South Shore Journal

A Mallard Flies Over Portland

Nobody ever goes to see "puffins." They go to see the puffins.  It's almost as if they're a family unit.  "We're going to see the Puffins" one says as easily as you'd say "we're going to see the Smiths."

Last weekend was our turn.  We'd called ahead and scheduled a visit, and set out to see the Puffins.

First, a secret.  When you're meeting people you never have before at 5:30 in the morning and will be spending the next hour in the van with them alone on your way to meet up with the greater group, as a trip leader you need to jump on every available ice-breaking topic you can to keep the conversation going.  By the end of four days, yes, there will be inside jokes to shoot back and forth, and if you can lay the groundwork during that initial ride, you'll be much better off.  So what did Nancy (whom, I did know well), Judy, Janet and I talk about?  Belted galloways.  Yes, cows.  We started pointing out out-of-state license plates, and I told the story of how David Ludlow and I had done the same on the way to Sapsucker Woods in New York in April.  David had even produced a typed list of all the states as a checklist.  When we saw our favorite cows, belted galloways, he suggested a cow list.  I said if we started counting cows, I was heading back to Massachusetts on foot.

We reached the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary intact, the bases of new friendships formed.  We joined the rest of the group and headed north, eleven attendees, me, and Ipswich River director Carol Decker in the lead.  Puffins, here we come.

The ride to Machias, Maine, is about six hours straight out.  We broke it up with a few rest stops, and then lunch at the Sea Dog in Bangor.  From there, we got onto the Airline, Maine Route 9, the quickest way downeast.  Somewhere along the way, many of our American crows had morphed into common ravens, in the shadows of the many osprey nests seen on the powerlines above.  From Route 9, we cut down route 193 through Deblois and into Cherryfield, the blueberry capital of the northeast. The blueberry barrens are where we normally stop to look for upland sandpipers.  Yup, look for.  For the second year in a row, we came up empty.  We also came into some fog, a theme for the early part of the trip.  We did find some interesting birds - a vesper sparrow, some savannah sparrows, singing hermit thrushes - but no uppies.

We also made a stop on Ridge Road in Cherryfield to overlook a very wet, swampy area.  We quickly found one American bittern, and then a second.  And yes, then a third.  The trip was off to a great start.

We got onto Maine Route 1 and headed further downeast, pulling into the parking lot of the Machias Motor Inn.  We offloaded our bags, found our rooms, and met out back in the fog to scan for bald eagles.  Got one!  Even in the fog.  We headed to Helen's Restaurant for dinner, and some blueberry pie.

Here's where the controversy began.  Helen's, which is known nationally for its blueberry pie, had only one piece left.  There were thirteen of us.  This was not good.  But, in a show of early solidarity among our birders (and one botanist), we ordered that piece and split it - twelve ways (Judy B., not Judy W. or Judith, doesn't eat pie).  The group had quickly started to gel, and we began reviving talks about Carol's proposed business venture of the 2006 trip, Grandma Lubec's Tasty Tails (chocolate covered sardines) and I threw down the gauntlet to challenge someone to brew a new beer, Puffin Pale Ale.  We laughed into the night, or at least until Carol announced that we would be opening Helen's for breakfast at 6.  Then we fell silent, looked at our watches and called for the bills.

Carol and I met in the parking lot under the heavy rain of Friday morning and decided to change the order of the day's plans.  We had hoped to hike by morning, and visit FDR's summer estate on New Brunswick's Campobello Island in the afternoon.  The forecast called for rain all morning, possible clearing in the afternoon.  So we headed for Campobello.  We were off and running at 7, and then again at 7:20.  One attendee had forgotten his passport in the hotel.  I tried not to embarrass him, only telling Carol by walkie-talkie that he had a moustache, was from New Hampshire and his first name was Len.

We drove through Whiting to Lubec, searching our usual eagle spots to no avail in the heavy fog.  In fact, we could barely see the Mulholland Lighthouse across the FDR Memorial Bridge.  We crossed that bridge, needling Len along the way, telling him how close he came to staying in Lubec, and making landfall in Canada.  We stopped at the visitors' center just across the bridge and loaded up on brochures (I suggested we visit Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park at Kozy Acres, but then, I had already been rebuffed in my attempt to get the group to divert to Scarborough, Maine, to meet Lenny, the World's Only Life-Size Chocolate Moose.  I should have learned).  White-throated sparrows and black-throated green warblers sang outside, a rabbit nibbled on the lawn, and I circled around behind the center to find a singing Swainson's thrush. 

