Mount Desert Island.

I had to google “Boxing Day.” For whatever reason it’s called that, this one was gorgeous. Sunny, melty, fresh-seeming, even briefly warm in the briefly high sun. Crows about, and chickadees, and a titmouse. I shoveled the Christmas snow, and the sun took care of the thin remnant layer of ice on the deck and walkways. At one point I moved my pickup, and as soon as a started it, a small brown bird flitted away from somewhere underneath the vehicle, looked like. (I suppose it might’ve just at that moment flitted up from somewhere else, traveling low.) It was a sort of bronze-brown color with white wing bars. That’s all I got.

Afternoon sun.

But I did get a few resident species at Beech Hill with Jack, where we met a number of other hikers and saw the paw prints of dogs dashing all over the fields. (Seems a lot of people simply ignore the keep-your-dog-on-a-leash sign.) Brilliant sun, bright landscape, distant islands.

Beech Hill List
Beginning at 2:30 p.m., I hiked the open trail.

1. American crow
2. Black-capped chickadee
3. Northern flicker
4. Brown creeper (voice)
5. Hairy woodpecker

Elsewhere

6. Herring gull
7. Tufted titmouse