Yesterday, we conducted the 2nd Annual Merrymeeting Audubon Birdathon (but the first full-day affair) .We limit our route to towns that fall within our chapter’s catchment area (roughly Pownal east to Wiscasset, and Richmond south through Georgetown, Phippsburg, Harpswell, and Freeport). During our 15 ½ hour day, we birded in Georgetown, Arrowsic, Woolwich, Bath, West Bath, Brunswick, Topsham, Freeport, Pownal, and Phippsburg.

Ted Allen, John Berry, Mike Fahay, Mark Mahnke, and I met in a parking lot in Bath, which in addition to providing a location for us to carpool from, also provided our first birds of the day: Eastern Phoebe, American Robin, and Chipping Sparrow. We then headed down to Reid State Park – picking up Virginia Rail, Marsh Wren, Swamp Sparrow, and others along the way. Seawatching at Todd’s Head, was followed by walking Half-Mile Beach (Piping Plover and other shorebirds).

Departing Reid, we checked a couple of feeders before walking around the village of Five Islands (producing a Carolina Wren and a Blackpoll Warbler among others). We made a number of shorter stops - some of which added a few new birds - as we made our way towards Topsham’s Bradley Pond Preserve. Northern Waterthrush and Bank Swallow were important “gets” here, but as the day warmed up and the wind increased, song was being greatly reduced, and the woods were falling quiet – even by 9:30am.

Unfortunately, this dearth of song limited our detection of forest birds throughout the rest of the day, greatly impacting our day list. Heading into my local “patches,” however, we were able to start filling in some of the holes on our checklist, like Canada Warbler and Alder Flycatcher at Florida Lake, along with the two continuing Ring-necked Ducks – a great bird for this time of year in our area. Hedgehog Mountain Park produced Black-throated Blue and Chestnut-sided Warblers EXACTLY where I expected them (always nice on a big day), along with a lucky spot of a silent Brown Creeper.

“The Hog” also produced one of our highlights for the day, when we finally got a Barred Owl – in a big way! All morning I have been calling for one, trying to get a response. While waiting for the Chestnut-sided Warbler, I made a single Barred Owl call. A couple of minutes later, as a few Blue Jays began to make a racket – a Barred Owl hoots from a mere 50-75 feet away! It was soon spotted, glaring towards us, fluffed out in anger (towards me and the Blue Jays). When we finally walked away, with the owl keeping an eye out for the intruder, it was calling repeatedly. Boy, I got him worked up. Oops. Although we missed a few target species for this stop – like Wood Thrush – this close encounter of the owl kind more than made up for it.

Then, I had to make a call. We were 1 ½ hours ahead of schedule. This is a rare thing on a Big Day, but we spent less time than we thought at a number of places – due to the deafening silence in the woods and the lack of migrants moving through – and were able to cut out a few stops when we picked up things like a Red-breasted Merganser at Reid. I made the call to spend this time now - a very gutsy, and maybe stupid, call - but we were missing too many birds that we MIGHT get by climbing up Bradbury Mountain. This would take a large investment of time, and an even greater investment of energy – we had been birding at full steam for about 7 hours already – but the potential rewards were many. The walk up did finally net us Eastern Wood-Pewee, and the summit provided our first Common Ravens of the day (although we did end up seeing them twice later, of course), but it did produce a Red-shouldered Hawk, which from a rarity-within-the-catchment-area perspective was probably our best bird of the day. No Northern Goshawk, Red-tailed Hawk, Wood Thrush, or Turkey Vulture though (we did finally get a few “TV’s” later at least).

Highland Road in Brunswick then provided our American Kestrel – just as we were about to leave the area, but Wharton Point was nearly devoid of shorebirds. Crystal Spring Farm gave up Eastern Meadowlark and Field Sparrow, but we missed White-throated Sparrow here as well. We finally picked up Rock Pigeon in Brunswick, which barely made up for “dipping” on the local Fish Crows. I refused to allow the counting of two fly-by crows that were not heard (thanks to the wind and a generator) behind the Hannaford’s. There’s little doubt in my mind that these were Fish Crows – based on location – but I steadfastly refused to count them unless we heard one, which we never did. Integrity still won out, however.

A feeder stop in Georgetown finally produced a Hairy Woodpecker – which was good, since I skipped pulling into our yard in Pownal to watch our suet feeders for a while. After Head Beach, we decided to use up the rest of our good daylight hours walking over Morse Mountain to Seawall Beach. The excellent habitats of this preserve would hopefully fill in some of the gaps on our daylist, but the woods only produced Golden-crowned Kinglets. The marsh, however, gave us Glossy Ibis for the day, and a few Black Scoters were offshore. However, a deathmarch up and down Seawall Beach after a distant flock of shorebirds that I spotted ended up producing only Semipalmated Sandpipers (along with Black-bellied, Piping, and Semipalmated Plovers, which we had already seen elsewhere).

