The Wrack

Fog: welcome hydration after the heat wave. Lunch on the porch. Barn swallows, and a couple of trees, whip past incessantly. A vigilant starling keeps going to the gutter with a beakful of food and leaving without one. Two adolescent bluebirds perch on the sapling chestnut and its wire barrier, watching for bugs. I imagine it's their dad who stops while passing downhill, sporting colorful leg bands he probably got a few miles (not a few rods) away. A mockingbird moves in and out of the Sialia space without its typical confidence. To the west, somewhere along the swampy head of the Muskie Trail, cu-cu-cu, cu-cu-cu, cu-cu-cu, cu-cu-cu. The rain crow.

Doing a butterfly sit instead of a bird walk.

I was out on the salt marsh this morning  the sun-baked, no-shade Little River marsh  to learn a bit about Jenn Dijkstra's research and couldn't help but notice a number of winged creatures. The mosquitoes weren't too bad (they were worse in the woods on the walk down), but as soon as I reached the research transect an early green-headed horse fly sortied to my left shin. The menacing tabanid maneuvered around my counter-strikes, making several quick attacks before succumbing to an overwhelming force. I usually think of greenheads as a July annoyance, so I was unpleasantly surprised to have to battle this one.

When birder Brian Harris photographed a Barnacle Goose on the Moody marsh, he documented a new species for both the Rachel Carson refuge and the reserve. For the reserve, this would be species number 265.

I noted 132 species during 2011, but only 92 of the ones on our "99 common birds" checklist. These are the ones I missed:

1. Lesser Yellowlegs
2. Spotted Sandpiper
3. American Woodcock
4. Eastern Wood-Pewee
5. Great Crested Flycatcher
6. Red-breasted Nuthatch
7. Rose-breasted Grosbeak

The avian community at the end of March is not dramatically different than the one that has been around for the past few months, but behaviors have changed. The birds are getting noisier.

2010 was not a good year for piping plovers on Laudholm Beach, though the overall Maine population held steady. Maine Audubon reports that 30 breeding pairs fledged 49 young along the state's sandy shorelines, with beaches from Kennebunk to Fortunes Rocks in Biddeford being the strongholds this year, but Laudholm put up zeros for nests and young.

An update of the Wells Reserve bird list has been overdue for some time. Now it's done.

Download the latest Wells Reserve bird list

I fell short this morning. An unfamiliar song kept me following a skulker in the thick shrubs along the Barrier Beach Trail. Sweet sisiswit switchew ended up in my notebook. With a Chestnut-sided Warbler behind me and a Common Yellowthroat in front, I kept trying to convince myself this was an aberrant song from a resident, probably an inexperienced yellowthroat stumbling through its early attempts. Still, it was consistent, except for those occasions when immediately after finishing a song it would repeat itself once or twice as if mumbling an addendum.

It's a 20-year tradition: In each season of every year since 1989, birders from the York County Audubon Society have scoured the forests and fields, marshes and beach of the Wells Reserve, intent on counting all the birds they can see or hear in 3 hours. Teams spread out to cover four routes, never knowing what they'll encounter.

At yesterday's post-survey compilation, it was clear that the Muskie and Pilger trails were the hot spot. That's where most of the 127 warblers of 15 species were found.

Survey coordinator Joanne Stevens and data handler Nancy McReel have shared the full results from one of the birdiest quarterly surveys the Audubon team has done75 species.&