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9 February 2010
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Rockport, Maine, USA
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February 8th, 2010
 Wedge of blue sky. The day dawned calm and hazy. Temps in the 20s (F), a sky that seemed unable to decide whether to stay cloudy or let the sun shine through. Early on, I heard the single squeal of a winter robin out back, then the friendly voices of chickadees, then the soft call of a white-breasted nuthatch. From my desk in morning I could see crows alighting in the crown of a great oak down the road a ways—the same tree whose foliage, in summer, takes on the shape of a human head or face. The crows would alight, then leave; then they’d return, then they’d leave again.
 Great black-backed gull. I’d had all the desk work I could stomach by about 3:30 p.m., and so decided to head out the breakwater to look for the king eiders rumored to be hanging out on the bay side these past couple weeks. I’ve only ever seen common eiders there, but you never know. After a quick trip to town—herring and ring-billed gulls, rock pigeons, the usual—I turned down and parked and grabbed my gloves and scarf. The temperature had warmed to slightly above freezing, but I’ve learned to respect the raw exposure you feel out on the granite stones. Still, I stuck my gloves in my pockets at first and didn’t zip my parka.
Not much wind really. The usual collection of mallards by the shore. On the island side of the breakwater, I saw black ducks and common goldeneyes; on either side were loons.
Maybe a hundred yards out, the wind rose suddenly. I pulled on my gloves and zipped up. A solitary gentleman I often meet returning from his walk warned me of ice out toward the lighthouse. A loon rose as by magic from the swell not a dozen feet away.
 Great cormorant. He was right about the ice. I had to keep closer tabs than usual on where I put my feet—and you generally have to pay attention to your footing out there, lest you step between the stones and break an ankle (a fairly common occurence)—and a couple times slipped and slid. Once I looked up surprised to see a great black-backed gull floating above me maybe twenty feet or so. Wings out, motionless in the wind. Taking its photo proved a challenge, however, as it was pretty close for my telephoto lens. I’d focus, it’d move; I’d focus, it’d move. It hovered directly above me for quite a few seconds—to the point that I wondered if I’d get pooped on.
Then the gull did an odd thing: at once it veered into the waves, plunged its head in, and when it emerged it had what looked like a long worm in its mouth—I couldn’t tell if it was eating the worm or trying to spit it out. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure it was a worm. Perhaps it was some kind of string or line, or maybe the gull’s long tongue. (Except I can’t imagine gulls have tongues that long.) Maybe it was dining on saltwater worms. The tide was semi-low, and it looked like it was hunting.
I saw a single great comorant. I saw no long-tailed ducks. And this is noteworthy: I saw no eiders at all, let alone a king eider. I can’t remember the last time I headed out the breakwater in winter without seeing at least a dozen or so.
 Sunset over Rockland. I made it to the end and turned back. The sun was setting. The light in the sky was lovely. On my return, I met a young couple headed out and said, motioning behind me with a smile, “Kind of precarious.”
“We’ll be careful,” they said, as if I were a parent.
My cheeks grew numb in the wind. Loons and cormorants and goldeneyes dove for seafood. A great black-back gulped down worms—or not. And as I stepped off the breakwater and returned to my pickup, I saw a solitary duck, a female common eider, floating in the protected cove at gloaming and swallowing what might’ve been a mussell or other shellfish. She was the only eider I saw today.
Today’s List
American robin
Black-capped chickadee
White-breasted nuthatch
American crow
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
Mallard
Common loon
Black duck
Common goldeneye
Red-breasted merganser
Great black-backed gull
Great cormorant
Common eider
 The bay.
Tags: American crow, American robin, black duck, black-capped chickadee, common eider, common goldeneye, common loon, great black-backed gull, great cormorant, herring gull, mallard, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, white-breasted nuthatch
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February 7th, 2010
 Sunset at Ballyhac Cove. Kind of a lazy Sunday. A breeze kicked up early, and the temperatures stayed fairly low. The big snowstorm in the news these past couple days not only passed well to the south of us but also to south of New York, 400 miles distant, where my daughter lives. (The mid-Atlantic got socked, I gather.) Here at the 44th parallel, all is fairly nice for winter—sunny, windy, cold.
