by Seth Davis
On Saturday the 27th, MYBC was lucky to be offered to represent our club at the Maine Spring LIVE event at Gilsland Farm in Falmouth. Marion spent a lot of time and effort to set up our booth which turned out really great! We had a lot of interested people stop by to see what the club has to offer and we were happy to be given this opportunity to promote MYBC. The young birders had a lot of opportunities to go on bird walks, see live animal shows, and interact with other nature-focused organizations around Maine.
As much as we would love to talk about club promotion, the more important question is, how were the birds!?! Right off the bat we were given the pleasure of seeing a Pileated Woodpecker working a tree not too far from our booth! It was a very patient bird that let a lot of us get within great photo distance (see below). Right then we knew it was going to be a good day. Admittedly, it was difficult to keep track of birds because the club was pretty split up throughout the day, with members going on bird walks or to the shows, however our booth was right next to a set of feeders which provided some excellent opportunities to see who was coming in! From our nice comfy chair we had a lot of the regular visitors, Black-capped Chickadee, Chipping Sparrows, Downy/Hairy Woodpeckers etc. We also got some great views of a Pine Warbler and Brown-headed Cowbird that would stop by pretty regularly. Out on the walks we saw a lot of great birds like an American Kestrel, extremely close views of Wild Turkey and multiple Song Sparrows. The cherry on the ice cream was definitely a great view of a LITTLE EGRET!!! This is an exceptionally rare bird for the U.S. but Maine has been lucky enough to host it (quite possibly a pair) for the past 4-5 years with it always returning to Gilsland Farm! This eurasian visitor was ID’ed for the first time this year on Saturday and it was awesome that we got to see it!
After the walks and as the event began to die out, Seth and River got the opportunity to go down to the “vaults” of Maine Audubon to look at specimens and try to learn a little more about how Maine Audubon operates. It was a fun experience! All-in-all this event was really fun and we look forward to being a part of it next year!
