[Maine-birds] Head Harbor Passage Trip Report and Washington Co shorebirds

On Saturday, August 25th, Maine Audubon ran its now-annual Head Harbor Passage Trip and had a phenomenal showing of gulls and shearwaters. We hit the tide just right to have an impressive feeding frenzy of thousands of Bonaparte's Gulls with at least two adult Little Gulls in the mix. The Sooty Shearwater flock near East Quoddy Head swelled to 700+ birds on Saturday morning with many birds being quite tame sitting on the water. I posted a full trip report here: https://www.maineaudubon.org/news/head-harbor-passage-2018-trip-report/ and wanted to express my thanks to Chris Bartlett, Woody Gillies, and Captain Butch Harris for making this trip a great success.

Before the trip, I had my one of my best shorebirding experience at the Lubec Flats as the tide was just beginning to drop on the afternoon of the 24th. Diversity and overall numbers had been below average the past two weeks while Woody and I were guiding in the area but a couple thousand peeps with a few notable species made for a great study. Among the 1600 Semipalmated Sandpipers was a yellow-flag "ML7" that bandedbirds.org reports as originally being captured near Nickerie, Suriname on 6 Dec 2016. A juvenile Western Sandpiper was my first for Washington County but the most interesting bird was an apparent Dunlin x White-rumped Sandpiper (hybrid). Photos of these individuals are in my eBird list here: https://ebird.org/me/view/checklist/S48051050

I also had two Lesser Black-backed Gulls roosting on either sides of the Lubec Flats, visible from Quoddy Head Road. Of more note there, an apparent 'Ipswich' Savannah Sparrow that kept coming into the parking area was by far my earliest for that subspecies. Birds of North America says they don't migrate until mid-September so I'd appreciate feedback if anyone disagrees with my identification. Photos are available here: https://ebird.org/me/view/checklist/S48050897

Good birding,


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

--
Maine birds mailing list
maine-birds@googlegroups.com
http://groups.google.com/group/maine-birds
https://sites.google.com/site/birding207
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Maine birds" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to maine-birds+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.