Birding with Friends

Our friends Carolyn and Wally (volunteers from Santa Ana NWR) are volunteering at a National Wildlife Refuge here in Maine and drove up today to see if we could find the Red-necked Grebe again. We didn’t find it but we did see some good birds. We had a nice lunch (at the Governor’s) then went out to the Christina Reservoir and Lake Josephine.

A new Maine bird for us was a female Blackpoll Warbler.

We also saw a moose (Moose count is now at 5).

Mark spotted this, hard to see, American Bittern:





[Extensive freshwater marshes are the favored haunts of this large, stout, solitary heron. It is seldom seen as it slips through the reeds. When alarmed, freezes with bill pointed up.]

Some of the other birds we saw:


Spotted Sandpiper


Song Sparrow


Mallard


Gadwall


Common Loon


American Wigeon

The bugs were out in clouds!


It's hard to tell but all the little black dots are bugs (thankfully, non-biting bugs).

You might also be able to tell that, part of the morning, the sun was shining! That makes about three days that we have seen sunshine.