[Maine-birds] Snowy Owls still at Jetport; Falcons, Accipiters, Dovekie, etc

Freeport -> Cape Elizabeth (with a quick loop up to the airport) and back again ... Lots of crows out today.  I passed over a dozen groupings of 4-10 birds along 295 southbound.  Four redtail hawks (adults near exits 22, 15, and 5; and an immature about a mile s of the adult at 15).

At least two snowy owls are still hanging around the Portland Jetport and nearby Correctional Facility (one on the fence) - had some nice sightings a bit after noon today.  While looking for the snowy there was a flying peregrine way to the south and a large buteo with some gulls (thinking redtail, didn't have the gestalt of baldie, and it might have been the redtail from exit 5).  Looking at the map, there's an argument for this being one of the peregrines I sighted half an hour later at Casco Bay Bridge.

Adult peregrine on one of the transmission towers at the Casco Bay Bridge; adult-or-immature peregrine on another one of the towers.  The pullouts along Waterman Drive and Thomas Knight Park gave great views.

As other notes posted here, the Dovekie at Cape Elizabeth was seen off and on for several hours ("There he is!  Oooops he went under again"), be patient and keep scanning and you'll luck out and happen to be looking at the point where it pops up for air for a whole 2 seconds.  A group of Harlequins wandered back and forth close to shore giving some great view acting as reference landmarks for the dovekie ("It just came up to the left of the harlequins about 15 feet closer than the long-tailed duck oh it just went down again"),  An Atlantic Puffin floated through, dove a few times, and had a bunch of us thinking for a while that it was the dovekie until folks calmed down and started thinking clearly.  

I'm still rusty at non-raptors, but other people identified razorbill, great cormorant, rednecked grebe, "probably a murre" and "one of the loons".  Plus all of the other usual suspects re: waterbirds.

Driving around Cape Elizabeth/Kettle Point yielded a few more raptor finds - adult bald eagle, a merlin, adult sharp-shinned hawk, 2x Cooper's hawks (1 adult, 1 immature).

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