 American crow. From the deck at mid-morning, I heard a few chickadees chattering away up the hill. They sounded happy and animated, as if excited about the lengthening photoperiod and the certainty of spring. Not long after, three crows landed in the limbs of the oaks and commenced with their varied calls. Crows tend to come in threes.
In late-afternoon I kept an appointment in Owls Head. En route, I took Buttermilk Lane thinking I might see the sparrow I missed photographing yesterday, but no dice. The wide, icy expanse of the Weskeag Marsh extended brightly to the south, and I checked most every perch on passing trees for shrikes, but none appeared. Gulls flew high and solo in the mostly clear blue sky.
I didn’t see a lot of birds today. But come sunset, I found myself on the wind-whipped shore of Ballyhac Cove under a western sky that looked like an oil painting. Beautiful.
And the stars tonight are profuse and sharp and twinkling.
Today’s List
Black-capped chickadee
American crow
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, herring gull, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon
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February 6th, 2010
 Bald eagle (and vapor trail). The day dawned cool and bright. OK, cold and bright. Low double-digits (F) to start, with temperatures rising no higher than about 20. A punch-packing wind. I had Saturday errands, during which I saw crows, heard a titmouse, saw gulls and pigeons, got a little shivery.
 Iceland gull and black-headed gull. My friend Kristen had some time today, so we decided to make a quick circuit of a few winter birding hot-spots around the county—hot-spots as determined by local birder extraordinaire Don Reimer. Just as we were leaving my place, I spotted a tight bunch of crows on the wing, all swooping together behind my building.
“Must be a hawk,” I said—or something like that. Got out of the car with my camera just as a big handsome redtail soared up amid the cacaphony of crows. In my hurry to capture the image I hit a stray button, and by the time I was able to focus on the scene, the scene had moved off behind the trees and powerlines and into the bright, yellow, southern sky. Frustrating. Much like the owl last night.
 Nine bald eagles. But we headed down to Owls Head Harbor, where I’d seen iceland and black-headed gulls a few weeks ago. Well, there they were again, riding the frigid, wind-whipped air above the harbor or wading in the chill waters of mid-tide. Buffleheads, loons, crows, herring gulls, ring-bills, mallards, some bird I saw through fieldglasses flapping low along the far flats—it seemed to fly like an ibis or heron but might’ve been a crow. At one point, a huge cloud of crows rose in the distance above the trees. We figured they were returning from harassing some raptor or other. Soon after, an adult bald eagle flapped nonchalantly away from that general vicinity.
Next stop, the Owls Head Light. In the wind-whipped whitecaps below the rugged promontory we saw a horned grebe, a long-tailed duck, and the continual, mirage-like passage of Bonaparte’s gulls—their long wings flapping gracefully and purposefully back and forth above the wild waves. Below, at the frigid wind-blown cove, more Bonaparte’s and a solitary female merganser bobbing near a spray-splashed rock. The giant thicket of rugosa there still held last fall’s rose hips.
 European starling. We headed to the Keag in South Thomaston, where the tide pushes and pulls to and from the Weskeag Marsh via a narrow bridge, and saw a good number of Canada geese. Next we took Buttermilk Lane to the marsh itself, which yielded another redtail keeping watch from a tree at the northern edge and a raven flying solo high in the blue. Just after leaving, I spotted a small bird flitting amid the remnants of the marsh plants alongside the road. We pulled over. The bird flitted out onto the shoulder—some kind of sparrow. Again, my camera failed me. (It looked like a song sparrow.)
Then off to Route 1 in Warren, where Mainely Poultry’s famed winter eagle population seems never to disappoint. We counted a couple dozen of the big birds—most of them adults, seemed like—and saw at least a dozen more off in the trees beyond. Also a couple more redtails and a rabid flock of starlings.
Finally down to Warren’s Main Street, with its bridge across the St. George River. Don has spotted Barrow’s goldeneyes and an American wigeon in the water below the bridge; all we saw were many mallards. Then again, the icy, knifing wind prevented us from truly putting our hearts into it.
At one point, Kristen said, “Blue jay.” I missed the jay. Her list of species today is one bird longer than mine.
