Tag Archives: Maine

Puffin Party! (Maine to Montana, Part 2)

The state of Maine can be simplified to four things: lobster, moose, blueberries, and puffins (with Dunkin Donuts as a runner-up). During the four years I’d spent going to school in the state, I’d eaten lobster rolls, visited blueberry bogs, and tried my hardest to find a moose, a quest that would continue later this week. Through no fault of my own, I had never even tried to see a puffin and the reason was simple—my school year did not overlap with the Atlantic Puffin school year. This year, however, was different. I was actually still in the state of Maine as puffins were arriving at their breeding colonies, and was not going to miss my last chance to see these iconic seabirds. So, on May 14th, I boarded a large boat in Bar Harbor and took my seat in the cabin, binoculars and camera ready.

Unlike previous boat rides I’d taken to see birds, this cruise was relaxed and family-friendly. About two hundred people crowded the deck, many of whom were just as interested in the Bald Eagles and American Herring Gulls circling above the harbor as the prospect of seeing any alcids (Alcidae is the family of birds that includes puffins, murres, auks, and guillemots). Over the intercom, a very knowledgeable guide spouted off a non-stop stream of facts about the islands, lighthouses, and wildlife of the area as we headed for Egg Rock, a sparse strip of land just barely visible to tourists standing onshore in Bar Harbor. With the coastline of Acadia National Park to our right, we slowed as we approached the island.

**This Common Murre was the only one I saw the whole boat ride. While this species hasn’t yet started nesting at Petit Manan, the ornithologists are hopeful that they will soon!**

Egg Rock did not have a puffin colony—it was too close to shore for that. What it did have were colonies of several other species of seabirds. Gulls dominated the island, mostly Herring with scattered numbers of Great Black-backed Gulls mixed in, their charcoal backs sticking out amongst the sea of gray. Cormorants patrolled the southern side of the island, standing tall like gargoyles on the rocks. And in the waters lapping up against the side of the island I saw my first alcids—Black Guillemots! Although guillemots, which are black with white wing patches in the summer and white with black wing patches in the winter, are in the same bird family as Atlantic Puffins, they are far easier to see in Maine. Not only do they breed right on the coast during the warm months, they also stay for the winter—something that the puffins do not do. That’s one of the reasons why I’d never seen puffins here during my time at the University of Maine: From August to April, these birds stay as far from shore as possible, floating around somewhere in the North Atlantic.

After circling Egg Rock to look at the seabird colonies, as well as the dozens of Harbor and Gray Seals lounging on the rocks, the boat picked up speed and headed out to sea. While we never lost sight of the coastline, it grew hazier and hazier until eventually, a new island appeared on the horizon: Petit Manan. The first thing I noticed about Petit Manan were the buildings. Many islands off the coast of Maine had lighthouses, built during centuries past to help steer ships into harbors. As recently as the late 1900s, lighthouse keepers and their families lived on the islands and maintained the lighthouses, although by now many of the keepers had left, likely because boats had better forms of navigation at their disposal. The houses they left behind had been taken over by people working a very different type of job.

**The Lighthouse on Petit Manan Island.**

Both Egg Rock and Petit Manan are part of a large reserve known as Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge. Every summer, dozens of wildlife technicians head out to these islands to spend weeks and months working with the birds that live there. On some islands, like Petit Manan, this work includes Atlantic Puffins, but it also includes monitoring and conservation of other species like Common, Arctic, and Roseate Terns, Common Murres, Black Guillemots, Razorbills, Common Eiders, and Leach’s Storm-petrels. Several of my peers at the University of Maine worked for Maine Coastal Islands and would be heading out to their assigned locations within the next few weeks.

I began to make out large rafts of birds next to the island as our boat approached, and was delighted to spot football-sized alcids with rainbow bills taking off in front of us. I raised my binoculars and smiled—these were the first Atlantic Puffins I’d seen in seven years, since 2018 when I’d been lucky enough to visit Iceland with my grandparents (see my post “All About Alcids”). The birds lounged in the water close to the rocks, and our guide told us that many of them had likely just returned for the summer from their mysterious marine wintering grounds. I counted ninety or so during our half hour stay at Petit Manan.

