Yesterday, I visited a site near Jackman that had more Olive-sided Flycatchers than I’ve ever seen anywhere (including the Burn Road in Topsfield). Had a bear there, too, plus one today near Danforth and one last Saturday near Portage. It must be a good year, because today’s was the tenth bear I’ve seen this season.
Lately, I’ve been taking an inventory of good birding sites near some inns and camps in northern Maine to help them promote birding to visitors. Last weekend, I investigated the birding around Eagle Lake Sporting Camps…intruding on Bill Sheehan’s turf in northern Aroostook County. For future reference, birders might like to know that the camps can be reached from Route 11 via the Pennington Pond Road (between Portage Lake and Winterville). Noteworthy: after the first 1.5 miles, there is a four mile stretch that is all Mourning Warbler habitat. Yowzer. We picked up Philadelphia Vireo around Mile 6 and a Tennessee Warbler at Mile 9. Access from Route 161 on the Caribou side runs through Irving lands and it’s mostly a spruce plantation. Picked up Boreal Chickadees and Bay-breasted Warblers, as expected, but last weekend was too hot for anything else to be singing on those roads. The four mile entrance road to the camp is quite birdy, too. Gray Jays and Boreal Chickadees presented themselves to us with no effort on our part. We arrived just in time to see a family of Merlin fledglings make their first clumsy flight. The nest was in a spruce right over the parking area. We set up lawn chairs to watch.
Thursday and Friday were spent around Attean Lake Lodge in Jackman. I took a dawn paddle down to the Moose River outlet and encountered a swarm of swallows. There were hundreds, mostly Bank, but with a few Cliff and Tree Swallows mixed in. When I poked the nose of the kayak into the reeds so I could get a better look at the swallows, five Wilson’s Snipe startled up and away. From there, I paddled up lake to a point where a logging road comes within 500 yards of the shore. I bushwacked to the road with the intention of trying to find access to #5 Bog – a particularly large and interesting bog that remained inaccessible despite my best efforts. But while prowling this road, I was impressed by how many calling Olive-sided Flycatchers there were. Equally exciting, there were several clusters of Rusty Blackbirds. There were also Mourning Warblers, Lincoln’s Sparrows, one singing Fox Sparrow, and a few calling Yellow-bellied Flycatchers. And a coyote pup. Cute. I’ve noticed this with young foxes, too: they are so intent on looking down while hunting that they forget to look up until they are right on top of you.
Today was spent prowling logging roads around First Settler’s Lodge in Weston. Because the Burn Road in Topsfield has undergone a lot of harvesting and thinning lately, I’ve been trying to find some alternatives. So far, no luck. I tried three other roads today but could not find the concentration of boreal habitat that is the Burn Road. Or was. The day’s highlight was a Northern Goshawk on the Harlow Road in Danforth.
Bob Duchesne
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