I began the morning at Portland’s Dragon Field, hoping to add a Northern Shrike to my Patch list. No luck with that, or much else for that matter – it was dead! Evergreen Cemetery – where I was hoping for winter finches – was almost as unproductive.

However, Capisic Pond Park once again produced! Even when it doesn’t have a rarity, it always seems to produce good numbers of common species. In other words, there’s always lots of activity and something to look at.

While the three Swamp Sparrows today were the “good birds” for the morning, I thoroughly enjoyed the 13 Northern Cardinals – 8 of which were males, which certainly brightened an otherwise gray and dreary morning. The 75-100 House Finches that split time between a crabapple tree, a nearby feeder, and some Evening Primrose that avoided the mowing, may have been the largest flock of this species that I have encountered in Maine. 12 White-throated Sparrows, 9 Song Sparrows, 6 American Tree Sparrows, and 2 Dark-eyed Juncos were tallied – definitely the most sparrow-age that I have seen in a couple of weeks!

After scanning Back Cove (lots of Bufflehead, American Black Ducks, and an increasing number of Common Goldeneyes) for a bit, I headed downtown for some Christmas Shopping.

And if I’m Christmas Shopping, that means it’s also time for the other holiday tradition – Christmas Bird Counts! The first ones are this Saturday. I’ll be spending ½ the day scouring the Portland Peninsula again, and I need to get some scouting done later this week.

Christmas Count Season always turns up some great birds. Both pre-count scouting and the Count itself gets a lot of birders out and about, checking a lot of places that usually don’t get checked. So even though November is Rarity Season, mid-December through early January can be very productive for “good” birds thanks to increased coverage. We’ll see what this season produces!

There's a bunch of Christmas Bird Counts in Maine (or anywhere else), mostly on weekends - and mostly, to much chagrin, on Saturdays (I'd rather there be more Sunday and weekday options so I can participate in more!) There's 2-3 counts each Saturday that I would like to take part in, but I will stick to the Greater Portland count on the 16th and the Brunswick-Freeport Count on the 30th, with a half-day on the Southern York County Count on Monday, the 18th.

Regardless of what your motivation is - rare birds, social, or like me, simply getting out and birding on a day when everything counts, Christmas Bird Counts are great ways of getting into the field and seeing some birds. Regardless of experience - you can join a team as an extra set of eyes, or you can stay at home and monitor your feeding station only, everyone can participate. Plus, the "data" collected means something - it all goes into one database that can be used to provide some excellent broad scale and long-term trends. (And, you can play with this online).