree I thought it was coming from, I raised my light and immediately spotted the bird: America’s smallest owl was barking, unperturbed, from a small cavity in the sycamore. Then another Elf Owl landed on a tree on the other side of the road! I’d only heard this species before, never gotten eyes on one, and I hadn’t even realized they lived this far north! Happy, I went to bed as the Elf Owls called into the night.

The next morning, unfamiliar bird songs woke me, and I packed my tent before the sun crested the hills. As I headed down the road, I spotted Northern Cardinals and Ash-throated Flycatchers, knowing full well that Black-chinned Sparrow reports were more frequent higher up the canyon but curious as to what else lived below. Arizona sycamores followed the creek down the canyon, which contrasted with the dry, rocky, juniper-covered slopes surrounding me, and created great habitat for birds like Hooded Oriole, Bell’s Vireo and Cassin’s Kingbird. From the hillsides sang Rufous-crowned Sparrows, a southwestern bird with a messy jumble of a song that I’d been learning to love over the last few months.

Forty minutes after I started walking the canyon, another car pulled alongside me. A woman got out, introducing herself as Shannon and stating that she was a local birder. From then on, we mostly birded together, taking turns pointing out cool birds as we encountered them.

“Zone-tailed Hawk above us!”

“Check out that male Scott’s Oriole!”

“Oooh, that Costa’s Hummingbird is displaying!”

Eventually, we arrived at a natural turnaround point—a large, grassy pile of dirt blocking the road. The road continued behind it, but Shannon decided to turn around. I felt that I should keep going a little farther, a birding strategy that I’d adopted in recent years. Often, when I feel like turning around, I decide to push on around ‘just one more corner’, and it’s gotten me some great birds over the years. I did just that, and wasn’t disappointed.

To be honest, Black-chinned Sparrow was not the main reason I’d selected this location. No, the Beeline Highway was known for another species, one I’d seen before in Costa Rica but never in the US—Common Black Hawk. In the tropics these raptors are hard to miss, using mostly coastal habitats, especially mangroves. North of the Mexican border, though, there are fewer than 300 nesting pairs, confined to sycamore-covered canyons.

Sure enough, after walking around ‘just one more corner’, I spotted it: A Common Black Hawk sitting on a nest in the crook of a sycamore. I snapped a bunch of pictures and watched as it began flying back and forth, its calls bouncing off the walls of the canyon.

I headed back up the canyon and again met Shannon, who gave me a ride to my car. We parted ways and I continued driving slowly with the windows down. I’d seen a ton of cool birds so far, but I couldn’t help feeling a little stressed. Where were the Black-chinned Sparrows?

Apparently, near the top of the canyon! Pulling over for probably the fourth time, I immediately heard one sounding off from the valley below—a musical, descending song like that of a Field Sparrow but more piercing. While I don’t enjoy using playback, I went ahead and played its song. My bird didn’t come any closer, but the sound prompted another sparrow to start singing on the other side of the road. I snuck up on him and suddenly, not ten feet from me sat a male Black-chinned Sparrow. Almost immediately, a second male flew in to join him and the two flitted from bush to bush together, never staying in one place for longer than ten seconds but giving me satisfying views. I knew they were both males because only the male of this species has the diagnostic black chin.

The Beeline Highway offered up one more gift before I left. While watching the sparrows, I heard the telltale varied song of a mimid. I walked to the edge of the road expecting a Northern Mockingbird, and instead was treated to great views of a Crissal Thrasher! This high-altitude shrubby habitat differed in nearly every way from the desert wash where I’d seen one in Vegas, but the bird seemed to be thriving here! As I headed north, away from the sycamores and saguaros, I felt a pang of regret since I likely wouldn’t be seeing these birds again for a long time. However, I knew that today’s experience would give me hours of pleasant reflection as I continued my adventure into new, exciting habitats.

Redstart Rendezvous at Sears Island, Maine (Maine to Montana, Part 3)

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Today, we are pleased to offer the third in Braden’s series about his adventures driving across the country from Maine to Montana. Already, it’s been an incredible birding journey—and he’s not even out of Maine! Sneed is also pleased to announce that two of his books, Birding for Boomers and Like No Other, have been named finalists for the High Plains International Book Awards. We hope some of you Montana residents will join Sneed for the celebration and to crown the winners at the awards ceremony in Billings on October 4th!

