This morning’s outing was for some urban birding in Portland’s West End. The wooded hillside of the Western Promenade, regenerating woods along the West Commercial Street, and the isolated woods and brush along the new Commercial Street Extension provide a welcome oasis for migratory birds that find themselves over the concrete jungle at dawn. Migrants can become “trapped” here, waiting for nightfall to continue their journey. These last bastions of shelter can be crucial to an exhausted migrant’s survival. There, surrounded by water, roads, and buildings, hundreds of birds go about their business while thousands of people pass by unknowingly.

I enjoy birding these urban oasis’s. One, they can sometimes pack a lot of birds in a small place. Two, there’s always the chance at rarities. Three, I love the quizzical looks of passerby’s wonder what the heck I am looking at (OK, actually, I don’t love the quizzical looks). Anyway, although I did not expect to see many migrants this morning – with the south wind overnight – I did want to make one last visit to the area that I have affectionately been referring to as “Mercy Woods,” the woodland that is on the future site of the new Mercy Hospital.

I had heard that they have just broken ground on the project, and wanted one last swan song in the area (actually, I was thinking more along the lines of song from a Kentucky Warbler or some other “mega” to send the place off). I was rather surprised to see the pace of progress! One lone Carolina Wren sang from a small remaining stand of brush, it’s normally cheery song sounded almost mournful as it rang out from this little patch amid the hustle and bustle of the construction vehicles.

I was happy to learn however, that most of the vegetation around the pond will remain – although surely not enough for the Black-crowned Night Herons that I believed were nesting there. But, it will certainly help. Furthermore, there are still trees farther west along the road, closer to I-295, and a lot of regenerating second growth along the shore of the Fore River. All is not lost as a birding destination here.

However, I will miss the “Mercy Woods,” (although I never actually set foot IN the woods, just birding the edges) and my daydreams of rarities. I have had a couple of good mornings of warbler and sparrow movements here, but not the “mega” that I was waiting for – although John and I did our best to turn a late Baltimore Oriole into a Bullock’s Oriole on last year’s Rarity Roundup.

Elsewhere in the area, I did pick up my first two immature White-crowned Sparrows of the season, along with two Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers along the Western Promenade, another singing Carolina Wren in Western Cemetery, and one pocket of warblers along West Commercial Street (on the riverside, closer to the Casco Bay Bridge than the Rte 1 bridge) that included: 8-10 Blackpoll Warblers, 2 Yellow-rumped Warblers, 2-3 Western Palm Warblers, and one each Northern Parula, Nashville Warbler, and Red-eyed Vireo.

But now, I’ll leave you with more aesthetically pleasing pics – from our trip to New Hampshire on Tuesday:
McDowell Lake, Peterborough:

Immature Great Cormorant at McDowell Lake. We think this is a very good bird this far inland.

Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory: