Jack and I slept late. It’s Saturday, after all, and I’m fighting off the Lyme disease bacterium. OK, so the meds have pretty much fought it off already—but still. A man’s gotta sleep sometime.

But hit the hill we did, just a little late. Sun was out. A little breezy. Crickets singing, and cicadas. A couple monarchs and other butterflies. Just a hint of fall ion the air, along with a few red leaves. And birds. Pretty many birds.

First to call was a hairy woodpecker, and then a few of the usual suspects, and then a black-billed cuckoo, and then we startled a partridge. As the trail opened up, where we came upon alder flycatchers yesterday, today we came upon phoebes. My friend Kristen says flycatchers migrate together, so maybe this is what’s going on.

Then, surprisingly, a field sparrow hopped over to harangue us for a while. It’s funny. You hear their musical song in spring and early summer, but you can’t get near enough for a photo. Then, once they nest and (presumably) have young to defend, they seek you out and get close. This is the second such bird I’ve photographed on these terms of his, not mine.

Down toward Beech Hill Road, I heard some chickadees and so began to scan the hardwoods—chickadees often being the indicator of other, quieter species flitting about, I’ve learned. Sure enough, I spotted a parula among them, along with a chestnut-sided warbler and a couple I couldn’t identify.

Then I heard the strange, very soft warbling sound I’d heard down there before without seeing its source. But this time I did: a blue-headed vireo. I still sort of shake my head at how different the soft warble is from its typical call, but there you go.

Nothing much else on Beech Hill, but at high tide this early afternoon I met my friends Kristen and Paul at Weskeag Marsh in south Thomaston, the idea being that shorebirds would be moving through. Well, rather oddly, we saw very few shorebirds moving through. There were some least sandpipers and yellowlegs. There were snowy and great egrets. There were a pair or three red-tailed hawks. A great-blue heron. And—curiously, to me—a bobolink way out in the pannes. But no great clouds of shorebirds. A lonesome merlin flew over, even, looking similarly baffled at the dearth of wheeling flocks birds.

It was beautiful down there, though. Photogenic clouds in a summer-blue sky, and a red-tail up there soaring.

Beech Hill List
Beginning at 8:45 a.m., I hiked all trails.

1. Hairy woodpecker (voice)
2. Red-eyed vireo (voice)
3. Black-capped chickadee
4. Eastern towhee (voice)
5. Common yellowthroat
6. Black-billed cuckoo (voice)
7. White-throated sparrow
8. Ruffed grouse (flushed, voice)
9. Eastern phoebe
10. Field sparrow
11. Gray catbird
12. American crow
13. Cedar waxwing
14. Song sparrow
15. Mourning dove
16. Savannah sparrow
17. Blue jay
18. American goldfinch
19. White-breasted nuthatch (voice)
20. Blue-headed vireo
21. Tufted titmouse
22. Northern parula
23. Chestnut-sided warbler

Weskeag Marsh List
Arrived at 2:15 p.m., walked the pannes.

24. Northern shoveler
25. Herring gull
26. Snowy egret
27. Red-tailed hawk
28. Great egret
29. Merlin
30. Least sandpiper
31. Bobolink
32. Greater yellowlegs
33. Lesser yellowlegs
34. Great blue heron
35. Double-crested cormorant

Elsewhere

36. House sparrow