I had never seen so many American Redstarts. The birches and maples standing on the northern tip of Sears Island, at times, had more warblers on their branches than leaves. According to Wesley Hutchins, this was the norm for Sears Island during spring, and part of the reason why he’d been wanting to bring me here since we’d become friends four years ago.

I’d met Wes a month or two after arriving at the University of Maine, and thanks to the hours and days we’d spent together exploring the forests and coasts of the state, I now considered him one of my closest friends. Wes and I kept in close contact during the summers when we worked out-of-state (California and Pennsylvania for me, New York for him), keeping each other updated on all of the awesome birds we were seeing around the country. He’d graduated a year before me, but still visited UMaine every week to spend time with me and his other friends there. I had never visited his hometown of Belfast, however, despite it being only an hour away from the campus where I’d gone to college. This week, I was bent on changing that, and now here I was birding the spots that he’d fallen in love with over the last few years.

**Selfie of me and Wes at one of his favorite birding spots, Sears Island, Maine.**

“It’s really weird seeing you here—in the good way!” Wes admitted, and I nodded. I’m sure I would feel the same way once I finally convinced him to visit me in Montana.

We’d spent the previous evening walking around Belfast Harbor, a pleasant little cove tucked away into the side of Maine’s midcoast region and another one of Wes’s favorite birding spots. This morning, however, he’d taken me to Sears Island, Waldo County’s best birding hotspot and a prime location to see migrating warblers. Upon setting foot on the island, I began to notice warblers—redstarts, a Chestnut-sided, a Northern Waterthrush—but nothing out of the ordinary. I’d been seeing warblers like this all week. We wandered a bit, down into the forested center of the island, but things stayed eerily quiet. After about twenty minutes, Wes turned to me and said, “We should go back to the northern point. That’s usually where all the action is.”

**Unlike the other warblers, Sears Island’s Ovenbirds were keeping pretty quiet on the day Wes and I visited.**

I felt skeptical. I much prefer walking around to staying in one spot to bird, but Wes had the local knowledge so I followed his lead. We walked back and we immediately began to see birds we hadn’t seen just twenty minutes ago—a Blackburnian Warbler and a couple of Magnolias. Then, I looked up.

In the sky above us floated dozens of warblers, all seeping and chipping as they struggled to combat the winds rushing over the island. Many of the birds faced north, while others zoomed in from the north, landing in the trees directly to our right and left. We stationed ourselves directly in front of a flowering apple tree that seemed to be overflowing the warblers and began calling things out.

“I’ve got two Magnolias on the same branch.”

“Is that a Tenness—no, it’s just a REVI.”

“Here’s our third Wilson’s of the day, a nice male!”

“Six redstarts in this one tree alone. Scratch that, seven.”

**One of approximately one hundred American Redstarts we counted at Sears Island.**

What we were experiencing was a river of warblers. Every three minutes or so, the birds we’d been staring at would vacate and be replaced by new birds dropping in from above, all slowly making their way toward the causeway that connected Sears Island to the mainland. One in every three warblers was an American Redstart, and there were easily hundreds of warblers. Mixed in with the warblers were small numbers of other species: vireos, flycatchers, a couple Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. It was exactly the experience I’d hoped to have when I’d signed up to go to school on the east coast. The West doesn’t do songbird migration like the East does, especially when it comes to warblers. Montana has fourteen regularly-occurring species of warblers. On Sears Island, we’d seen fourteen species in a matter of minutes.

**Rose-breasted Grosbeaks added further spice to an incredible wave of warblers migrating in!**

My focus had been warblers the whole week, in fact, with the notable exception of the Acadia Puffin Cruise (see our recent post, Puffin Party). Just a day or two earlier, I’d spent two nights in Portland, Maine, with my good friend Hayden Page. We’d birded hard, visiting many of Maine’s famous birding hotspots like Scarborough Marsh, Laudholm Farm and Portland’s urban Capisic Park. The morning we’d hit Laudholm Farm had been incredible, with 81 species at the preserve including seventeen warbler species and a White-eyed Vireo, a rarity this far north. At an airport in Brunswick, Main, we’d also chased a Blue-winged Warbler—another southerner not supposed to be here. In the coming decades it wasn’t hard to imagine both the vireo and the warbler showing up more and more frequently in Maine thanks to warming temperatures and changes in habitat.

**A Blue-winged Warbler—an unusual migrant that may become much more common in Maine as global temperatures warm.**

The week had also exposed me to the diversity of Maine’s habitats. Living in Bangor during the colder months, my impressions of the state had mostly been of woods. And it is true that Maine has woods—it’s the most forested state in the country. But southern Maine, especially, holds its fair share of unique ecosystems. Kennebunk Plains Preserve, which I’d visited twice this spring, is a patch of grassland with Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows and Eastern Meadowlarks. It is regularly burned to keep shrubs and trees from encroaching on it. Grassland used to be far more common in the state, following the intensive logging of the 1800 and 1900s, but now that the forest had grown back Kennebunk Plains was one of the only spots for certain species to be found.

Scarborough Marsh, which my dad and I had visited when we’d come out to Maine in fall of 2021 (see this post), held the largest chunk of salt marsh in the state. This habitat, which looks like a savannah floating on the edge of the sea, is also threatened, both in the state and worldwide, thanks to rising sea levels. The birds that live here include Willets and Saltmarsh Sparrows, the latter of which was the focus of my Honors Thesis Project and is one of North America’s most endangered birds.

**A Willet, one of our most common large shorebirds, at Scarborough Marsh.**

Southern Maine is also a prime location for sandy beaches, and both the birds and the tourists know it. Maine’s coastal towns go from sleepy and affordable in winter to bustling and expensive during the summer, when Americans from all over flock to them to enjoy the summer. This has created problems with the wildlife that depend on sandy beaches as their homes, namely the Piping Plover and Least Tern, two species who spend their days hunting for invertebrates along the coastline and breed in the grassy dunes just upland of the beach. Thankfully, the state of Maine has put in a lot of work to close off these dunes to tourists and their destructive dogs, allowing the birds to nest in a fragile security. At Pine Point, just five minutes from Scarborough Marsh, Hayden and I got to watch a trio of Piping Plovers chasing each other around the beach at close range. It was also at Pine Point that I got to see my lifer Roseate Terns, along with the more common Least and Commons.

**Keeping Piping Plover populations going requires careful monitoring and protection from the swarms of people and dogs crowding East Coast beaches each summer.**

Though I’d always joked about the cold weather, lack of mountains, and isolation of Maine, I was certainly going to miss the state I’d spent four years getting to know. The places AND the people. This was especially present in my mind after giving Wes a hug goodbye and driving away from Belfast, from the University, and from some of the best friends I’d ever made. I would make sure to see them again, though it would never quite be the same. Thankfully, I had one more night to spend in Maine before leaving, though it wouldn’t be in the comfort of a friend’s air mattress. No, I was headed for the last county I’d never visited in the state: Franklin County, the land of wind, mountains and moose.

To learn more about Sears Island and the ongoing fight over developing it, click here: https://friendsofsearsisland.org/wind-port-fact-sheet/

**Sears Island provided just the kind of warbler experience I’d been hoping for my past four years in Maine.** **(For those confused by the above photo, it is *not* Sears Island, but just a fun travel photo from that week in Maine.)**

Braden’s Maine to Montana Birdventure, Part 1: A Day in “The County”

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Today, FSB kicks off Braden’s accounts of his truly remarkable spring birding trip from Maine to Montana. This adventure would take him to an astonishing variety of habitats most of us never get to experience. Along the way, he would drive 5,000 miles, visit nine states and provinces, and record 264 bird species, seven of them lifers. He begins this series with a visit to Maine’s arguably wildest and most inaccessible county: Aroostook.

Twenty-four hours after walking across the stage of the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor and receiving my college diploma, I was alone in a tent in Northern Maine. I’d gone to school in the state for four years, but never experienced it in the summertime, those three months when Maine is at its best. Now, with an abundance of time, I could leisurely make my way back to Montana instead of the six-day dash I’d done across the country last August. Because of this distant deadline, I’d arranged to spend a week in Maine birding and exploring following my graduation, and there was no better place to start than with one of the two counties I’d never visited: Aroostook County.