Today’s List
American crow
Tufted titmouse
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
Red-tailed hawk
Mallard
Common loon
Bufflehead
Iceland gull
Black-headed gull
Bald eagle
Black-capped chickadee
Horned grebe
Long-tailed duck
Bonaparte’s gull
Red-breasted merganser
Common raven
Sparrow (sp? song?)
European starling
House sparrow
 Owls Head Light.
Tags: American crow, bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, black-headed gull, Bonaparte's gull, bufflehead, common loon, common raven, European starling, herring gull, horned grebe, house sparrow, iceland gull, long-tailed duck, mallard, red-breasted merganser, red-tailed hawk, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, tufted titmouse
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February 5th, 2010
 Beech Hill at sunset. Another bright one. Another cold one. My outdoor thermometer showed 7 degrees (F) when first I checked, about 7-ish. Out the window above the kitchen sink I watched a crow on the limb of an oak overhanging the parking lot, in the light of the rising sun, preening.
Poured hot coffee. Stepped out onto the back deck. Right away I heard the spring love song of a chickadee—fee bee!
Stuck inside working most of the day, but in afternoon I headed to town. Saw a tight bunch of about a dozen starlings veer over onto the sunlit southern face of a small roadside bank, where they began pecking around in the exposed grass. In Rockland, ring-billed gulls and herring gulls and rock pigeons dipped and swirled, as usual. Not long after, in Rockport Village, I caught sight of another flock of pigeons that apparently frequent the roofs of the Main Street buildings there.
I keep my new snowshoes in my pickup. My return from the village takes me near the Rockville Street trailhead at Beech Hill. These two facts prompted me to take a solitary hike at the end of the day.
Mine was the only vehicle in the parking lot. Moving into the woods, I scanned for the barred owl that hangs out in that area (I’d seen it once myself), but it didn’t appear. As usual, I headed up the less traveled, lower trail—my preferred route at this season for its greater distance and taller trees. Whereas the upper trail showed heavy traffic, after a hundred yards or so I noticed no human footprints in my path. However, I did see canine tracks. The animal had headed in the opposite direction, down the hill, a single dog, or fox, or coyote. Its track never varied; it’d dependably followed the well-used trail.
 Blurry barred owl. About half-way up I decided it must’ve been a coyote. The tracks were larger than a fox’s, the gait was long. I’d have imagined it was a dog, but no stray domestic dog would’ve hurried down the trail the way this animal had. Perhaps it’d passed this way last night. Or in early morning. At one point, near the top, where the trail veers into a wide curve, the coyote had taken a short cut off to the left; I met up with its tracks again at the end of the curve. Also toward the top I noticed other recent canine tracks coming in and moving away—some small like a fox’s, most about the same size as the main tracks. All I could figure is the hill has its share of song dogs.
It makes sense. My own back hillside, a couple miles away, has a family of coyotes that I hear singing late at night at random times of year. And Beech Hill has plenty of rodents—rabbits and squirrels and voles.
At the top of the trail I took my usual picture of the summit, but the sun setting behind the hill moved me also to take a photo from a different angle. And on the way back I headed off the trail for some shots of the bay at gloaming. Things remained quiet on the way down. I took the upper trail—the one I like in spring and summer, for the warblers. Intermittently I’d stop to listen to the sound of the wind in the trees: the faint clatter and squeak of the hardwood branches against each other, the sighs of the conifers.
Approaching the parking lot, I scanned for the owl again but detected no movement. No birds or animals of any kind on the hill this day. But then, in the dimness near the road, I saw a brown gray shape fly silently from a tall tree near the entrance to the limb of another several yards away. The owl. Quietly, I removed my snowshoes (it’s hard to sneak up on anything wearing snowshoes), grabbed my camera, and headed toward the bird. Two steps later, it flew off to the west along the road—so I gave up, started up my truck, headed out.
But passing the stretch where the owl had seemed to go I looked up and saw it perched in a limb overhanging the road. Turned off to the side. Took out my camera. Slipped out the door. Snapped off a couple shots through my long lens—too blurry. Twisted off the lens in hopes of using my flash, but then the owl flew off again.
Maybe my third sighting will be the charm.
Today’s list:
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
European starling
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
Barred owl
 Penobscot Bay at evening.
