After visiting Scarborough Marsh, Charlie Nims, Rick Steber and I went to Biddeford Pool. We parked at the lot at the end of Elphis Road and went first to scan the ocean and beach. To our surprise it was a bit like December in July. The first birds we saw were a M/F pair of black scoters, followed by a female white-winged scoter, a red-throated loon near a common loon, and a red-necked grebe. We expected shorebirds but all we had were a dozen semi-palmated plovers on the beach and two turnstones on the rocks offshore. Strange day.
So we went back to land birds, looking for night herons. We did not go to Great Pond right away; we first went along the ocean side of the pond that runs from the Elphis Road parking lot to the Spiritual Center. We found a total of 8 black-crowned night herons, 3 adults and 5 juveniles. They were at both ends of the pond and on the side facing us. Most were at the water's edge but they also spent time in the trees and in flight. We checked them carefully, looking for the swiss dot backs of the yellow-crowned night herons, but we didn't get any.
We then went to Great Pond next door and looked for night herons there. We had one adult and one juvenile, both black-crowned. I suspect both of them had just wandered over from the other pond only a few yards away.
That's one of the beauties of birding - we don't often get what we expect, but we do get some nice surprises.
Joe Scott
Chatham NH
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