**A raft of Atlantic Puffins and Razorbills!**

The puffins weren’t alone. Black Guillemots were here, too, as were a couple dozen Razorbills, another gorgeous black-and-white alcid named after the unique shape and decoration of its beak. I spotted a single Common Murre amongst their ranks, my fourth alcid of the day and a species that had not yet attempted to nest at Petit Manan—but scientists were optimistic! A dozen or so Common Terns circled the island loftily, letting out loud “kyeeeer” calls to notify everyone who was really in charge here. In a few weeks, the numbers of terns would swell into the hundreds, and include Arctic as well as Common. Terns were the aggressive defenders of islands, and would dive-bomb anything they perceived as a threat, including people. I remembered one walk in Iceland when we were asked to hold a tall, wooden stick so the Arctic Terns there would target that instead of our heads!

These birds are the reason that so many alcids nest at Petit Manan. The huge tern colony on this and other islands provide safety for the puffins from predators like gulls and Peregrine Falcons that might otherwise raid their nests. Of course, the biologists working for Maine Coastal Islands NWR were also there to aid these species and chase predators off the island. It hadn’t always been that way, unfortunately.

**Common Terns nest in huge, aggressive colonies along the Maine coast!**

A hundred years ago, feathered hats were all the rage in cities across the east coast of North America. The demand for white feathers meant that large numbers of terns, gulls, and egrets were harvested—to the extent that these species declined dramatically across much of the country. With no terns to protect them, puffins nesting in Maine were faced with higher predation, but not just from other birds. Rampant collection of eggs and puffin meat also plagued many of Maine’s islands, leading to a dramatic decrease in this species down to just two tiny colonies. Sadly, it was looking like the Atlantic Puffin would join the ranks of the Great Auk and Labrador Duck in Maine’s list of extinct birds.

Thankfully, ornithologists and bird-lovers alike noticed how much environmental damage was being caused by these practices and stepped in. Groups like Audubon formed and began lobbying for the protection of birds, eventually leading to the passing of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. And in 1973, Audubon launched Project Puffin. Scientists were sent out to islands equipped with broadcasting equipment and decoys, as well as a small number of puffin chicks donated from colonies in Canada. Step one was the rearing of chicks on islands that had previously been occupied by puffin colonies; step two meant attracting terns back to the islands. Finally, with their defenders back in place, Atlantic Puffins began returning to many of the islands they’d previously been extirpated from. They now occupy six colonies in Maine.

Today, Atlantic Puffins are doing well, but are still being monitored very carefully. Puffins feed on fish that thrive in deep, cold water. That’s why the species only nests on the outermost islands in Maine. Our guide told us, “Puffins would lay their eggs in the ocean if they could.” Unfortunately, the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than any other body of water in the world, and this means that puffins are having to travel farther and farther out to sea to obtain their prey items of choice. During particularly warm years, puffins have switched their selected prey entirely to other species. Many of these other species of fish, which are brought back to their chicks on Petit Manan and other islands, differ in their size and the toughness of their skin. Often puffin chicks cannot eat them, and will starve even when food is sitting right there.

**The man-made burrows where puffins nest on Petit Manan!**

The good news is that there are many, many people keeping an eye on these birds, doing their best to keep their numbers high. Last year was an especially good year for the species, so optimism is in the air. I felt cautiously hopeful for the future of this species as the Bar Harbor Puffin Tour headed back to shore, content with the pictures and new memories I’d experienced with this iconic Maine species.

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!

**A slightly ruffled-looking Black-and-White Warbler, a favorite among UMaine Birding Club members!**

Sifting Through Maine’s Fall Migrants

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Congratulations to Braden for having his first full-length article published, in the July/August 2023 issue of Bird Watcher’s Digest! The editor actually plucked the piece from our blog post “Montana Shorebird Surprise”! If you don’t already subscribe to BWD, I strongly encourage you to do so. It is packed with fun and interesting articles about all aspects of birds and birding—and honestly, magazines like this need our help to keep promoting bird conservation and foster our birding community. Learn more by clicking here. Meanwhile, enjoy Braden’s new fall migration report from Maine.

October, in Maine, is usually a major cutoff point for neotropical migrants. Warblers, specifically, seem to disappear from the state right around October 1st, having already moved through in large numbers in late August and September. Last year, I barely detected any warblers after the October curtain dropped, with my only species being Yellow-rumped and Palm Warblers (which are later migrants and do stick around until November) and two Tennessee Warblers that I worked my butt off to find on the first of the month.

