Southerly winds and low clouds, fog, and drizzle for the last two nights has brought migration to a virtual standstill. Very little is showing up on the radar, and I’ve heard few birds moving overhead during my nightly listening sessions. That certainly doesn’t mean NO birds are on the move, as clearly a few birds are always heading somewhere. Two White-crowned Sparrows arrived at our store’s feeding station sometime over the last two nights, for example.

Yesterday, we had to stay close to home, as our latest house project was coming to a close. Jeannette and I wanted to use some of the money from the sale of my father’s old condo in NJ to reduce our personal carbon footprint – a worthy goal and investment, we believe. Therefore, as of yesterday afternoon, our home’s hot water is now solar-generated and our roof is producing up to 2.1 kilowatz of clean, green, and bird-friendly solar energy (saving 1800lbs of carbon dioxide a year!)

We did squeeze in a stroll around Wolf Neck Farm in Freeport, however, a place that has been on our “to explore” list for a while. Things were pretty quiet yesterday, but this is definitely added to the list – weedy fields look “sparrow-rific,” (just a smattering of the usuals today) and the extensive mudflats seem worth checking out in shorebird season (one Greater Yellowlegs today). The rest of the day was spent lounging around the house, gaining the upper hand on a nasty cold that I have been battling.

Today, I guided for the Garrett family on a tour of Merrymeeting Bay. Bob, a Bowdoin grad, and his family – were visiting the area for his birthday. Having recently read Franklin Burroughs’ book on Merrymeeting Bay, Bob wanted to take his family on a birding tour of the bay. We hit a number of the locations Burroughs mentions – or at least viewed them from terra firma.

This was a different kind of trip for me, as the locations were more important than the birding. Essentially, it was more of a natural history tour – we looked at habitat, plants, and geography as much as birds (3 pairs of binoculars to share among 8 people limited the amount of small, flitting things, we would all get views of!). I really enjoyed this trip, actually, because I looked at locations from a different perspective – how they were mentioned in the book, and how each stop we made told part of the story of the fascinating Merrymeeting Bay area. Unfortunately limited by the dearth of public access to shoreline, we nevertheless got to sample each river and many of the unique aspects from the bays – from the extensive wild rice fields that form the basis for the rich foodweb to the rough water of the Chops.

Bald Eagles were one of the target birds, as “charismatic megafauna” are always a treat for any group - and we enjoyed 5 observations, including one chasing an Osprey, and scope views of three different birds. Green-winged Teal are starting to show up in the Bay, and we had a few small flocks around the Brown’s Point Rd area, a couple of Northern Harriers over the mouth of the Abagadasset, and over a thousand American Black Ducks (with at least two Gadwall, some Mallards, and some Green-winged Teal among them) concentrated at the Chops – with two immature Bald Eagles standing guard.

So, as I mentioned earlier, the radar for the last few nights has showed that little has been on the move. The same was clearly not true for Friday night through Monday morning. As I mentioned on yesterday’s entry about my trip to Monhegan, each day clearly saw an ebb and flow of migrants. The radar images confirm that, as birds were really on the move before these southerly winds developed.

Friday night, birds were definitely on the move, as shown on the 10pm radar.

However, by early Saturday morning, relatively few birds were offshore – hence our rather slow day on Monhegan.

Then, came nightfall, and birds were on the move.
Saturday, 10pm:

Sunday, 12am:

Sunday, 2am:

Sunday, 5am:

Notice the density of migrants offshore as twilight approached? Hence, the amazing day on the island! Come nightfall on Sunday, many of the recent arrivals were already on the move, as evidenced by the 10pm radar:

However, as we see here on the 5am image, relative few birds were still in the air, so an exodus clearly occurred, as we noted by the significantly fewer birds on Monhegan on Monday.

And finally, as I also mentioned yesterday, I thought I’d share some photos from Monhegan.

The Summer Tanager:

And some views from the island, as we departed on Monday afternoon.
Town:

Lobster Point:

Burnt Head:

And, this photo, compliments of Kirk Rogers, that shows just how cooperative that Yellow-billed Cuckoo was on Saturday: