[Maine-birds] Maine Bird Atlas - Weekend Challenges, 6/9

Hi everyone:

Sorry for not getting these "weekend" challenges out on Friday but between Maine Audubon's Matinicus Rock trip Friday (report coming soon) and the Aroostook Birding Festival Saturday, the birds have been too good to stop at a computer!

Anyways, today (June 10th) finally gets us into the safe dates for all of Maine's breeding birds! This means that any bird you hear singing *should* be on its breeding grounds and can be entered as "S-Singing Bird". New confirmed breeders continue to roll in, putting us at 136 species (up from 122 last week) and a whopping 214 species (needing some review) when we include possible and probably records. For context, the first atlas had 201 confirmed breeders.

As usual, lets take a look at how we did with last week's challenges…

Indigo Bunting - A tough one if you don't have the right habitats around but nice to see a few people were able to increase possible records to probable! Check those power line cuts along your commutes.

Eastern Phoebe - Great work! There was a 18% increase in the number of blocks confirmed for this species over the past week, bringing the total to 123.

Brown-headed Cowbird - On a percent increase basis, BHCO blew away EAPH with a 400% increase in confirmed blocks (now up to 5). Remember that parasitized nests count as confirmed records for both the cowbird and the host. Same with an adult host feeding a recently fledged cowbird. On Thursday's bird walk at Gilsland Farm we saw an Eastern Phoebe feeding a noise and beefy-looking cowbird…

Honorary mention goes to European Starling, which continues to jump in confirmed blocks, now up to 107 (from 83 last week and 64 before that). I think Bill and I confirmed them in at least four blocks driving around Aroostook County yesterday morning - keep an eye out for food they are carrying or buildings they're flying into.

NEW CHALLENGES:

1) Common Eider - We've obviously got some bias of effort along the coast so we should be able to get more confirmed records for Common Eiders, only at 13 confirmed blocks right now. Look for females swimming around with their chicks, often forming large groups called creches.

2) Song Sparrow - For being such a common species, these need a little work on getting confirmed. 150 blocks have possible and 106 with probable  records but only 55 confirmed. Spend some time this week watching for adults carrying food. They've got a fun map to look at because so many blocks have at some level of breeding documented: https://ebird.org/atlasme/map/sonspa

3) Bump a species up to confirmed - with 136 confirmed species, there are some obvious birds lacking confirmed records that shouldn't be too hard to track down. A scan of the list (https://ebird.org/atlasme/state/US-ME?yr=all) looks like Marsh Wren or Scarlet Tanager, among many others, are low hanging fruit.

Good birding and happy atlasing!


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