Tags: American crow, barred owl, black-capped chickadee, European starling, herring gull, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon
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February 4th, 2010
 Common eiders. Soon after rising, showering, dressing, making and eating breakfast, and heading downstairs to the office with coffee, I ended up shoveling snow again. The morning beamed with the sort of gloriousness only possible when bright sun meets fresh snow. While on the deck tossing shovelfuls off into the brisk north wind, I heard the clear, unabashed, unmitigated song of a house finch coming from the bare limbs of the big overhanging oak above me. I dropped the shovel and ducked in for my camera. It took me a good three or four minutes of tipping my head to find the bird—which sat in one of the tree’s highest branches, giving forth lusciously cascading warbles of sound. Too obstructed by twigs for a decent photo, though, alas.
 American goldfinch (?). From somewhere up the hill, meantime, came the chip of a northern cardinal. While scanning for the cardinal, I caught sight of a small bird flitting into the crown of the sickly pine at the property line. A goldfinch. And while all this was going on, I heard the ever-present voices of American crows.
The bright sun crossed the sky slightly higher than it did yesterday, and snow melted, and icicles formed. By mid-afternoon, I had a hankering to move and thought first of the breakwater. It had to be close to high tide. My friend Kristen joined me again, and en route we wondered about the wind. Would it counteract the seeming warmth of the afternoon? I was beginning to think not—until I saw the chop in the harbor. So instead we wondered if the torturous headwind would afflict us outbound or returning. Heading out, we hoped; alas, it was returning.
It seems most of the sensible ocean birds stuck to the protected coves, the shelter of the lee. But a few braved the bare, raw waves: a good-sized raft of eiders, several loons (as usual), a great cormorant, a male long-tailed duck. A couple herring gulls floated alongside the ducks, and one ring-billed flew the length of the breakwater—up and back, up and back—I suppose looking for something edible.
 Common eider (?). The way out was nice: bright, mild enough, and with snow enough that you had to make a point to avoid the hidden cracks between the granite blocks. Heading back, temperatures in the 20s (F) combined with a stout northwest wind to cause an ice-like pain right in the middle of my forehead. Surf splashed over the stones from the shoreside. Out on Vinalhaven, the great turbines, too, turned their faces into the wind. But it let up some about half-way back. A female eider floated calmly to the left of us. To our right, in the little cove, goldeneyes dove and mergansers sailed as the sun headed for the horizon.
When my father was a toddler, his family conspired to have him sit on the lap of one Charles Goodnight, a famous rancher known as “the father of the Texas Panhandle.” Goodnight was by then an elderly cowman—he was born in 1836—and late in his own life I recall my dad marveling at how between the two of them they’d witnessed upwards of 170 years.
I thought of Dad and Mr. Goodnight this week when I read the news of “Herbie,” an American Elm in Yarmouth, Maine, that finally died of Dutch Elm Disease and was cut down on 20 January. After counts and recounts of its rings, arborists finally judged the enormous tree to be 217 years old. When it was but a sapling, George Washington was president. Perhaps another ancient elm in its vicinity back then had lived to a similar age—it would’ve been around before New England was even a glimmer in any European’s eye.
I figure the older you get, the more you consider time. You consider the swiftness of its arc, the brevity of a day, the lifespans of mayflies, the breadth of an ice age. Today, returning against the wind in Rockland Harbor, time seemed long and lazy; tonight already I’m lamenting the loss of this day, 04 February 2010.
Today’s List
House finch
Northern cardinal
American goldfinch
American crow
Herring gull
Common loon
Common eider
Great cormorant
Ring-billed gull
Long-tailed duck
Common goldeneye
Red-breasted merganser
 Rockport Harbor (from the Rockland Breakwater).
Tags: American crow, American goldfinch, common eider, common goldeneye, common loon, great cormorant, herring gull, house finch, long-tailed duck, Northern cardinal, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull
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February 3rd, 2010
 Oak grove, Beech Hill Rumor had it snow might fall—a sixty percent chance is what I’d heard. And my first glance out the window confirmed it: nearly three inches had fallen by dawn. Light, angel snow. After getting dressed, instead of shoveling, I swept it easily away with with a broom. The temperature started at about 20 degrees (F) and rose to near 30 by nightfall. While sweeping snow, I heard the faint cheeps of chickadees, the sudden song of a house finch across the road, and the and chatty, varied voices of crows.