**Oct. 1 is usually about the cutoff for seeing fall warbler migrants in Maine, leaving residents such as Downy Woodpeckers and . . .**

Because of this knowledge, I had no expectations when I hit the University of Maine Bike Path last weekend, October 7th. I had already birded the path several times this fall, once by myself (when I scored great looks at two Ovenbirds and a Canada Warbler, both of which were long gone by now) and once with the University of Maine Birding Club, which I had restarted in mid-September. This was the same path, though, that offered up American Woodcocks and American Bitterns in spring; the same place that hundreds of salamanders and frogs would migrate across on rainy nights in April. Unfortunately, none of those animals were active now, so again, I had no expectations and was pleasantly surprised to run into a flock of Yellow-rumped Warblers and other birds right off the bat.

**Ruby-crowned Kinglets are one of the “later” songbird migrants—in Maine as well as in Montana. I saw 17 of them on this outing!**

In fall, my birding strategy is to find the mixed flocks and sift through them until I’m reasonably sure I’ve identified all of the species. I did just this with the flock, finding a Palm Warbler, several Ruby-crowned Kinglets, and a Blackpoll Warbler in its drab, green winter plumage, adorned with orange feet. In terms of warblers, Blackpoll Warblers are one of the later migrants in Maine, and travel the farthest of any of the group, heading east from their boreal breeding grounds before flying south straight across the Atlantic Ocean to South America. I’d seen several in the Adirondacks this summer, in their spiffy black and white plumage, and it was nice getting to wave goodbye to them for the winter.

**Swamp Sparrows are a real find in Montana, but on my birding walk today, I counted at least 33 of them—a low estimate!**

After pishing in a few more mixed flocks, I reached one of the the bike path’s main attractions—a large, weedy field, hosting tall goldenrod and other plants that reminded me of the Fort Missoula gravel quarry back home. This, like the gravel quarry, was Sparrow Central. I waded out into the grass, flushing flocks of Song and Swamp Sparrows into the bushes, from where they watched me carefully as I checked each and every one of them. Ruby-crowned Kinglets chattered from the aspens and birches lining the perimeter of the field, and I pished at them with every chance I got, searching for anything rare. Soon, amongst a group of White-throated and Savannah Sparrows, I spotted a smaller, more crisply-patterned sparrow hop up onto a bramble: the Lincoln’s I had been hoping for! My dad and I had gotten our lifer Lincoln’s Sparrows in fall, and while I had seen and heard many this summer between the Adirondacks and the joint Western Field Ornithologists and Colorado Field Ornithologists conference I attended in alpine Colorado, I still sought out these stunning birds every time the colors on the trees began to change.

**My dad went out four times last week before he found a White-throated Sparrow migrating through Missoula. I counted 23 of them on my single outing**!

The Lincoln’s Sparrow abruptly disappeared as a small, yellow bird took its place: a Nashville Warbler, about a week after the last Nashville Warblers should have left for Central America! A few minutes later, in another horde of kinglets, I briefly spotted a Tennessee Warbler. Yay! The warblers were still here!

It wasn’t until I circled back over to the far end of the grassy field, however, that I found my real prize. As I sorted through yet another flock of kinglets and sparrows, I spotted it: a greenish, grayish warbler. Now, in Maine, in fall, this could describe just about every species of warbler since most have adopted relatively drab nonbreeding plumage. Nonetheless, I started checking off options in my head, narrowing it down.

The body was mostly green, with a green throat. That eliminated Palm, Pine, Nashville, Yellow-rumped, and any of the more colorful fall warblers. The head, meanwhile, contrasted with the green—it was slate gray, and the bird had broken eye-arcs. Those two features alone, plus a total lack of yellow or white, eliminated Blackpoll, Bay-breasted and Chestnut-sided. That left two species. Tennessee Warblers are easily identified in fall by their white vents (butt feathers)—but this bird’s vent was green. The bird I was looking at was one my dad has surely seen many times this fall and paid little attention to—an Orange-crowned Warbler!

**While migrating fall Orange-crowned Warblers are fairly common in Montana, in Maine they qualify as a genuine rarity!**

Orange-crowned Warblers are fairly common in most of the United States. They breed throughout the Rockies and are commonly seen in migration and winter across the country. They avoid Maine in migration, however, and don’t breed in the state, so this warbler is quite a rarity here! What’s more, early October is actually one of the best times to find them here, which is not the case for any other common Maine warbler. I celebrated for a moment before whipping out my camera to snap some photos of the bird, which I assumed I would need to prove that I’d actually seen it.

