Bird-watching in winter can yield delightful and unexpected results, as reports from readers have proved. A highlight over the past week includes a sighting of a varied thrush at a feeder in Etna.

Because it is primarily a Western bird whose range extends down the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California, finding this bird in Maine, or anywhere on the East Coast, is a rare event. Although it has been reported to stray occasionally this far east, it is by no means a common occurrence. Or is it? Could more of these birds be coming East that are just not being spotted?

The interest and vigilance of bird-watchers could help to establish this. The varied thrush is robin-sized, but beyond this any comparison to a robin stops. It is a striking bird with a blue-gray nape, back, rump and tail. Its neck and belly are a bright orange-yellow, and it has a wide black mask over its eyes, just beneath a thin stripe of orange. It has a thin black collar across its chest. Its wings are bluish-black with orange barring, and the outer tail feathers are white-tipped. Its diet consists of insects, earthworms, small invertebrates, fruit, seeds and acorns. It mostly forages on the ground in dense, low shrubs, but will visit feeders – as the family in Etna experienced firsthand!

Another uncommon bird that has shown up at an Orono feeder since mid-December was a red-bellied woodpecker. Its normal range extends into Massachusetts. According to an article in Bird Watchers Digest, it has been extending its range northward, possibly because of the availability of feeders.

Other sightings last week included a glaucous gull in flight over Brewer heading toward the Penobscot River. This large gull summers in Arctic Canada and comes to Maine only in winter. It may be spotted with a flock of herring gulls, and, with the smaller Iceland gull, would be the only gulls without black wingtips. The Iceland gull has a smaller, daintier beak than either a glaucous or herring gull.

Thank you to readers who have e-mailed sightings through the Fields Pond Nature Center. Sightings of common birds can be just as entertaining and educating as those of rare birds, and I intend to cover this theme in a future article. I encourage readers to e-mail observations of any interactions and behaviors among birds that they may witness, and any questions.

The Christmas Bird Count to Schoodic Point led by Fields Pond Nature Center director Judy Markowsky on New Year’s Day produced great sightings:

Seen while on Hancock Point:

3 red-necked grebes

4 horned grebes

10 mallards

225 black ducks

12 common goldeneyes

15 bufflehead

120 long-tailed ducks

4 common eiders

15 white-winged scoters

6 red-breasted mergansers

1 goshawk

1 bald eagle (adult, seen from east side of Hancock, near Sorrento side,

about noon)

8 black-backed gulls

120 herring gulls

3 ring-billed gulls

15 mourning doves

12 crows

6 chickadees

1 red-breasted nuthatch

30 starlings

2 tree sparrows

24 northern juncos

Seen on Sorrento Peninsula:

6 common loons

2 horned grebes

8 black ducks

10 bufflehead

20 long-tailed ducks

8 eider ducks

4 red-breasted mergansers

1 Iceland gull (2nd year, seen at lobster pound)

6 great black-backed gull

30 herring gulls

3 ring-billed gulls

15 mourning doves

1 hairy woodpecker

5 blue jays

8 crows

3 red-breasted nuthatches

40 starlings

6 juncos

Chris Corio is a Fields Pond Nature Center volunteer. Readers can send their sightings to fieldspond@juno.com.