We drove around the island a bit and ended up at the FDR Summer Home at Roosevelt Campobello International Park.  We were there early, before the house opened, so we birded.  When the doors opened, we all hit the gift shop, some of us took in the orientation film and house, and two of us took off on the trails.  I headed for Friar's Head on a beautiful forest walk that suddenly opened into a grassland.  And although the walk was relatively nondescript, birdwise, I did find a dead star-nosed mole.  I also got great looks at the Atlantic salmon pens offshore before hustling back toward the house to rejoin the group, meeting up with our botany lover, Bonnie, along the way.

From the compound we visited East Quoddy Head Lighthouse.  Nancy joined me on the up and down journey out to the lighthouse, even fogged in at a hundred feet away.  From East Quoddy Head we had lunch at Raccoon Beach, then visited Eagle Hill Bog, a sphagnum moss bog loaded with pitcher plants, sundew, bog cotton, Labrador tea, baked apple berry, bog rosemary and even one grass pink orchid, tucked under a wet spider web.  The fog, the rampant black spruce, the soft trilling of dark-eyed juncos and the occasional echoing song of the white-throated sparrow made for an unique atmosphere, one perfectly befitting a bog in the northeast in summer.

With thick fog continuing, we re-entered the U.S. at Lubec and took Boot Cove Road to Boot Cove Nature Preserve, with two goals in mind.  Last year we found boreal chickadees and spruce grouses on this trail.  This year, we called in the boreal chickadess, but only to audio distance.  They chose not to be viewed through the dense forest.  And there were no spruce grouses.  The fog proved to be a problem for the rest of the day.  We took coastal Route 189 back to Machias, passing through Cutler in an attempt to see the U.S. Navy's radio station towers.  No dice.  Back to Helen's for dinner, where we had two pre-ordered blueberry pies waiting for us, and Carol had some bad news.  John Norton, our puffin charter captain, wanted us at the dock in Jonesport at 6 a.m.  That meant leaving the hotel at 5 a.m.  That meant waking up at 4 or so.

We made it to the dock by 6:05, which was just fine, as John's deckhand hadn't arrived yet.  Bonnie showed off her stick-tossing skills playing with the Norton's black lab, Chip, running him through rosa rugosa and down onto the beach.  In a fit of excitement, Chip ran over to one of our group's bags, lifted a leg...and John started hollering.  "Chip, no!!!"  Too late.  We boarded the Chief for the twelve-mile ride to Machias Seal Island.

We had heard there might be three-foot swells.  We watched as they grew to six, seven, eight, maybe ten-foot swells (one of our gang said they would definitely be ten-to-twelve when she told her friends about the trip).  John held a steady course and we birded with one hand while holding on with the other.  We got everything - black guillemots, northern fulmars, greater, sooty and manx shearwaters, Wilson's storm-petrels, razorbills, puffins, common murres, a minke whale and a pomarine jaeger - and some even got seasick.  We never made it onto the island.  We stopped at the Puffin Store back in Jonesport and then headed for lunch at Tall Barney's.  From there we visited Great Wass Island, a Nature Conservancy preserve, locating two young Cooper's hawks in the trees.  On the way out we scoped another eagle and found a spacious bog overflowing with grass pinks, making the one flower at Eagle Hill seem puny and pathetic by comparison.  Poor thing.  Back to Helen's, more pie, and a Sunday morning walk-up notice for a 5:30 a.m. departure.

With some morning fog, but clear skies expected, we sought some ancient history.  On the road to West Quoddy Head State Park we pulled aside to visit a raised bog, and then climbed down onto the beach to see a cutaway of an 8,000 year old bog, all the way down to the clay.  We examined snail trails, which we likened to beach art, and guessed at the age of sticks jutting out from the eroding bog.  Onto West Quoddy Head, where we were there for the opening of a park (Len found an alder flycatcher as we waited to keep our interest up).  We walked the Inland Trail to the Bog Trail, where Ava, for the second year in a row, found a Lincoln's Sparrow, and collectively we homed in on a singing magnolia warbler.  We returned to the lighthouse for some whale-watching (minke, fin and humpback) and some group photos.

