Day 19.210: At the beach (part 2)

Some more birds from Wednesday evening’s nature group visit to South Point beach.

Piping plover

Semipalmated plover

Sanderling possibly (we definitely saw one)

Piping plover chick

So cute!

Ruddy turnstone

Ruddy turnstone

Ruddy turnstone

Great black-backed gull

Rung-billed gull

American herring gull

Day 19.209: At the beach (part 1)

The middle of our nature group outing on Wednesday evening was at South Point beach. We didn’t get very far having arrived on the sand as there was so much to see from right there.

The teen just right of center with the dark bill is a Forster’s tern. The rest are common terns

Common eider

Black-crowned night heron flyby

Black-crowned night heron

Part of a large crèche of common eider chicks

In the foreground are two young common terns either side of a roseate tern

Common tern

Common tern

Common tern

Common tern

Day 19.207: At Great Pond

Our nature group gathered this evening in Biddeford Pool. We started and ended with a view of Great Pond. Here is some of what we saw there (in the dying light):

There are two black-crowned night herons in this photo

Glossy ibis (later we saw 40 of them in this pond)

Choke cherry

Great egret

Great egret

Double-crested cormorant

Glossy ibis

Snowy egret and great blue heron

Snowy egrets

Eastern kingbird

Sunset clouds

Day 19.202: Wetness day

Our nature group was due to meet on Wednesday evening this week until the weather forecast (for rain) caused a reschedule to Tuesday. 

Well, it didn’t rain on Tuesday…until we’d all walked well away from our cars and then it rained hard enough for us to get very wet. We spent some time looking at trees both while sheltering under them and afterwards.

We also saw a few wet birds:

Double-crested cormorant 

Mallards 

Great black-backed gull 

Canada geese

Great cormorant

American goldfinch

Great black-background gull

Day 19.197: Puffins

Early this morning I headed over to Boothbay Harbor with my friend J to take a 9 am boat trip. The trip is a double-header promising both puffins and whales. 

For the former, we headed to Eastern Egg Rock, one of the handful of islands where Atlantic puffins regularly nest in Maine, and we were not disappointed. 

We saw several puffins carrying fish back to young in burrows on the island. 

Immature