Last year, I posted that if you ever get a chance to bird with “Susan from New Jersey,” take it. She’s good luck. Yesterday was the fifth time that I’ve taken her out birding and we’ve had Black-backed Woodpecker all five times, and each was in a different place over the years.
The Burn Road in Topsfield has been a secret spot for some Maine birders over the years, but it has experienced a lot of logging in the last two years and is visited much less frequently these days. Currently, I don’t recommend the road to anyone who is not familiar with it. The active logging operations mean heavy trucks on narrow roads and blind corners. Worse, because the main branch is unused this year, it looks like an obscure side road, easily overlooked, and it is easier than ever to get lost on this Baskahegan property. For those who are familiar with the road, I’m posting this as a status update on a once-popular road, because I’m sure some people are curious as to its present condition.
We decided to try it yesterday and my heart sank upon arrival as we followed a logging truck through his dust right to one of my favorite spots at Mile 3. The road ends in a terrific black spruce bog at Mile 8, but that area was logged and thinned last year and I didn’t hold out much hope for this year.
Wrong. Most of this year’s logging activity is on the front end of the road and off on one of the side trails. The main section beyond Mile 3 is relatively untouched this year. Once we got past the forestry operations, we encountered Spruce Grouse regularly – three different encounters with hens and chicks, plus one lone male. Olive-sided Flycatchers were ubiquitous. Black-backed Woodpeckers nested in a flooded area at Mile 5.5 over the last two years, but it appears they’ve relocated farther down the road and off on a side trail this year, based on the lack of tree markings in the area. I didn’t see those, but we did encounter another much farther down.
I posted some video of yesterday’s boreal birding at www.mainebirdingtrail.com. I’ll leave it up for a few days.
And…thanks to the wet June and the hot holiday weather, the deer flies are awful this month.
Bob Duchesne
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