On the way out we stopped at one final birding place, picking up nesting Nelson's sharp-tailed sparrow.  Total for the trip?  We had no moose or bears, despite the numerous lucky rocks we picked up along the way, and 99 bird species.  Are you kidding me?  We couldn't find a cardinal or a catbird over the course of four days?  Could we live with this?  We had no choice.  Carol set out to find Route 192, hoping to find us a quicker way home, but took a wrong turn.

BELTED GALLOWAYS!!!  Standing right there in a field.  What were the chances?

We pushed southwestward down the coast of Maine, hoping for a broad-winged hawk overhead.  Through Bangor we rode, for miles and miles of highway, stopping occasionally for a restroom break or gas.  We crossed onto Route 295 to cut through Portland, and there, flying over the water, was the most beautiful mallard ever hatched in these United States, complete with the number 100 stenciled onto its back. 

At least, that's the way we saw it.

July 29 - Back to Birdland

It's been a busy summer.  Can I say that without sounding cliche? 

Here's my work schedule since July 11, the day of my last post:

July 12 - Birding Duxbury Beach with Sue MacCallum in the morning; lecture on Coast Guard history in Yarmouthport for the Trayser Museum of Coast Guard Heritage at night.

July 13 - In the office all day!

July 15 - Morning, led bird walks at the Jones River Village's Major John Bradford House Breakfast in Kingston, 7-12; afternoon program, All Around the Mouth of the North River, 1-3.

July 17 - Meeting in New London, Connecticut, at the Coast Guard Academy in the morning; in the office in Marshfield from 12-3; meeting with the South Shore Military History Roundtable, 3-4; Mayflower II crew training from 6-8 in Plymouth.

July 18 - Radio interview on WATD in Marshfield about one of my new books, Crime, Corruption and Politics in Hull at 7:10 a.m.; interviewed by Patriot Ledger on same topic in Weymouth, 10 a.m.; book signing at Simply Irresistible in Hull, 7 p.m.

July 19-22 - Puffins and Peatlands!  See my next post with pics.

July 23 - Mayflower II 1957 crew reunion from 6:30-10 p.m.

July 24 - Duxbury Beach trip to Gurnet Lighthouse.

July 26 - Birding on Duxbury Beach in the morning; lecture on the history of the Boston Harbor Islands at the Marshfield Council on Aging in the afternoon.

On Friday, July 27, I helped out on Friday Mornings Birders for the first time in a month.  On Thursday, we had found some oddities out on Duxbury Beach, including an immature black scoter on the bayside, just south of High Pines.  No idea what it was doing there (except for surviving, of course).  But thanks to the richness of Duxbury Bay, many birds that are not "supposed" to be there in summer do just fine.  Common loons and common eiders, many of whom are young males either too injured, late or stupid to fly north when the time came, are almost expected each summer.

Friday, we headed for a different beach, particularly the one at Third Cliff in Scitutae known as "The Spit."  The Spit is a protected nesting area for two Massachusetts endangered species, least terns and piping plovers; it's also a hot party spot in summer for boaters.  That leads to problems from time to time.

That day, though in the high 80s, was relatively quiet, with a boat passing by here or there, but no summertime revelry ashore.  It turned out to be a great day for watching the shorebird migration, and more.  The expected species were there, for the most part: black-bellied, semi-palmated and piping plovers, greater yellowlegs, semipalmated and least sandpipers, willets, sanderlings, ruddy turnstones, short-billed dowitchers and three red knots.  There were laughing, herring, ring-billed and great black-backed gulls and least and common terns.  And as far as the eye could see there were great and snowy egrets.

But beyond the expected there were some unusual sightings that made the day, if possible, even more pleasant (high 80s, yes, but with a light breeze blowing and cooling things off).  An adult little blue heron hopped from site to site, usually dropping into ditches out of sight.  When David Ludlow attempted to flush a saltmarsh sharptail sparrow he instead scared up an immature northern harrier.  In the meantime, I picked out two green herons.  Seconds later, he found a savannah sparrow.  Tree, bank and barn swallows swirled.

