Day 19.135: Half-century

On Saturday, our nature group had set out to see 50 species of birds in a three hour visit to Rotary Park in Biddeford. In the end we reached that "half-century" with the black vultures around the two hour mark and went on to total 56 species. Here are some more photos from a very camera-friendly morning.

Northern cardinal

Song sparrow

Wood ducks

We watched two Baltimore orioles chasing crows away across the river

These cedar waxwings were passing an unripe fruit back and forth for a while

Eventually, one of them flew away and the other dropped it unceremoniously

Turkey vulture

Not a great photo, but it was my first blackpoll warbler of the year

Red-eyed vireo (with visibly red eye)

Better photo, but eye looks black

Chestnut-sided warbler

Brown thrasher

Eastern bluebird

American redstart

Gray catbird

Broad-winged hawk (with some missing flight feathers)

Hairy woodpecker (rare to see it foraging on the ground)

Maybe being a new parent explains some odd behavior

Spotted sandpiper

Great crested flycatcher

Day 19.134: Exile #2’s Sunday Column #553

Exile #2 writes...

One benefit of having our primary board game instigator home for a brief period is that board games happen! Yesterday, the game in question was Finspan, the latest in the Wingspan universe of games. We introduced Wingspan to Exile #4, so it was fun to have the favor returned with Finspan. It’s essentially a fishy version of the bird-based game but with some different mechanisms. It also, unexpectedly, gave E5N1 the opportunity to demonstrate some of his fishy knowledge, courtesy of the Marine Bio class he took this year (this being Maine, Marine Bio features pretty heavily on syllabuses!). As was to be expected, Exile #4 ended the game victorious, but we all enjoyed it, and it was a good way to spend a rather gloomy and overcast holiday weekend.

Day 19.133: Black vultures

Our nature group gathered this morning at Rotary Park in Biddeford and we had a remarkable encounter that turned even stranger in retrospect. 

At one point we saw a group of turkey vultures circling an d then spotted another bird above them. At first we assumed it was another turkey vulture then someone suggested it looked like a much rarer (in Maine) black vulture. It was already flying away. I tried to snap a couple of photos and then it disappeared behind some trees and our attempts to get a different angle failed. 

We decided to backtrack a little way to get a better view of the sky, hoping the bird might circle around for us to get a second look. 

A few moments later, two black vultures flew towards us and right over our heads, heading in the same direction as the first bird. 

The strange thing is, when I looked at my photos from the original birds, they were all of turkey vultures. So either, I I photographed the wrong bird (very possible in the scramble) or we didn’t see a black vulture at all at that point but reacted as if we did and then were rewarded with an excellent view of two of them. Either way, it turned out extremely fortuitously for us. 

Here are a couple of pictures from the undoubted flyby:

Day 19.132: Peeper

Spring peepers are small tree frogs that are rarely seen but make their presence felt with their loud calls at this time of year. We had.a close encounter with one this week when Exile #2 found one while gardening. At first she thought it might be dead, but it turned out to be very much alive and capable of some impressive bounds. 

Only cellphone photos, but we were quite close:

Day 19.131: Sunday birding

Our nature group met on Sunday morning. We had to slip away a bit early to meet our church commitments but it was an eventful gathering nonetheless. Here are some of the birds we saw in Biddeford Pool:

Red-tailed hawk (one wing extended)

Crow and red-tailed hawk

Cormorant fly-by

Common tern with some fish

Least flycatcher

Wilson's warbler

Wilson's warbler

Nashville warbler

Common yellowthroat

Eastern kingbird

Tree swallow

Eastern warbling vireo

Red-eyed vireo

Bay-breasted warbler

 Black-and-white warbler

House finch

House finch

Blue-headed vireo

Blue-headed vireo

Blue-headed vireo

American redstart

Carolina wren

House sparrow

Swainson's thrush

Yellow-rumped warbler

Ovenbird

Northern yellow warbler

Chipping sparrow

Cooper's hawk

Cooper's hawk