 American crow, Glen Cove. The snow continued, light and steady, all day, and I didn’t see or hear another bird. Much of the day I worked indoors—but I did take a drive to town without noticing even a herring gull in the lowery sky. True, the roads were slippery and traffic was slow and I might’ve been distracted.
When I surveyed Clam Cove at high tide, all I saw was an even watery gray.
It was just about 4 p.m. when I pulled into the Beech Hill parking lot. I had to get out in it, so I pulled on snowshoes and headed into the woods. Close to six inches had fallen by then, and mine were the first tracks on the trail. It was still snowing. Not very cold, little wind. Gentle snow, tiny kisses on my cheeks. I’d forgotten my gloves but didn’t need them.
 Angel snow. Aside from the sound of my snowshoes and the distant fog whistle, the woods were silent. No movement but the settling flakes and an occasional fall of snow from a branch of a tree. Somewhere were chickadees, creepers, woodpeckers, turkeys, owls. Somewhere were deer and foxes, rabbits and squirrels. Maybe bobcats—which have been seen (and photographed) on the hill. But the only evidence my senses could detect were tracks in the snow. They weren’t fresh. Deer had crossed the trail a few times, I could tell, but not since at least morning. All the many varied tracks had inches of fresh snow in them. It made them hard to identify.
A few channels crisscrossing the trail toward the top of the hill I attributed to rabbits. At some point a wild animal had come from uphill and turned into the trail itself, followed it for a good hundred yards, then turned off into the woods again. The tracks were soft, snow-filled, rounded, vague. Judging by their separation and the apparent gait of the critter, I’d guess fox. Or maybe bobcat.
I was sort of hoping for an owl. Maybe a barred owl awakening early. Instead, I saw no birds, I heard no animals at all. They were there, I know—just out of reach of my senses.
Today’s List
Black-capped chickadee
House finch
American crow
 Deadfall where I've seen magnolia warblers in spring.
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, house finch
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February 2nd, 2010
 Rock pigeon. I’d barely awakened when I hear it: the flute-like call of a tufted titmouse. A rising call, repeated four or five times in this case. The bird must’ve been perched in the big oak overhanging the corner of the house where my bed is. I jumped up and threw on my bathrobe, grabbed my camera, headed for the bright back deck, newly splashed by the rising sun. Sure enough, the titmouse was calling from almost directly overhead—either in the oak branches or those of the adjacent maple. Trouble is, titmice don’t move around much when they’re singing their sweet spring song. In the twenty or thirty seconds my bare feet could stand the cold, I didn’t manage to see it. But I did hear another titmouse singing a similar song in a tree a couple hundred yards to the north.
 Do you see the gray squirrel's eye? In those sun-splashed twenty or thirty seconds, I also heard the soft call of a white-breasted nuthatch—and the two-note love call of a black capped chickadee. Back inside, I confirmed the temperature: 9 degrees (F). Clearly, our birds’ libidos are stimulated by the lengthening photoperiod, not the temperature.
After showering and dressing, I stepped out back in hopes of finding more love-sick passerines. Instead, I found a couple gray squirrels. One stared at me from around the great trunk of the big oak; the other poked its eye—and only its eye—out of its hollowed-out knothole.
Not long after, I made a trip to Rockland. En route, I was amused to see rock pigeons completely covering the south side of the little pitched roof above an old restored factory building in town. We humans tend to forget what it’s like to find warmth where you can find it—out of habit, or instinct. (Witness a dog or cat in a sunbeam.) And in a low tree above the yellowed grass of a vacant Rockland lot, a female cardinal chipped her warning in the direction of black-and-white cat. A chorus of house sparrows chipped and cheeped from behind me. And a solitary pigeon sat on a cable, eyeing me.
Eventually the temperature warmed into the 20s (F). Blue sky and sun all day. I saw no ducks—didn’t visit the shore—but inshore birds seemed active despite the chill. It’s easy to forget that days lengthen in February, the month when eagles nest and dooryard birds practice their spring love songs.