After the Orange-crowned Warbler moved on, I continued to walk the rest of the bike path, finding more flocks of sparrows, thrushes, and the occasional warbler. I even heard a few pipits fly over as I headed to McDonald’s for a respite from UMaine’s dining hall food. I’d had my best fall day of birding so far this year. Hopefully, more great birding was to come!

Braden’s 2022 Recap: Scrambling to 500

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Well, another great year of birding has passed for Braden and me—and we hope for you, too. Both of us had remarkable experiences the likes of which we’d never had before, and in the process once again broke our previous Big Year records—I, accidentally, and Braden with determination and grit. As you enjoy Braden’s year-end recap, we want to tell you how much we appreciate your interest in our adventures over the years. In 2022 we smashed viewership for our blog with more than 7,000 views for the first time, bringing our total to more than 21,000 views since we first began writing this blog (gasp) five years ago. We have never had any goals with the blog except to share our love of birding, provide some education about birds, and encourage a will to protect them. With that in mind, we don’t know how long we’ll continue writing it, but as long as you all keep checking in, chances are good that we’ll stay with it, too. Happy 2023 and may birds continue to grace your lives!

Roaring winds, carrying hordes of gulls and Northern Gannets with them, ripped past Schoodic Point as I stood on the wave-battered rocks. The sky was beginning to brighten, and a few other people had made an appearance, including a guy in the parking lot with a spotting scope who I’m pretty sure was counting migrating sea ducks. I had no particular need to talk to him. Instead I was content to stare at the sea, reflecting on one of the most memorable weekends I’d had in a long time.

**One of the fun things about returning to Maine for fall semester was hitting the Cornfield Loop and seeing tons of fall warblers, including this Palm Warbler.** **(See also warbler photos below.)**

I was several hours away from the end of my EES 217 class, a one-credit course completely confined to the past two and a half days. During this time, I and a group of like-minded students had designed projects relating to the ecology of the Schoodic Peninsula, a part of Acadia National Park. My group was chosen to study the impact that humans were having on Acadia’s saltmarshes, and we tackled this issue by wading out into the marshes around the peninsula and collecting data on trash, invasive species (specifically a tall grass called Phragmites) and erosion. Yesterday we had arrived back at the Schoodic Institute, our home for the weekend, to begin analyzing our data, and later today we would be presenting our project to the public, all under the guidance of the head of the University of Maine Ecology and Environmental Sciences Department, Katharine Ruskin.

**The first Rusty Blackbird I’d seen in six years, also on the Cornfield Loop, was a key ingredient to hitting my Big Year goal.**

The fact that I’d been doing science all weekend wasn’t the only great thing about this class. The food was great— welcome relief from dining hall food—and the people were amazing. It was the first time I had been surrounded by like-minded people in a long time, people who cared deeply about conservation and the environment. No one knew each other whatsoever on the Friday that we left, but by Sunday night I felt like I had made some really great friends. I talked to everyone I possibly could during the brief breaks we had to be social, including on Saturday night, when we all grouped together to do icebreakers for a few hours, and Sunday morning, when we all walked out to see the sunrise at Schoodic Point. It truly was an incredible experience.

**I was especially proud to pick out this juvenile Iceland Gull from a flock of Herring Gulls at the UMaine campus this fall.**

Now, as I stood on the rocky cliffs above the Atlantic (half an hour after everyone else had gone back to eat breakfast), I spotted a tiny gull fly by—one with a yellow bill and tiny black wingtips.

“Kittiwake!” I yelled, to no one in particular.

Black-legged Kittiwake was not a bird I had been expecting to see on this trip, or this year for that matter, and had the distinction of being my 498th bird species for the year.

After my dad’s and my amazing shorebirding and ptarmigan experience in August, I had arrived back on the University of Maine’s campus with low expectations—500 birds for the year was within reach, but unlikely since I had only 484 species and didn’t know where 16 more could possibly come from. I took advantage of my campus’s great location during the month of September, however, circling the campus’s Cornfield Loop as often as possible to look for warblers as they migrated south from their breeding grounds in the boreal forest. During that month, I added six species of warblers to my year list: Blackburnian, Bay-breasted, Canada, Cape May, Blackpoll and Tennessee. I also saw the first Rusty Blackbirds and Scarlet Tanagers that I’d seen in six years. Suddenly, my year list passed 490. A trip to St. John, New Brunswick with my girlfriend added White-rumped Sandpiper to my ABA list, and in late October, my friend Wesley Hutchens volunteered to drive me to Lake Sebasticook to see two long-staying Hudsonian Godwits, which I got to watch through fellow Montana birder Ed Harper’s spotting scope. And then, on November 6th, I saw those Black-legged Kittiwakes, cruising by Schoodic Point, and was suddenly two birds away from 500 with two months left.

