After a decent (for the second week of November) flight overnight Thursday into Friday, on light northerly winds, diurnal migrants were in the air Friday morning as well.

Here’s the midnight radar, for example:

What was supposed to be a “quick walk” at the Fore River Trail in Portland before getting some errands done turned into a 2+ hour event, with a lot of birds, including some real treats. I walked from near the Train Station almost all of the way to Jewell Falls. This was the first time that I have walked the length of the trail (including the dog-leg along Congress St for a little while). I had walked both sections on occasion in years past, with very little to show for it. However, on last weekend’s Rarity Roundup, Luke and I checked it out, and found a plethora of food sources, including lots of Speckled Alder catkins and an explosion of Oriental Bittersweet. I made a mental note to get back here soon, and I was very glad I did. Today’s highlights included both Red and White-winged Crossbills (single fly-overs of each), a flyover flock of Common Redpolls, an American Coot (this might be my first within Portland city limits), a Common Yellowthroat, and a very late, and very pale, first fall female Pine Warbler, that I had to chase around for quite some time to confirm its ID. (The complete total is below).

Then, what was in fact a quick walk through the area I call “Mercy Woods” along the new Commercial Street Extension yielded some more migrant sparrows, including a Fox Sparrow, and another real treat: a flock of 58 Common Redpolls feasting on Paper Birch catkins.

Another good flight was noticeable on the radar Friday night, as light northerly winds continued. By watching the loop last night (I wish I was able to post video to this blog, as a picture is indeed worth a thousands words), we were able to see a distinct lift off beginning as early as 5:00pm. A major wave of birds picked up out of the mid-coast region and moved due south, straight offshore. This wave can be seen in this 5:30pm base reflectivity image:

…and the corresponding velocity image:

And, here’s the 10pm radar image. By morning, however, the radar showed little activity, so I think we saw another exodus (likely a lot of Dark-eyed Juncos and American Tree Sparrows, I presume):

On Saturday morning, 12 folks showed up for our weekly free Wild Bird Center of Yarmouth birdwalk (yup, we run them all winter long) despite the cold (upper 20’s) and raw morning. A visit to Florida Lake produced only 14 species, but one of those was Red Crossbill (2 poorly-seen flyovers), and another were 10+ Pine Grosbeaks! 5 female-type and one adult male were very well seen as they fed on Winterberry a short distance off of the trail. At least 4 more flew overhead, and later, a group of at least 10 passed over – possibly our same birds as we had seen earlier…or not. Complete totals from the birdwalk, as always, are on our store’s website: www.yarmouthbirds.com/news.asp.

So clearly, as we have been predicting, there are A LOT of finches around. And, very large numbers on unusually early dates. Clearly, something BIG is going on. There’s a food shortage somewhere.

Then, the other day, there was this post to the Ontario birding listserve, which explains it: massive fruit and seed crop failures from Saskatchewan east through Quebec. The extent of the food shortage, and the volume of birds on the move already, has been labeled a “super-flight,” which happens about once a decade. In fact, the last “super-flight” was exactly 10 years ago, in the winter of 97-98.
http://www.birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/ONTB.html#1194477653

So, it continues to be simply finch-tabulus out there! Customers at the store today have been reporting good finch numbers, especially Pine Siskins, Purple Finches, and even Evening Grosbeaks at their feeders recently.

What a great start to the winter, and a great start to the weekend. Well, that and becoming bowl eligible by demolishing Army last night 41-6, despite having our back-up quarterback complete only 2 passes in about 50 minutes of playing time. The school-record 243 yards of rushing by Ray Rice will do that . . . but I digress.

Here’s the list from Friday morning’s visit to the Fore River Trail.
Location: Fore River Trail
Observation date: 11/9/07
Notes: Great diversity and surprising activity here today. Diurnal migrants, esp. finches, were really one the move today (here, and elsewhere).
Number of species: 40

American Black Duck 11
American Black Duck x Mallard (hybrid) 2
Mallard 9
Bufflehead 25
Hooded Merganser 17
Great Blue Heron 1
Red-tailed Hawk 2
American Coot 1
Ring-billed Gull 12
Herring Gull 5
Rock Pigeon 11
Mourning Dove 5
Belted Kingfisher 1
Downy Woodpecker 2
Blue Jay 8
American Crow 12
Black-capped Chickadee 28
White-breasted Nuthatch 2
Carolina Wren 1
Golden-crowned Kinglet 2
American Robin 19
Northern Mockingbird 6
European Starling 21
Cedar Waxwing 18
Pine Warbler 1
American Tree Sparrow 7
Song Sparrow 19
Swamp Sparrow 1
White-throated Sparrow 5
Dark-eyed Junco 26
Northern Cardinal 11
Red-winged Blackbird 22 One flock overhead
Common Grackle 4 With RWBL flock
Purple Finch 1
House Finch 17
Red Crossbill 1 briefly landed before resuming flight
White-winged Crossbill 1 flyover
Common Redpoll 14 flyovers
American Goldfinch 26
House Sparrow 4

This report was generated automatically by eBird v2(http://ebird.org)