**A Cedar Bog up in Aroostook County! This one shimmied with Palm and Magnolia Warblers.**

Known simply as “The County” to locals, Aroostook is by far the largest and least populated part of Maine. The County contains a large portion of the state’s agriculture, mostly located on its eastern flank, whereas the rest is coniferous forest. Aroostook’s high latitude and cooler climate create a haven for many boreal species of birds that have receded from their more southerly haunts because of warming and excessive logging that promotes regrowth of a different, unsuitable habitat. This northern conifer forest is also a hotspot for the primary topic of my dad’s previous post: warblers.

Warblers, in fact, were a major factor in my decision about where to go to school. I wanted to go to college somewhere where I could see as many warblers as possible, and Maine fit that bill perfectly. With almost thirty species of breeding warblers (nearly triple what Montana, a state twice the size, has) there is no better place to be, and that is especially true of Aroostook County, where most of them could be found. Lying in bed the night of Monday, May 12th, I felt nervous. It was still fairly early as far as migration goes. What if the birds weren’t here yet?

**This was my camping spot in Aroostook County, on a backroad in northern Maine!**

On Tuesday, May 13th, my worries were settled when I woke up to the sound of a Nashville Warbler singing above my tent. I dressed as quickly as I could and set off down the logging road I’d driven in on, my ears receptive to any and all of the birds sounding off in the surrounding woods. Every level of the forest had songsters belting out their tunes: Ovenbirds from the ground, Black-and-white Warblers from spruce trunks, Magnolia Warblers from ten-year-old firs and Yellow-rumped Warblers from high in the canopy. Present in lower numbers were species like Blackburnian Warblers, Black-throated Blue Warblers, and American Redstarts, all likely early representatives of their species, most of which were still farther south, booking it north.

I was especially excited about the two Cape May Warblers. While I’d seen a fair number of Cape Mays before, I’d rarely seen them in their breeding colors and I’d never heard them sing before. This is because of their distributions. While I’d encountered many of the East Coast warblers on their breeding grounds during my time in Pennsylvania, I was hundreds of miles too far south for Cape Mays, which use contiguous spruce-fir forest and are mostly confined to Canada. These warblers (which are named after Cape May, New Jersey, where they neither breed nor spend the winter) are particularly dependent on an insect known as spruce budworm. Budworms are spruce parasites, and their populations are cyclical. During outbreak years the insect infects and ravages thousands of acres of spruce trees before the population crashes. Cape May Warblers, Bay-breasted Warblers, and Evening Grosbeaks, therefore, all have populations that rise and fall with the populations of this insect.

**A “Myrtle” Yellow-rumped Warbler, which is the subspecies that lives on the East Coast!**

Besides agriculture, the main industry in Aroostook County is logging, and understandably, the logging industry is not the biggest fan of an insect that defoliates thousands of acres of their crop. Unfortunately, the industry’s historical response to spruce budworm outbreaks (which, remember, are ecologically “normal” and important for the birds dependent on them) has been to clear-cut hundreds of hectares of infected forest. Spruce-fir forest is a mature ecosystem that takes centuries to develop, however, and the forest that grows back after these clearcuts is not coniferous but deciduous. This is a major reason why many spruce budworm-specialists, like Cape May Warbler, and many other birds found in boreal forests, like Canada Jays and Black-backed Woodpeckers, have retreated from much of southern Maine in the last hundred or so years. Their habitat has simply disappeared.

I saw evidence of this as I birded The County. Sure, there was a lot of seemingly healthy spruce habitat. There were also massive empty lots, covered in nothing but slash and debris. The forests were filled with birds, while the lots had almost none. It almost seemed apocalyptic. At least the empty lots provided good views of Mt. Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak, rising in the distance.

Again, though, the forests DID have birds, and not just warblers. Many migrants had not yet arrived (namely the flycatchers, of which I saw very few), but I recorded dozens of Ruby- and Golden-crowned Kinglets, Blue-headed Vireos, and Winter Wrens. Ruffed Grouse drummed from wet thickets, Hermit Thrushes foraged in the road, and I even got to see an American Goshawk bomb overhead at a million miles per hour, chasing something or perhaps just trying to give me as least satisfying a look as possible. In the evening, a walk along a side road yielded incredible, up-close views of Canada Jays, or “Whiskeyjacks” as they are known colloquially. These subtle, white-and-gray corvids landed in the trees less than five feet from me, curiously searching for insects while paying me no mind.

**A photo of a Canada Jay that I took with my phone!**

After a night and a day spent in The County, I headed back south to investigate the other corners of Maine I had yet to explore. Stay tuned!

**What the forest looked like in Aroostook!**

Graduation Birding Bonanza in Maine

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News Flash!

Braden graduates from the University of Maine!

Okay, we all felt confident that he would, but holy cow, where did the last four years go? After all, when we started FatherSonBirding (see our first post, “A Quest for Snowy Owls,”) Braden had just turned fifteen years old and was a mere freshman in high school. What he has accomplished in college has truly done him proud. He would no doubt say that his greatest achievement was to start the UMaine Birding Club and turn it into a powerhouse campus conservation, education, and social organization. As proud parents, however, Amy and I would point out that he also graduated with highest honors, made incredible friendships, spent a semester in Costa Rica (see post “A Glimpse of a Ghost”), got two articles published in top birding magazines, and amassed a Maine Life List of 231 bird species. Along the way, he has transformed himself into a compassionate, kind leader with a passion for meaningful connections and making the world a better place. Congratulations, Son! We couldn’t be prouder.

Amy, Tessa, and I were incredibly fortunate to be able to travel to Maine to partake in the celebration last week, accompanied by Braden’s wonderful uncle, Dennis. We got to meet Braden’s friends, get a tour of his favorite UMaine hangouts, attend the Honors College celebration—and, of course, we went out birding!

**Braden and I heard “Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!” almost constantly while I was back in Maine, but this is the only Ovenbird I got a good look at.**

Shaking off my eighteen-hour travel day, I awoke bright and early Saturday morning so that Braden could pick me up for an excursion with some of his friends and birding converts to one of their favorite local hotspots: Taylor Bait Farm. Braden and I had birded here three-and-a-half years earlier (see post “A Tornado of Warblers”) when I originally dropped him off for college, but this was my first time back since. A cold drizzle greeted us (see Equipment Notes at end of this blog), but that did nothing to dampen the bird activity. My top priority? Seeing migrating warblers—and they delivered! Almost immediately, Braden and his friends began calling out Chestnut-sided Warblers, Northern Parulas, Black-and-White Warblers, Ovenbirds, Palm Warblers, and a spectacular male Magnolia Warbler.

**Northern Parulas were probably the most common warblers we encountered this past week, and it was especially fun to see them after Roger and I saw Tropical Parulas in Colombia this winter.**

Braden’s friend Emmit confided to me that the UMaine Birding Club generally considered Black-throat Green Warblers to be the “worst” warbler, but we both strongly disagreed, and I said that anyone who had a problem with that should come see me. Shortly afterward, in fact, I got to see my first “BT Green” since Braden and I visited High Island, Texas more than eight years ago!

**Braden poses with friends and fellow Birding Club members Nathaniel, Emmit, and (far right), Drew. I loved meeting them after hearing so much about them the past year.**

That night, after Braden’s Honors College celebration, he took our entire family out to a place he called “the bike path” for what turned out to be one of the coolest things we have ever witnessed. As the sun set over a large field, a strange, short buzzy song interjected itself into the chorus of spring peepers, Red-winged Blackbirds, and other calls. “That’s it!” Braden excitedly told us. “American Woodcock!”

Braden had told me that we might see one, but as is my nature, I didn’t really believe him. As we all waited in the dimming light, however, a shape suddenly rose up into the sky. “There it is!” Braden exclaimed. The bird’s silhouette looked very similar to a Wilson’s Snipe, and it flew around high in the air—in fact, right over us—before diving back down to its spot in some nearby bushes. Dennis and I felt especially moved by this majestic, little-known performance. “I didn’t even know they did that,” I told Braden.

