by Marion Sprague
It is hard to beat May in Maine—everything is greening up, the warming temperatures, and the BIRDS! MYBC headed to check out the warbler activity at Evergreen Cemetery. While not the most warblerey (I may have made that word up), we had a great walk all the same.
We started out at the Duck Ponds, with a pair of drake Wood Ducks sitting on the edge of the island. We all got great looks with lots of camera shutters clicking away. There were Mallards spread throughout all of the ponds. We noticed that the ducks were mostly males. It became more obvious why when a female Mallard flew in only to be pursued relentlessly by multiple drakes. We also picked up our first warbler of the day here—a Yellow Warbler! As we were getting ready to explore the trail along the backside of the large pond a Black-crowned Night Heron flew by. We were able to locate it again very well camouflaged in a tree. It was striking how well it was able to blend in!
We then moved down the road toward the brush piles and picked up our second warbler of the day, a Black-and-white creeping along one of the tree trunks. As we headed down the hill toward the power line cut, we hit a little pocket of activity and picked up 2 Eastern Phoebes and a Hermit Thrush. We saw our first few White-throated Sparrows here kicking around the leaf litter—little did we know the show they had in store for us!
We went a little off-trail following a trail that cuts through the powerline cut. Here we picked up a Ruby-crowed Kinglet that gave us nice looks foraging in the low bushes along the trail. We could hear several White-throated Sparrows calling in the woods to our left. As we continued down the trail we stopped to admire an Eastern Phoebe sitting low in a dead tree along the ground. We noted a few White-throated Sparrows…then a few more…and a few more…our count kept climbing—10, 20,30…40!!! We decided that we might not break our record for 70 species like we saw on our trip to Evergreen in 2021, but we just might see 70 of one species today!!!
We decided to back track along the trail and head further down the road along the power line cut. A few young birders aw a peep flying pretty high along the tree line. We were never able to make it out, but agreed that it was one of the larger shorebirds. Sometimes you just have to accept that you won’t get the full id and move on to the next bird. We headed next along a trail through the woods that leads back toward the brush pile. Here we heard the unmistakable yet distant song of a Winter Wren.
As we worked our way back toward the ponds we kept our eyes peeled for “promising lumps” in the trees hoping to spy the Great-horned Owl or their nest. We never did. However, we heard our first Ovenbird of the day. It was doing a variation on the usual teacher-Teecher-TEECHER call so it took us a few minutes to really pick it out. We were rewarded with a very brief look as it popped out on log along the trail. Here we encountered our second large flock of White-throated Sparrows. Much like the first time, they just kept crossing the trail in front of us—10, 20,30…we hit 70 White-throated Sparrows!! To add to our excitement a Merlin flew overhead as we made our way back to the ponds!
Before we headed to the Junk Pond, we spent a little more time birding the pond edges. Good thing too because we got another warbler to our list when we heard and then spotted a few Northern Parulas. We also spotted a Swamp Sparrow flitting along the pond edge. The Junk Pond itself was pretty quiet, but we did get to see a Downy Woodpecker excavating a nest hole!
While not the number of warblers we had hoped to see, we had a great outing! Check out our full eBird checklist here: https://ebird.org/me/checklist/S109213350
Keep a lookout for our next trip announcement for June 11, destination TBD!