However, one of our other highlights from the day came just as we returned to our cars in the parking lot. A minute or so earlier, I stopped dead in my tracks after hearing what I thought was a . . . no, couldn’t have been; didn’t hear it again anyway. Then, a bird flew into the top of a large spruce. I only glimpsed it, bit it looked like a . . . “Hey guys, check out this bird on the backside of this spruce.” A moment later, the other half of this pair lands on our side of the top of the spruce, in perfect, low, soft late-day light. My earlier suspicions were correct: White-winged Crossbills!

Scanning from Fort Baldwin and Fort Popham as the sun began to set added nothing, but we did get a Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed Sparrow in the marsh near the state park. A brief glimpse of a Cooper’s Hawk was a bonus – our first accipiter of the day, and we finally added Warbling Vireo at 7:53pm to the daylist at our last stop, at dusk, as we were failing to call in a Sora.

So, in the end, we amassed 121 species for the day, including 18 species of warblers (plus an Indigo Bunting that I only briefly glimpsed at Bradley Pond; I also spotted two Common Nighthawks over Brunswick on my way home, and an American Woodcock flew across Pownal Rd a little later), which is actually a really good total for the catchment area. However, with a pile of “easy” birds (although no birds are truly “easy” on a Big Day), we really should have reached my goal of 130-140 birds. However, the heat (upper 70’s) and surprisingly strong winds hampered visibility offshore and significantly reduced woodland bird activity, so given the conditions, we cannot complain. Besides, we’ll just have to get 130 next year!

Here’s our complete day list:
Canada Goose
Wood Duck
American Black Duck
Mallard
RING-NECKED DUCK
Common Eider
Surf Scoter
White-winged Scoter
Black Scoter
Red-breasted Merganser
Wild Turkey
Red-throated Loon
Common Loon
Double-crested Cormorant
Great Blue Heron
Great Egret
Snowy Egret
Glossy Ibis
Turkey Vulture
Osprey
Bald Eagle
Cooper's Hawk
RED-SHOULDERED HAWK
Broad-winged Hawk
American Kestrel
Virginia Rail
Black-bellied Plover
Semipalmated Plover
Piping Plover
Killdeer
Greater Yellowlegs
Willet
Spotted Sandpiper
Ruddy Turnstone
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Short-billed Dowitcher
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Herring Gull
Great Black-backed Gull
Common Tern
Black Guillemot
Rock Pigeon
Mourning Dove
Barred Owl
Chimney Swift
Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Downy Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker
Northern Flicker
Pileated Woodpecker
Eastern Wood-pewee
Alder Flycatcher
Eastern Phoebe
Great crested Flycatcher
Eastern Kingbird
Blue-headed Vireo
Warbling VIreo
Red-eyed Vireo
Blue Jay
American Crow
Tree Swallow
Bank Swallow
Cliff Swallow
Barn Swallow
Black-capped Chickadee
Tufted Titmouse
Red-breasted Nuthatch
White-breasted Nuthatch
Brown Creeper
CAROLINA WREN
Marsh Wren
Golden-crowned Kinglet
Veery
Hermit Thrush
American Robin
Gray Catbird
European Starling
Cedar Waxwing
Nashville Warbler
Northern Parula
Yellow Warbler
Chestnut-sided Warbler
Magnolia Warbler
Black-throated Blue Warbler
Yellow-rumped Warbler
Black-throated Green Warbler
Blackburnian Warbler
Pine Warbler
Prairie Warbler
Blackpoll Warbler
Black-and-white Warbler
American Redstart
Ovenbird
Northern Waterthrush
Common Yellowthroat
Canada Warbler
Scarlet Tanager
Eastern Towhee
Chipping Sparrow
Field Sparrow
Savannah Sparrow
Nelson's Sharp-tailed sparrow
Saltmarsh Sharp-tailed sparrow
Song Sparrow
Swamp Sparrow
Dark-eyed Junco
Northern Cardinal
Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Bobolink
Red-winged Blackbird
Eastern Meadowlark
Common Grackle
Brown-headed Cowbird
Baltimore Oriole
Purple Finch
House Finch
WHITE-WINGED CROSSBILL
Pine Siskin
American Goldfinch
House Sparrow