**While we waited for an American Woodcock to take flight, we all enjoyed a stunning sunset over this field near the UMaine campus.**

From there, Braden led us out onto the bike path itself in the hopes that Tessa would get to see amphibians. The path is where Braden has participated in “Big Nights”: rainy evenings when locals go out to look for—and help—frogs and salamanders that are migrating from their wintering grounds to spring breeding sites. We were a bit late in the year and the rain had stopped, but we lucked out by finding a lone spring peeper on the path. Braden showed Tessa how to wet her hands before picking it up so as not to damage the animal’s delicate skin. Then she moved it off to safety. It was the first frog Tessa ever got to hold and it pretty much made the trip for her!

**We had to really watch our step on the bike path because the spring peepers and salamanders can blend right into the pavement.**

Because of the rain and dim light, I had yet to take any bird photos, so the next morning I woke early before graduation and birded around our Airbnb at Pushaw Lake, nabbing a couple of year birds, Eastern Bluebird and Pine Warbler. Then, we all headed into Bangor to watch Braden “move his tassel.”

**After Braden and I were fortunate to see an Eastern Bluebird during last summer’s eastern Montana expedition, I loved seeing one in it’s “proper” habitat next to our Airbnb!**

Before we knew it, though, we awoke to our final morning in Maine, and Braden picked me up for another early round of birding. He had originally intended to find me my lifer Winter Wren, but I told him that I’d rather spend more time with warblers—and try to photograph them—so we headed back to Taylor Bait Farm. We are so glad that we did!

The hotspot proved even birdier today than it had two mornings earlier. The day started out great, with excellent looks at Solitary Sandpiper, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Blue-headed Vireos, and Veery. Common Loons flew overhead and a Ruffed Grouse thumped in the distance.

Despite being present in Montana, Veerys are birds that I don’t have a lot of experience with, so I was happy to see and hear them in Maine.

The warblers had not gone anywhere, either. We saw or heard thirteen species. I captured my best-ever Chestnut-sided Warbler photos, but the highlight was finding a Bay-breasted Warbler, a bird Braden especially wanted to see before leaving Maine. It was ironic that this bird captivated us so much here after blowing us away in Montana last spring (see post “A Rare Warbler in Western Montana”). Believe it or not, it did not even end up being our bird of the day.

**Best-looking Warbler ever? The breeding Chestnut-sided Warbler makes a good claim to it. Braden called this one in close so I could get this wonderful shot!**

As we made our way back to the car so that we could meet up for a final family breakfast, Braden suggested we take a slightly different path that wound its way along one of the ponds. As we started down it, a bird flew across the sky. “Get your eyes on that!” Braden said.

I did and for a moment, felt disoriented by what I was seeing. Then my brain began to put it together. “It looks like a cuckoo!” I said.

“It’s a Black-billed Cuckoo!” Braden exulted right before the bird disappeared.

We just stared at each other, open-jawed.

“Have you seen them here before?” I asked.

“I’ve never seen one in Maine!” he emphasized. “They’re really hard to see—and you never hear of one just flying over like that! That’s a lifer for you!”

(See also our post “Going Cuckoo for Fall Warblers in Texas.”)

**Sneed and Braden on their final, terrific outing at Taylor Bait Farm.**

Indeed, but even more, it was a total shock. Like the Yellow-throated Warbler I saw in Texas only three weeks ago (see post “Target Birds and a Shocking Surprise in the Texas Hill Country”), the cuckoo hadn’t even registered as a possibility. It was a great way to cap what turned out to be Braden’s best outing at Taylor Bait Farm in three-and-a-half years birding it. I couldn’t help thinking it made a perfect graduation gift—and boded well both for birds and Braden’s future birding career.

Sneed’s Trip Report: https://ebird.org/tripreport/370034

Equipment Notes: On this trip, I took along a pair of Vortex Viper HD 8X42 binoculars, which I reviewed in this post. This, however, was my first chance to use them in rainy conditions and I have to say, they performed incredibly well. While my companions’ bins were fogging up, the Viper HDs stayed clear as a bell during our two-hour drizzly session. I also had a chance to use the Vipers in “almost night” conditions to view the American Woodcock mentioned above. Again, I was impressed with the amount of light they transmitted, allowing me to easily follow the bird’s silhouette in flight. Back at our Airbnb, I let Braden look at a distant loon on the lake and he said, “Wow, those are good binoculars!” I suspect I’ll be using these a lot more!