[Maine-birds] Blackbirds Saco

FOY  2 Red Winged blackbirds in Saco Friday afternoon.

[Maine-birds] This Week's Highlights, 2/22-28



Hi all,

My observations of note for a great week of late winter birding are included here:

https://mebirdingfieldnotes.blog/2025/02/27/this-weeks-highlights-2-22-2-28-2025/

-Derek

*****************************************

 Derek and Jeannette Lovitch

 Freeport Wild Bird Supply

 541 Route One, Suite 10

 Freeport, ME 04032

 207-865-6000

 www.freeportwildbirdsupply.com  

 ****************************************

[Maine-birds] early territorial behavior?

A male bluebird repeatedly attacks the windows of our house near the feeding station and is calling frequently. This appears to be territorial behavior but isn't it early? This is a resident flock of bluebirds.

Michelle Gregoire

Westbrook

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[Maine-birds] This Week's Highlights, 2/15-21

Hi all,

My observations of note over the past seven days can be found here:

https://mebirdingfieldnotes.blog/2025/02/21/this-weeks-highlights-2-15-2-21-2025/

-Derek

*****************************************

 Derek and Jeannette Lovitch

 Freeport Wild Bird Supply

 541 Route One, Suite 10

 Freeport, ME 04032

 207-865-6000

 www.freeportwildbirdsupply.com  

 ****************************************

[Maine-birds] Snowy owl

Gonna be on the hunt for one this weekend.  Live in the Pine Point area and have heard they (it) is around.  Been out several days and have had no luck.  Anyone with info please share.  thanks

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[Maine-birds] glaucous gull

Hello,

Thought a Glaucous (Lewiston, Androscoggin County) might be interesting to some of you. You will want a telescope for best viewing. Not sure if they are still there--but . . . .

https://ebird.org/checklist/S214047864

Happy Birding,

Trish

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[Maine-birds] Snow buntings and horned larks

I drove along Upper Street in Turner again yesterday and had quick views of a big flock of snow buntings and horned larks near the first big farm on the left as you come up the hill heading north.

Danny

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Loring M. Danforth

Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology Emeritus

Bates College

446 College St.

Lewiston, ME 04240

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[Maine-birds] This Week's Highlights, 2/8-14

Hi all,

Here are my observations of note over the past seven days:

https://mebirdingfieldnotes.blog/2025/02/14/this-weeks-highlights-2-8-2-14-2025/

-Derek

*****************************************

 Derek and Jeannette Lovitch

 Freeport Wild Bird Supply

 541 Route One, Suite 10

 Freeport, ME 04032

 207-865-6000

 www.freeportwildbirdsupply.com  

 ****************************************

[Maine-birds] "Goldeneye" Roque Bluffs (don't get excited)

Only if you are in the neighborhood of  Roque Bluffs and birding at the bridge over the Englishmans River, you might check the view to Englishmans Bay from a culvert, close to the entrance to Cow Point. On recent mornings between 9-10:30am, high tide,  Wally has been seeing a single Goldeneye offshore for a couple of weeks, including today. He does not have a camera and does not carry a scope in these icy weather conditions. It's most likely a Common Goldeneye which is common here.  Vickery's Birds of Maine mentions that the more uncommon Bucephala islandica  is sometimes reported in Englishmans Bay, near Englishmans River bridge. So, IF you are birding at this reported bridge spot at high tide it would take you about 10 minutes round-trip to drive up to Cow Point and take a quick look there from the culvert location  The road is private beyond this point, and it becomes impassable due to ice and snow, and most of it is Posted and/or gated, so is not recommended. But the entrance, where the tidal marsh is frozen today still has a few American Black ducks on the bay side, now and then, and on 25 January, very briefly, a small flock of Canada geese (fuzzy photo attached).,

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[Maine-birds] Monhegan Sighting Update

I've added another update to the Birds of Monhegan Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/groups/778377796965411 - highlighted by the addition of Western Wood-Pewee as the 340th island species and an Ash-throated Flycatcher in late Oct. 2024 (the second record of the fall). Thanks to Luke Seitz for the photos.

Brett Ewald

716-628-8226

brett.ewald90@gmail.com

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[Maine-birds] This Week's Highlights, 2/1-2/8.

