Day 17.202: Busy feeder

Our bird feeder has seen a lot of action since we refilled it at the weekend (after our various trips left it empty for a while). I suspect this picture has five different species: house sparrow (not very commonly seen at our feeder), goldfinch, chipping sparrow (juvenile), bluebird, house finch (not certain).

Both the numbers of birds and the wide variety has been fairly consistent over the last few days.

Day 17.201: Devil's Back Trail - West

As Exile #2 mentioned, our second stop on Sunday was at Devil's Back on Orr's Island near Harpswell. Having chosen to cross the road and enter the west half of the trail (for no particular reason), we ended up walking the northern half of the trail loop on that side.

Here are some things that caught our eye.

Snowy egret

Common terns carrying their catch...

...and feeding their young

A double-crested cormorant doing its thing

A fly-by from a bald eagle

Eiders living their best life

More tern fishing action....

...and just flying

This is a flycatcher of some kind - possibly olive-sided 

I think it was too big to be a phoebe or eastern wood pewee

This inlet splits the northern half of Orr's Island in two.

We turned this amazing multi-limbed tree into a family tree

Exile #4 had some impressive hat-hair (and a well-formed curl)

Day 17.200: McIntosh Lot Preserve

The park with the trail that stretches about a quarter of a mile along the coast past the Giant's Stairs is officially called the McIntosh Lot Preserve, but as far as I can work out everyone just calls in Giant's Stairs.

Here is what we saw apart from the magma-tube-turned-to-basalt staircase that is the well-justified star of the show. You can see our visit to the stairs themselves here.

After we watched it fishing for a while, this double-crested cormorant had a good wash before flying away.

We were surprised to see this herring gull land on the rocks with an apple and then proceed to tear chunks off it.

A large group of eiders were floating in a small inlet between the rocks

In the distance: Halfway Rock Lighthouse

An impressive tent of fall webworm moth caterpillars.

Goldfinches

Song sparrow

Looking at the plants along the trail

The sedimentary rocks that are split by the basalt of the Stairs

It's a beautiful spot

Day 17.199: Exile #2's Sunday Column #487

Exile #2 writes...

It has been a lovely summer weekend and, having done chores yesterday, we decided to all head out for a drive up the coast today. We headed for Harpswell and, in particular, Orr and Bailey Islands at the far end of the peninsula. They are joined to the mainland by bridges, once of which is a beloved landmark, possibly because it is somewhat narrow and precarious.

We explored a couple of trails. A beautiful coastal path named after the “Giant’s Stairs” partway along the trail, and another named Devil’s Back. This trail had an east and west branch either side of the main road but due to the narrowness of the island at the point, either one took you down to the water side.

We stopped in Brunswick for some food on the way home and were grateful for Google Maps for steering us around the worst of the vacation traffic on the rest of the way home.

The Giant's Stairs 

Dedication plaque

Today's crew

Day 17.198: Winged visitor

We did some yard work this morning which included refilling the bird feeders so we might not have been surprised by some winged visitors but the one that attracted our attention was this one:

A close encounter with a monarch butterfly is a visceral experience - they are large (of course) but also powerful fliers which makes the way they move quite different from their smaller cousins. We were happy to see this one investigating some milkweed in our front yard. Maybe we’ll have a chance to see the next generation too. 

Day 17.197: Morning at the cemetery

Another birding walk this morning. Belted kingfisher and merlin in the distant tree:

 and a few more commonly seen ones a bit closer:

White-breasted nuthatch

Eastern bluebird

Red-winged blackbird

Day 17.196: Hawk-watch (audio edition)

You may recall our early-spring excitement over the possibility of nesting broad-winged hawks behind our house.  Things went quiet on that front for a week or two and then the leaves blocked most of our view into the woods, so we assumed they had moved on. 

This morning, through an open window, I heard some strange high-pitched notes coming from the woods and - sure enough - the Merlin app identified them as the distinctive cries of those hawks. 

I wonder if they nested here after all. 

Day 17.195: Scarborough Marsh

While Exile #3 and Exile #4 were at their gig on Saturday evening, the rest of us went for a golden-hour walk at Scarborough Marsh.

These are some of the birds we saw:

Great egret, great blue heron, great egret (in flight), snowy egrets

Red-winged blackbird (top left and bottom right), song sparrow, eastern kingbird

Possible long-billed dowitcher, barn swallow, common tern, least tern

The least tern (identified partly by size, but mostly by yellow bill) and this last bird were new ones for my list.

Lincoln's sparrow - this was the only shot I got before it flew-off in keeping with its reputation for being rarely seen.

Also seen: a willet (but not in the numbers we saw earlier in the season), a few killdeer and a huge flock of unidentified waders flying in the distance that disappeared completely when the turned one way and then stood out brightly against the background when the turned the other way.