Birds returning in Maine; N.H. numbers unclear

PORTLAND – Blue jays, dark-eyed juncos, tufted titmice and other feathered visitors are flocking to feeders in Maine, but where are the New Hampshire birds?

In the fall, Audubon centers and bird food stores in the Northeast were flooded by calls from anxious bird-watchers wondering why the usual flocks apparently had disappeared.

Naturalists theorized that nuthatches, cardinals, mourning doves and other birds had a bumper crop of preferred wild food sources in Maine and New Hampshire.

In Maine, veteran bird-watcher John Cole of Brunswick said he can’t keep up with the demand for food by returning birds.

“I have more than 100 goldfinches at my house, usually there are 30,” he said. “They can clean out my four feeders in one morning. There are more blue jays than normal, too.”

The picture is not as clear in New Hampshire, where the Audubon Society of New Hampshire is asking participants in the annual Backyard Winter Survey to be sure to take good counts on Feb. 10-11 to “get a clearer picture of what’s really happening with our winter bird population.”

Becky Suomala, the society’s winter survey coordinator, said that “even a lack of birds is important to report. An absence of birds, or the presence of only one or two species, is still valuable information,” she said.

The survey will help confirm whether the birds left back yards for the abundant woods, she said.

Information in the survey, she said, will enable biologists to compare numbers of geographic distribution of species “which will give an indication of how well these birds are surviving the winter,” she said.

In Maine, the National Audubon Society conducts the count in one day sometime between Dec. 14 and Jan. 5. Volunteers fan out in a 15-mile radius to conduct the count.

This winter, the bird-watchers spotted 172,674 birds, up from 164,173 last year and the 15-year average of 140,953.

Most of the birds that frequent feeders were also more abundant this year, with the notable exception of the chickadee, Maine’s state bird.

Chickadee numbers generally don’t fluctuate much from year to year, but this year volunteer counters saw 1,614 fewer.

An analysis by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y., found fewer chickadees at some feeders in the Northeast, but that it was not a universal phenomenon.