Today’s List
Tufted titmouse
White-breasted nuthatch
Black-capped chickadee
American crow
Herring gull
Rock pigeon
Northern cardinal
House sparrow
Downy woodpecker
 Northern cardinal (♀).
Tags: American crow, black-capped chickadee, downy woodpecker, herring gull, house sparrow, Northern cardinal, rock pigeon, tufted titmouse, white-breasted nuthatch
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February 1st, 2010
 American crow. There shouldn’t be so many crows. I know this. I tend to ignore it, because I like crows. They’re smart—maybe the smartest wild bird—and their language fascinates me. I sometimes obsess over their language. For instance, they’ve got this particular call: two caws, a pause, and two more caws. I’ve also heard a simple five-caw call; this is a five-caw call without the middle caw. What does it mean?
But there are too many. Something’s amiss. Something’s out of balance.
I don’t pretend to know what it is. I just know I have an eye (and an ear?) for balance, so I know imbalance when I see it (hear it?). Something’s out of kilter. Some pattern’s gone akimbo.
The comforting thing is, Nature will abide. Sometimes it takes a while. Sometimes there’s suffering. But in the long run, Nature will restore the balance. It might mean extinction. It might mean—will probably mean—sorrowful loss of life. But Nature will smooth things over eventually.
 Gulls at Clam Cove. Today, as usual, the first bird I counted was a crow. I heard the caw of an American crow soon after awakening, in fact—from bed. An hour or so later, out on the frigid, sun-splashed deck, I heard a black-capped chickadee. An hour or two after that, I heard a goldfinch and house sparrow up the road from me. I think the new tenants of a neighboring rental place must’ve hung a feeder.
This late-afternoon, while driving up to the Rockport Village post office, I looked over the guardrail to Clam Cove and saw a cloud of small gulls flapping actively in the dwindling, angular sunlight. At that moment, I decided to walk that shore on my return. And so I did. It was cold, windy. The sun was just about to set. It must’ve been low tide. I nearly slid down the snowy bank—just barely caught myself. Great plates of ice lay at odd angles on the flat amid crunchy masses of seaweed and rocks and empty clamshells. Away at the edge of the tide were herring gulls, black-backed gulls, and dozens of little gulls—many of them the same Bonaparte’s gulls I saw there a couple days ago, no doubt. Although I’m sure it’s a common sight at this season, I’d personally never seen so many small gulls together. They were half the size of the herring gulls. I took some photos.
Off in the waters at the opposite bank of the cove I saw a good number of ducks too distant to identify. I imagine them to have been black ducks, maybe goldeneyes and buffleheads, maybe a merganser or two. The sun was going down. The wind came gusting from the southwest. It was cold.
The temperature stuck in the 20s (F) all day. Tonight, the sky is clear and the stars are vivid. I feel like I might reach up and touch Orion.
Today’s List
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
Hairy woodpecker
American goldfinch
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Bonaparte’s gull
Greater black-backed gull
 Clam Cove, Rockport, Maine, 01 February 2010.
Tags: American crow, American goldfinch, black-capped chickadee, Bonaparte's gull, greater black-backed gull, hairy woodpecker, herring gull, ring-billed gull
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January 31st, 2010
 Sunset at Ballyhac Cove. Again, the blazing sun. Again cold—but teens (F), not single digits. I heard the friendly voices of black-capped chickadees when first I stepped out on the back deck. Also heard the beep-beep of a white-breasted nuthatch. Then crows, six of them, flapped up into the crown of the big red oak overhanging my place. As I stood below them, snapping photos, they seemed to alternate calls as if playing a game: first one crow, one call; then another crow, another call. I imagine these six individuals were among the dozens at nearby Clam Cove yesterday.
 American crow. I was on the phone with my daughter this afternoon when I spotted the shadows of birds out back. A quick glance out the glass doors got me excited—a pair of hairy woodpeckers playing an urgent game keep-away around the trunk of the big shade maple. (No shade this time of year, of course.) I excused myself to attempt photos, and eased open the door to hear their percussive back-and-forth calls, but I must’ve spooked the birds nonetheless and ended up getting only a few remote photos of the male. (The other was a female, I’m pretty sure.) Not sure what the fuss was about.
