Jeannette and I spent a very productive morning yesterday in the Kennebunk Plains. We spend a full morning each early summer – usually the first Tuesday of June – walking the vast majority of the trails here. Although far from being scientifically obtained, we keep track of all of the grassland denizens that we encounter.

The Kennebunk Plains is a fascinating are to bird – a very special and rare habitat with a lot of great birds that are tough to see elsewhere. I certainly haven’t found anywhere else in Maine that has more Upland Sandpipers, Grasshopper Sparrows, Prairie Warblers, or Vesper Sparrows.

Here’s our totals from yesterday’s visit (6:30am to 10:15am), not including birds heard in the woods or passing overhead. A continuous breeze certainly hampered detection, and definitely kept birds lower to the ground and harder to see. However, our tallies were still excellent.
29 Prairie Warblers
15 Savannah Sparrows
15 Vesper Sparrows
12 Field Sparrows
8 Chestnut-sided Warblers
8 Eastern Towhees
8 Grasshopper Sparrows
4 Brown Thrashers (including one feeding a downy nestling in the middle of a wide patch of short grass).
4 Common Yellowthroats
4++ Bobolink
3 Upland Sandpipers
3 Indigo Buntings
2 American Kestrels
2 Eastern Meadowlarks
1-2 Red-tailed Hawks
1 Alder Flycatcher
1 Eastern Kingbird

Afterwards we made a short stop at the Sanford Sewerage facility, just for the heck of it. I’ve never stopped here in the summer, and I can’t recall any pre-August reports, so I was curious as to what breeds here (Not much! Just Mallards, Canada Geese, and a pair or two of Killdeer). But, we also wanted to check for any lingering shorebirds (there was one Greater Yellowlegs) and the spot does seem great for a possible rarity (say, a Mississippi Kite or a Cattle Egret), so it seemed worth a visit since we were in that neck of the woods.