Day 18.293: Halloween

It was a wild windy evening here and the three of us here skipped most of the Halloween festivities. Exile #4 did better - with this take on Janet from The Good Place:

We believe that E5N1 also had a costume plan in mind, but we did not receive photographic evidence by our publishing deadline. 

Day 18.292: Dramatic weather

We're hearing some fairly impressive wind and rain outside this evening, but the dramatic weather I'm referring to was from the start of our nature walk on Sunday afternoon. As we set out, the rain started accompanied by a cold wind and we wondered if we were going to get completely drenched. However, it was short-lived and most of our walk was accompanied by sunshine.

Ominous

Rainbow

Dramatic

Day 18.291: Kennebunkport birds

Before we walked along Goose Rocks beach on Sunday afternoon, we had a look over the marsh from Dyke Road. We saw some distant herons and egrets as well as these ducks:

American black ducks

American black ducks

And as we returned to our cars after the beach loop, we had a lovely extended look at this Lincoln’s sparrow:

He was still there when we decided it was time for us to leave. A far cry from their “rarely-seen” reputation. 

Day 18.290: Birds on/from Goose Rock Beach

We saw a few birds before and after our walk on the beach on Sunday afternoon, but here are the ones we saw while we were on the beach.

Semipalmated plover

Red-breasted mergansers

Semipalmated plovers and a semipalmated sandpiper

White-rumped sandpiper

Semipalmated sandpiper

White-rumped sandpiper

House sparrows

Red-throated loon

Bald eagle

Red-throated loon and hopeful gulls

Double-crested cormorant with fish - possibly about to lose them to this herring gull

Red-throated loon

Bonaparte's gull

Bonaparte's gull. Its acrobatic flying set it apart from the other gulls. Black stripe on trailing edge of wing and tip of tail are distinctive.

Day 18.289: Fort Foster birds

Here are some of the birds we see on Saturday morning at Fort Foster. 

Cormorants on a small island offshore

Double-crested cormorant

House finch

Mallard - likely with some domestic duck hybridization

Red-breasted merganser

Gray catbird - showing a flash of rufous under tail 

White-throated sparrow (tan stripe)

Mallard

Common raven

Eider (Merlin suggests king eider but I can’t work out why that and not common eider)

Song sparrow

Black-capped chickadee

Savannah sparrow

House finch

Savannah sparrow

Field sparrow 

Savannah sparrow

Savannah sparrow

Golden-crowned kinglet

Golden-crowned kinglet

Common loon