[Maine-birds] Maine Bird Atlas - Weekly Challenges, 5/22

Hi everyone:

Last week's results:
WOW, you all turned out last week! 111 probable Ruffed Grouse records helped fill in 23 new blocks. 51 Carolina Wren reports added 4 new blocks to their already fairly full map. And 34 American Bittern records added 15 new blocks - most of these were "singing" birds so make sure you check back at least seven days later and see if you can bump those to probable (S7) records. Congrats to Gary in Winter Harbor, Bruce in South Portland, and Jonah in Orland for being chosen by excel's random number generator as winners this week!

Here are the challenges for this week:

1) Nuthatch round-up - My backyard White-breasted Nuthatches fledged this week so keep an eye out for confirmed records around the state of that species. And to include the entire state in this challenge, we are now in the safe dates for Red-breasted Nuthatches so all codes for that species will put you in the running.

2) Brown-headed Cowbird - I'm seeing a lot of people posting photos of nests (especially phoebe nests) with cowbird eggs in them. While we don't want to encourage volunteers to approach nests, if you respectfully view inside one and see it has been parasitized by a cowbird, that counts as a confirmed record (NE - nest with eggs) for both species. At only 47 confirm blocks, this species needs work: https://ebird.org/atlasme/map/bnhcow

3) Owls - Barred and Great Horned chicks are growing up, even some into their "branching" stage, so keep an eye out for these otherwise hard to detect species. Saw-whets are occupying cavities now too. Confirmed records of any owl species will put you in the running for this challenge.

Good birding and happy atlasing!


Doug Hitchcox
Maine Bird Atlas - Outreach Coordinator
Maine Audubon - Staff Naturalist
207-781-2330 x237
dhitchcox@maineaudubon.org

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