Later in afternoon, I visited a friend in Owls Head. En route, in Rockland, I saw circling flocks of gulls, multiple tight groups of starlings, and a solitary robin. At Weskeag Marsh in South Thomaston, I saw no sign of the great blue heron that’d been hanging out there earlier this month. Gulls flapped about the distant main channel, where sucked a falling tide.
 Hairy woodpecker. At the Keag Store, the water rushed frantically under the bridge and down the estuary and out to sea. A pair of common goldeneys dove off the landing. It’d be easy to miss all the bird activity in this supposedly dormant time of year.
At my friend’s house on Ballyhac Cove, black ducks and other birds were active at low tide. After sunset, I took a photo of her lovely western sky.
Today’s List
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
White-breasted nuthatch
Hairy woodpecker
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
Rock pigeon
European starling
American robin
Common goldeneye
Black duck
 Weskeag Marsh.
Tags: American crow, American robin, black duck, black-capped chickadee, common goldeneye, European starling, hairy woodpecker, herring gull, ring-billed gull, rock pigeon, white-breasted nuthatch
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January 30th, 2010
 The bay. My temperamental weather station showed things got a bit chilly last night—down at least to 5 degrees (F). Still single digits at first light, but apparently none of the whipping winds of yesterday. Sunny. An achingly blue sky. From the back deck I heard the voices of crows, chickadees, and a downy woodpecker.
On a trip to town, I counted the usual herring and ring-billed gulls and saw a single European starling in flight.
 Horned grebe. Then, despite the cold, my birding friend Kristen and I ventured out to the breakwater not long after high tide, where rime ice coated most of it granite surface. Somewhat surprisingly, several other couples and groups hazarded a Saturday walk along the narrow strip of ice-free stone. And there was wind—there’s always wind—but relatively light and northwesterly. The stroll out wasn’t too bad. On either side we saw loons, great cormorants, long-tailed ducks, eiders. We saw buffleheads, goldeneyes, mallards, guillemots. Kristen quickly ID’d a horned grebe in winter plumage. Herring gulls, of course.
On the way back we headed more or less straight into the wind. Despite my hat, hood, and scarf, my ears and forehead grew numb in a hurry. But once we’d covered about three-fourths of a mile, we’d reached the lee of the shore, and my face thawed. In fact, we took a little side trip northeast, to a little cove we visit during our area’s annual Christmas Count, to check on a pair of red-breasted mergansers and a group of black ducks.
 Red-breasted merganser (♀), bufflehead, black duck. But the most impressive sight came as we drove back, at Clam Cove—a wide tidal flat just a stone’s throw from my place. The tide was going out, and a dozens of crows stalked the icy mud together, poking around for grub. And if the crow party below caught our attention, so did a similarly large collection of small gulls floating far out in the open water: Bonaparte’s gulls, maybe sixty of them. They were pretty far away, but they appeared to have their heads tucked under their wings, snoozing.
Humans, loons, long-tails, black ducks, crows, gulls—all going about their Saturday business in the company of like-minded individuals. Not that I’d describe cold January as miserable, exactly, but it does seem true that most species do love company. (Ironically, I got one photo that features three wildly different ducks.)
After our walk, as Kristen headed home, I heard the spring warble of a house finch coming from across the road.
Today’s List
American crow
Black-capped chickadee
Downy woodpecker
Herring gull
Ring-billed gull
European starling
Mallard
Common loon
Bufflehead
Common goldeneye
Greater black-backed gull
Common eider
Horned grebe
Black guillemot
Long-tailed duck
Great cormorant
Black duck
Red-breasted merganser
Bonaparte’s gull
House finch
 Crows and Clam Cove.
Tags: American crow, black duck, black guillemot, black-capped chickadee, Bonaparte's gull, bufflehead, common eider, common goldeneye, common loon, downy woodpecker, European starling, great cormorant, greater black-backed gull, herring gull, horned grebe, house finch, long-tailed duck, mallard, red-breasted merganser, ring-billed gull
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| Bird Report is an intermittent record of what's outside my window in Rockport, Maine, USA (44°08'N latitude, 69°06'W longitude), and vacinity. —Brian Willson |
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