Hi all,

Here are my observations of note over the past seven days:

https://mebirdingfieldnotes.blog/2025/02/07/this-weeks-highlights-2-1-2-8-2025/

-Derek

*****************************************

 Derek and Jeannette Lovitch

 Freeport Wild Bird Supply

 541 Route One, Suite 10

 Freeport, ME 04032

 207-865-6000

 www.freeportwildbirdsupply.com  

 ****************************************

[Maine-birds] Brown Creepers

One Brown Creeper was on Spruce trees in our yard on January 2. Then, today, January 6, we saw two Brown Creepers. To our surprise they spent more time in the snow on the ground and at the mossy base of the spruce trees than they did climbing up the trunk, although they did a bit of that, too. Mid-February is the time when small insects in the Family Boreidae, that spend their lives in the moss and climb onto the snow to mate begin to be seen, although we haven't seen one in our yard, yet.

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[Maine-birds] Horned Larks and more

I went up to the intersection of Pearl St and Upper Sts. in Turner this morning before the snow started and found a flock of 30 or so Horned Larks. Mixed in were two Lapland Longspurs. A flock of Snow Buntings put in a very brief visit too.

Danny

--

Loring M. Danforth

Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology Emeritus

Bates College

446 College St.

Lewiston, ME 04240

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[Maine-birds] history of banded Common Gull at Rockland and South Portland

A nearly seven year-old mystery has been solved. The solution also presents many more questions.

Last fall, Maine birders might recall that on Halloween Evan Obercian found a European Common Gull (Larus canus canus) at Rockland. The following day, Magill Weber and Ethan Whitaker looking for that bird found what they assumed was the same bird. But after photos were posted, their bird was discovered to have a color band on its left leg. That banded bird was seen there only on that day, November 1st. Evan's bird stayed until November 20th.

Magill and others tried to discern the banding code on the blue band. The photos were poor, but "74J" in white text seemed to fit. This linked the Rockland bird to an adult Common Gull seen at Cohasset, Massachusetts, April 15, 2018 by Marshall Iliff and others.

On January 18th this year, Glenn and Anna Hodgkins took photos of gulls roosting at Mill Cove in South Portland. They noticed afterwards that one was a Common Gull, and it was banded with a blue band that read "74J" on its left leg. Clearly this was the same bird seen in Rockland two and a half months earlier and six years and nine months earlier in Massachusetts.

Magill and Marshall have tried to find out when and where the bird was banded, searching mostly in European ringing databases. Marshall noticed a similarity of the blue band to those being applied to Ring-billed Gulls in Quebec. So with the possibility that the bird was misidentified when banded, I submitted the code to www.reportband.gov without providing an identification, filling in the type of bird only as a "gull."

Today I got a reply. This Common Gull was banded at Revere Beach, Massachusetts December 19, 2013. It was identified as a *Ring-billed Gull* and aged as "hatched in 2012 or earlier." If not aged as a second winter bird at the time, then it might have been an adult when banded. Revere Beach is 14.30 mi (23 km) from where it the bird was next seen at Cohasset beach in 2018.

How long has this bird been in North America or returning here? Where does it spend the summer? Newfoundland? Iceland? The first European Common Gull records for western Greenland date back to the 1890s. The first for Massachusetts was a specimen taken February 8, 1908 at Chatham. Nearby, Nova Scotia's first record was March 9, 1969 on Sable Island, and Maine's first confirmed record was in 2000 (earlier records are not, so far as I know, clearly identified beyond Mew Gull, the name that formerly included North America's Short-billed Gull and the Eurasian taxa of Common Gull).

Here is the history of 74J as we know it.

Banded 19 December 2013
Revere, Suffolk Co., Massachusetts at 42.40778, -70.99083

Photographed 15 Apr 2018: Cohasset, Norfolk Co., Massachusetts
https://ebird.org/checklist/S44607307

Photographed 1 Nov 2024: Rockland, Knox Co., Maine
https://ebird.org/checklist/S200986026

Photographed 18 Jan 2025: South Portland, Cumberland Co., Maine
https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/629300281

Louis Bevier
Fairfield, Maine

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