Pair of Barrow's goldeneyes.

Today seemed the prototype of a sunny winter’s day in northern New England. Temperatures in the 20s (F), a cloudless blue sky, snow all about, not much wind to speak of. Before I even got out of bed, I heard a blue jay hollering from up the hill.

Many gulls.

Crows, always crows. Chickadees somewhere. Herring gulls and ring-bills and rock pigeons—the usual suspects—during a quick errand in town. But I had another day-trip scheduled with my birding friend, Kristen, and Barrow’s goldeneyes were our particular quarry. And as do most birders,  I know enough to expect the unexpected. You pick a goal, head in that direction, and open yourself to whatever morsels the universe might fling your way.

I’ve seen hundreds of common goldeneyes, but Barrow’ses are uncommon. Before today, in fact, I’d seen a total of one—a solitary male napping in my quarry pond at ice out in early April many years ago. As it turned out, a bald eagle had also been admiring the bird, and my eyes must surely have widened comically as I watched the eagle lift its talons in an eagle’s diving posture. Then it saw me in the window and aborted its dive. The duck didn’t even wake up.

Black duck.

Kristen assured me we’d see the duck in Belfast, from the footbridge across the Passagassawakeag River (locally referred to as the “Passy”). After a stop for muffins at Chase’s Daily—a wonderful vegetarian restaurant on Main Street—we walked a few blocks to the footbridge. Within about thirty seconds’ scanning with her fieldglasses, Kristen had spotted some goldeneyes. A couple pairs or so, maybe a hundred yards away. Sure enough, all of them were Barrow’s. The males with their white crescent-shaped cheekpatch, the females with their lovely brown heads and orange bills. The lot of them diving and flapping and acting as if today was the best day to be alive. Which, of course, it was.

Barrow's goldeneyes.

I got a couple photos, though from quite a distance. Then something spooked the hundreds of gulls from the roof of a neighboring commercial plant, and they all took to the sky at once, creating a cloud of gulls. I got photos of them, too—and in one, you can clearly see a stream of gull droppings descending amid an image otherwise straight out of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Kristen found an iceland gull among a thousand herrings. We also saw loons, buffleheads, black ducks.

Taking a leisurely route home, we happened upon a flock of waxwings of undetermined species. We took a brief stroll on a snowmobile trail, saw some chickadees and the tiny tracks of something like a vole. We saw red-tailed hawk with a distended crop that looked to have recently dined.

Afterward, as the sun descended at Kristen’s and Paul’s house in Camden, Mount Battie itself glowed eerily orange—in what you might call alpenglow.

Today’s List

Blue jay
American crow
Herring gull
Rock pigeon
Ring-billed gull
Barrow’s goldeneye
Black duck
Common loon
Bufflehead
Red-tailed hawk
Black-capped chickadee
Waxwing (spec.?)

Rodent tracks.