We left the beach and headed for the Scituate reservoir at Third Herring Brook.  With the water low due to evaporation in the July heat, the mudflats are usually exposed at this time of year, attracting a great variety of shorebirds.  We spotted four glossy ibises before even stepping out opf the van, and walked the old boat ramp to find killdeer surrounding us.  In the distance a stilt sandpiper drove its head beneath the surface of the water, probing the sifter mud for food, while in a nearby puddle, a pectoral sandpiper ran his own search pattern.  Across the water on the southern bank two spotted sandpipers occasionally disappeared from view behind some rocks, but never long enough for us to lose track of them.

To end the morning, we headed to an old favorite spot for shorebirds, on Chief Justice Cushing Road, known colloquially as "Behind PJs."  David had high hopes for a solitary sandpiper, but we ended up with a great horned owl instead.  OK, fair trade.

We ended the day with 65 species, deeper tans, and a strong craving for water.  But for David, the results came with mixed emotions.  Entering the day, he had totaled 96 species for the month (he's been riding a tractor quite a bit in July), needing four to keep his string of 100-species months alive and well.  He had forewarned his wife, Nancy, that if he didn't get those four species on Friday, he'd have to go birding on Sunday, an obvious ploy to get out of work around the house.  But because of the great day of birding on Friday, he ended up with a list total up near 105, and building bookshelves instead of birding on Sunday.

Can't win 'em all.

They're Heeeeeeeere....

It's no secret that we keep secrets.  Part of the fun of Friday Morning Birders comes from the clandestine nature of our destinations.  Most of the time - and I do say that with italics - we have a pretty good idea of where we're going when we leave the driveway of the North River Wildlife Sanctuary.  Sometimes we admittedly don't.  But that can be fun in itself.

This week we had a plan for Friday morning at 8:15.  We had three in fact.  Plan A, unknown to our attendees: spot the reported arctic loon off Manomet Point in Plymouth.  But alas, the sightings stopped mid-week.  Plan B, kept silent from our gang: find the red-headed woodpecker photographed in a town south of us.  Arrgh!  Nothing seen since Monday.  Plan C was it then.  We were headed for Third Cliff to watch some shorebirds.

But even the best laid plans of mice and birders can be interrupted.  We have access to parking at Third Cliff, a tightly congested little area, whenever the space isn't being used by the renter of a nearby cottage.  You guessed it - it was being used when we got there.  Onto Plan D.

We stayed within the borders of Scituate and headed for a well-known birding spot.  When we pulled up and parked, David Ludlow leaned over to me and whispered, "John, they're here.  Look up in the trees..."

OK, I thought, David's lost it.

But, trusting him as I do I left my scope behind and began to walk the trail, my eyes thrust upwards the entire time, a fact that made my uncoevered lower legs unhappy when we walked through a thorny stretch.  Common yellowthroats called, a female red-winged blackbird flew overhead with a bill full of goods for her young, and a distant red-tailed hawk soared.  Then, without warning, four great horned owls, an adult and three young, dove out of a tree and flew off, one to the right, three to the left.  We watched them fly into covered areas, mobbed and harrassed by seemingly every small bird on the planet.

We lined ourselves up to view one of the three, and I tried my hand (unsuccessfully) with the camera.  I got one beautiful shot of one of the young with his head behind a branch, one very distant, one poorly digiscoped.  It was just too far away, and, we'd decided, we'd already bothered him or her enough.

So we moved on.  We visited Black Pond Bog, where the annual Fourth of July wildflower show is already taking place - rose pogonias (do I dare mention wildflowers again in this blog?) and grass pink orchids - and where we go once a year to refresh our memories about pitcher plants and sundews.  We also struggled with a triller in the woods, one that sounded like a worm-eating warbler, but we finally settled on it being a pine warbler.  By the end of the day we tallied sixty species of birds, those few wildflowers, nine eastern cottontail rabbits, and one masked shrew under a log.

But that was just the start of the weekend for me.  On Saturday, I welcomed Dr. Robert Thorson of the University of Connecticut to the North River Wildlife Sanctuary to talk about his book Stone By Stone and the history of stonewalls in New England.  Our group had a wonderful time walking the grounds and discussing the geologic formation of the stones used in our many walls, how to read local history from them, and where stonewalls fall in the realm of historic preservation.  On Sunday morning I awoke at 5 to lead a beachcombing walk at Plymouth Beach, and at 1 p.m., I'll be leading "Birdlife and History of the Plymouth Coast," from the Cape Cod Canal on up. 

Sunny and 75.  Get me outdoors.