**During a long weekend in New Brunswick, Canada, I encountered the largest flock of White-rumped Sandpipers I’d ever seen.**

I was not to be deceived by that seemingly long amount of time remaining, however. There just weren’t that many possibilities left, and the birds were leaving. American Golden-Plovers were making brief appearances around the state, but my chances of finding one were slim. Rare wintering birds like Glaucous Gulls and King Eiders also were things I needed on my year list, but again, there was no easy way to find them. Besides, my class load had picked up significantly, and the time I had allotted for birding diminished with every day.

**Thanks to Ed Harper and his spotting scope, I picked up my Lifer Hudsonian Godwits in late October at Sebasticook Lake, about an hour away from Orono.**

And yet, in mid-November, a local birder reported a Snow Goose from a farmer’s field in Bangor, Maine. The next day, people went to see it, and apparently the identification had changed to Ross’s Goose. Wesley Hutchens went that morning, and reported back to me as I was getting out of my Honors Lecture: it wasn’t a Snow Goose or a Ross’s Goose. It was both. And I needed both for the year, which was ironic given that had I been in Montana, I likely would have picked them up months earlier. I couldn’t resist, but I also couldn’t get there. I didn’t have a car.

Wes solved that problem. “Dude, you’re going to get these geese. I might be late to class, but we gotta get you these geese.”

Needless to say, Wesley Hutchens had been responsible for a large chunk of the birds I’d seen this fall, and I’m very grateful to him for that. We drove the fifteen minutes from campus, pulling over near an abandoned church across the road from a large field, and there they were. Two differently-sized white geese, standing right next to each other. It was almost too easy. And yet, maybe it was a reward for all of the time I’d put into getting the other 498 birds I’d seen in 2022. I’d seen a lot of birds in 2022.

**Who would have thought my 499th (Ross’s Goose) and 500th (Snow Goose) birds of the year would be standing right next to each other—and only a few miles down the road?**

Before leaving Montana in January, my dad and I had racked up nearly 70 species just birding around Montana, including uncommon winter species like Great Gray and Short-eared owls, Lapland Longspur, Pine Grosbeak and Canada Jay. February had been a rough month for birding, but March brought the trip from New Orleans to Key West with Nick Ramsey, giving me lifers in the form of Prairie Warblers singing from mangroves and Swallow-tailed Kites circling over the Pineywoods. That trip got me over 200 for the year. April was when a few migrants showed back up in Maine, followed by a stellar few days of May birding in New York City with my dad. I arrived back home to Missoula later that month, just in time for the migrants to hit Western Montana, which allowed me to see 100 species in a day just birding around my hometown.

Then, it was off to Southeastern Arizona, a region that was already wilting under ninety-degree temperatures during the middle of the day. Thoughts of Spotted Owls and Scott’s Orioles accompanied us as we crossed the border into southern California, then up the coast, across the Central Valley into the Sierras, where the town of Twain Harte became my home base for three months. It was there that I’d met Sam Darmstadt, Miles Carlile and Ivara Goulden, amazing people with whom I shared amazing experiences throughout the summer. We camped in the hottest desert in the world, we climbed one of California’s tallest peaks, we set off into the formidable Pacific Ocean in search of lifers. If you want to know what wildlife we saw during these adventures, well, there are posts about each and every one of them!

**Despite all of the great adventures I’ve had this year, I never tire of being home and enjoying Montana’s birds, including the Bohemian Waxwings flying around our neighborhood.**

And now, flash-forward to now, December 26th, 2022. I’m back home in Missoula for a few more weeks, then I head back to Maine to kick-off another year. My goals? I don’t have any numbers in mind, but I would like to see a Northern Pygmy-Owl while I’m still out west. Learning the Eastern wood-warblers by song would also be awesome, should I get a summer job in New England somewhere.

But what about the birds of 2022? What were my dad and I’s top ten, or top twenty? You’ll just have to stay tuned!