A chilly start to the bird walk at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth was easily overcome by the quality of the birds! A skim of ice over the pond and around the edges of the river was a "first of fall" sighting here and a large push of Canada Geese made clear how extensive the freeze was. Three flavors of merganser were in the river and two Greater Scaup highlighted the waterfowl sightings - the latter being surprisingly uncommon given the numbers that overwinter near Mackworth.
The biggest excitement came when we got to the North Meadow: A late American Bittern was briefly seen flying north over the meadow so we decided to cut across the unmowed section to get better views. Just before getting to the peak of the meadow, a Short-eared Owl (my 217th species for Gilsland) flushed from the grass! The bird spent several minutes flying high overhead and eventually north above Route 1.
Also of note but not nearly as exciting an experience was a single Common Redpoll heard calling in a group of American Goldfinches that flew overhead while in the West Meadow. Our Pine Siskin flock has moved on and even Purple Finches were absent this morning but the redpoll was a nice sign of the predicted finch flight this winter.
A complete list from the walk is available here: https://ebird.org/me/view/checklist/S49949035
There will be no walk next week (off for the holiday) and we will switch to an 8:00AM start on November 29th.
Good birding,
Doug Hitchcox
Maine Audubon - Staff Naturalist
207-781-2330 x237
dhitchcox@maineaudubon.org
--
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maine birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to maine-birds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
0 comments:
Post a Comment