Birds and Nature North America

2-6. 23-25 August 2019. Thru Maine and to Newburyport, MA

Strangely named tiny towns in eastern Maine...

Eastern Maine, of course, looks much like New Brunswick, but the jagged coastline faces south into the Gulf of Maine (part of the Atlantic). The weather is cool and clear with the passing of a cold front. It is superb driving weather. I follow the little coastal roads through a series of tiny towns.

The goldenrod is out in force in the fields of eastern Maine

Meddybemps is perhaps the most unusually named town I encounter this day—just south of Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge. I have been looking for Moose every day, but have zero success on that front.

Eastern Maine is rocky and hilly and a mix of forest and pastureland and bays and rivers. The only towns are small ones. I follow Route 1 and 1A, very windy roads, to Milbridge, Steuben, and Gouldsboro, then to Winter Harbor, and, finally, the eastern adjunct to Acadia National Park, which is Schoodic Peninsula.

A lobster boat checks is pots just off the shore of Schoodic Peninsula

I plan to stay at Schoodic Woods Campground in the northern edge of the Schoodic Peninsula sector of Acadia National Park. This is the big rocky peninsula just east of Mount Desert. I was last here just 50 years ago, and I wanted to visit this beautiful spot and see the places that I found so beautiful back in August 1969.

Eiders loaf in a cove of Schoodic Peninsula

As I draw into the campground parking lot I glimpse a small sign saying “campground full.” It’s nearly 6 PM, and I am not excited about having to hunt elsewhere for a place to camp. Luckily, I am able to be fit in, because my needs are so meagre (just a tent space). Most campers have some large “RV,” which requires more space and utilities.

A winter-plumage Black Guillemot bobs in the water near the eiders

After setting up camp I drive down to check out the point, which I remembered with such pleasure. It was on this Peninsula that I first saw a Whimbrel in August 1969, and that bird made such an impression on me, that I wanted to try to experience the wonder once again (probably not possible!).

Least Sandpiper on the roacks, searching the wrack

At the campground it was sunny and clear and cool. Down on the point thick Maine fog enshrouded the rocky coast and dark blue-green waters. Thick as pea soup. This is the Maine experience! Down here, a few minutes’ drive from my tent, it was downright cold and damp. I was not going to see a

Whimbrel this evening in this fog!

After a chilly night in my little tent, I biked down to the fog-free point early the next morning. I dropped my bike at Blueberry Hill parking lot, and climbed the Anvil, a promontory just to the north. In fifteen minutes I was on the rocky top with a lovely view to the west and Mount Desert.

Spruce woods along the coast

The forest that cloaks the Peninsula is dominated by White Spruce and the climb took me through picturesque spruce forest interior, with lovely ground cover of lichens and mosses.

Spruce woods interior is magical

I was surprised to see a few gnarly Jack Pines here in the forest. They are best known in the sandy outwash of Canadian shield forest far west of here...

The forest floor is encrusted with lichens and other little plants

It being late August, the songbirds are quiet.

Jack Pines are scattered about on the Schoodic Peninsula

Back down on the shoreline, I check out the waters of the rocky inlets and headlands. This is classic Maine coastline. Small groups of Common Eiders loaf offshore. A single Black Guillemot in winter plumage bobs nearby.

Whimbrel hunts the wrack

Then, before I get back on my bicycle, I hear a trilling call in the sky, and a Whimbrel drops down onto the tiny seaweed-covered set of rocks in front of me. Almost fifty years to the day I saw my first Whimbrel here is a ghost from my birding past, welcoming me back to the Schoodic Peninsula. I happily watch the bird hunt through the wrack for marine edibles.

The one jarring surprise is the abundance of colorful buoys marking the placement of lobster pots all along the shoreline of the National Park. Should these waters be harvested so heavily or so close to the shore of the protected area?

By mid-morning I am on the road westward, on my way to Hope, Maine. Passing by Sorrento, I see flats with shorebirds. I stop and scope them—Black-bellied Plovers, both yellowlegs, and a group of Bonaparte’s Gulls. No godwits.

Yellowlegs, dowitchers, peeps, Mallard

I am headed to the home of colleague John Morrison and his family in the interior uplands just north and east of the Camden Hills. I drive up a gravel driveway and over the brow of a hill I look up to see a beautiful modern house set on the hilltop, with woodland protecting its flanks, and blueberry fields in various directions.

John Morrison works for the World Wildlife Fund and is a old birding buddy from when he lived in DC. I dine on their large deck in the sun with wife Serena and two boys Grant and Ward. The house is clearly a labor of love. John assures me there was still much to do, but what I saw was room after gorgeous room with splendid views and myriad artifacts—natural and human-made, collected on John’s world travels. Now this is the way to live in the woods!

We dine and looked at the beautiful hills to the southwest and John and I speak of our explorations in faraway places. John is an expert on the wilds of Alaska, and had just returned from a grueling trek across the Seward Peninsula. I pepper John with questions regarding my plans to drive up the Dempster Highway to the Beaufort Sea in the spring of 2020.

View to Biddeford Pool town looking across the "Pool"

After lunch, I depart for Biddeford Pool, in southwesternmost Maine, long a famous site for the August stopover by shorebirds such as godwits. I had visited Biddeford Pool several times in the 1970s, and wanted to get back and have a look, with a hope of seeing something interesting.

High tide in Biddeford's marshes

What I find is a beautiful community on the rocky coast with the “pool” just back from the shore. I do not find any shorebirds or mudflats (high tide), but I wander around the little lanes and walk out along the shore through a local Audubon sanctuary. Clots of eiders paddle about off the rocks and gulls soar overhead.

Looking across at the Light

An hour drive takes me through New Hampshire and into northeastern Massachusetts. I am camping for two nights at Rusnik’s Campground in rural Salisbury, just a bit north of Newburyport and Plum Island (Parker River National Wildlife Refuge). The refuge is another place famous for shorebirds and godwits in particular.

Painting school on the rocks

I set my tent under the tall White Pines and bed down early in anticipation of a long day birding out on Plum Island.

Lovely coastline of southwestern Maine

The early morning I am at the refuge hunting shorebirds. A Hudsonian Godwit had been reported on Thursday, and a Marbled on Friday. I instead am shown an American Avocet and several other shorebird species: White-rumps, Baird’s, dowitchers, Black-bellied Plovers, yellowlegs, and a Willet. I find a flock of more than 50 Killdeer on the little grass airstrip on the west side of the estuary. I see a Merlin harass flocks of shorebirds.