Cool and unsettled weather continues, with some showers – albeit light ones – finally hitting our yard in Pownal early Wednesday morning, although it also failed to dampen anything other than the soil's surface. Meanwhile, a series of weak disturbances continues to rotate around an upper-level low, producing these rounds of widely scattered showers (less scattered and slightly heavier in the mountains and north). It looks like this pattern will continue through Friday.

Very little moved overnight Monday into Tuesday, thanks to a westerly wind. Here’s the 1:00am radar image, for example.

But, it was a Tuesday, and it was our first day off since the end of the Hawkwatch. Therefore, we took advantage of our day of freedom to bird the southwest coast of Maine. As usual, Jeannette and I began at Fort Foster, which was quite productive today. Our first Black-billed Cuckoo, Scarlet Tanager (2), and Bay-breasted Warbler of the spring were highlights, along with 14 Yellow Warblers, a Black-crowned Night Heron and two male Indigo Buntings.

Overall, we did find things to be rather slow, passerine-migrant-wise, throughout the day, but we still crawled our way to 11 species of warblers, with some other pretty good birds along the way. Seapoint Beach was very slow, but we did hear a Red-bellied Woodpecker near Legion Pond. However, Legion Pond was hosting only two Mallards. Where are the Mute Swans? Unless they have been hidden somewhere on my last three visits here, they do not seem to have returned this year. This is a very good thing! Mute Swans are incredibly destructive invasive species, and we really don’t need these aggressive birds – no matter how beautiful they are – to colonize the state.

A few stops between Kittery and York produced a bird or two, but our next batch of migrants was on Cape Neddick. One small patch of scrub hosted four species of warblers: single Black-throated Blue, Wilson’s, Magnolia, and Common Yellowthroat. Two Least Terns flew overhead, and we saw a few Common Grackles carrying food for young – a sign of the rapidly changing season. However, the most interesting bird of the day was this exceptionally pale immature Double-crested Cormorant that was roosting on the Nubble. It’s almost as white below as an immie Great Cormorant, but alas, I can’t make it into anything else. The overall size, structure of the head and bill, and shape and color of the orange facial skin put this into the Double-crested camp.

We finished up the day’s outing with Flo’s Hot Dogs, followed by Beach Plum Farm (birdy as usual), and the Webhannet Marsh in Wells. Shorebirds were surprisingly scarce here today, but we did enjoy the wheeling flock of 14 Least Terns in Wells Harbor.

Southerly winds overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, however, got birds going once again, despite the scattered showers. Here are the 10:00pm, 1:00am, and 4:00am images.

While I didn’t have a lot of obvious migrants at Hedgehog Mountain Park in the morning, I did amass 13 species of warblers, and there have definitely been some new arrivals here in the past two days. Three Red-eyed Vireos, my first of the spring, were the most obvious in the new-arrival department.

Also on Wednesday morning, I made my first visit to Skyline Farm in North Yarmouth. A 2.8km trail winds through pasture and into the woods. There were quite a few of Bobolink and a pair of Savannah Sparrows in the fields, but this morning the woods were rather quiet. However, my guess is that the usual breeding species of the areas mixed-woods occur here, and it was a pleasant place to take an easy stroll.

And finally today, here’s an interesting article on a study that showed how shorebirds rely on surface tension in order to feed.