I had a most enjoyable Sunday morning. I slept in a little bit, and then spent a couple of hours studying shorebirds, followed by watching the end of the Tour de France. It was a good day.

My shorebirding time was spent at Brunswick's Wharton Point. A mere 20 minutes from my house, this is my closest good shorebird habitat. But, unfortunately, there are only a couple of hours on each side of the high tide that provide good viewing. At other times, the birds are too far away, or hidden in the marsh. Today, however, the timing was perfect, and I enjoyed a full two hours of prime time as the tide was rolling out. The totals for the morning:
141 Lesser Yellowlegs (typically, my highest fall counts of this species occurs here).

129 Short-billed Dowitchers

~25 Semipalmated Sandpipers
4+ Greater Yellowlegs
3 Semipalmated Plovers
2 Least Sandpipers.

18 Snowy Egrets, 14 Glossy Ibis, and at least three Bald Eagles were also present, and I was happy to see seven American Kestrels along Highland Road on my drive over.

After my discussion the other day with Dan about how under-birded the Sebago Lake area is, I decided to visit Sebago Lake State Park on Monday morning. I was thinking about shorebirds and crossbills. But, clearly, I was not thinking all that well #not unusually for me, especially in the early morning hours # because I failed to consider how all of the rain that we have had of late would affect the limited shorebird habitat here. Sure enough, high water resulted in just a narrow sandbar at the mouth of the Songo River, and it contained only 11 Spotted Sandpipers and 5 Killdeer, all of which are probably local breeders. No crossbills today either. But, there's no such thing as a bad day of birding, and observations of 4 Common Mergansers, 3 Common Loons, two juvenile Hooded Mergansers, one molting Wood Duck, and about 30 Ring-billed Gulls # including fresh juveniles # along with a very tolerant family group of busy Pileated Woodpeckers that allowed close approach (close enough that I could see the beetle larvae that they were extracting from the tree!) more than made up for the lack of shorebirds and crossbills.

But, today, I am going to leave you with a request for a small favor. Would you mind filling out a little survey? You can cut-and-paste the questionnaire into the comment field below, or, paste it into an email and send your responses to yarmouthwbc@yahoo.com. I know that this is a bit unconventional # to put a survey about one's own blog in one's own blog - but your answers will help to make this blog better. Furthermore, Mainetoday.com is going to be making some changes to the Outdoors section, and to its blogging tools, so feedback could be most helpful. Thanks!

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