Patience is key for fall birding Walk along Penobscot productive

Spring birding is guaranteed to be rewarding and exciting – migrants have returned from their wintering grounds and are conspicuous in their breeding plumages and songs. Autumn and winter birding can also be as rewarding if you are patient.

This was so last week as we birded along the Penobscot River in Old Town. Memories of summer faded against the starkness of the bare trees and gray, somber day. We were hoping to catch a late heron, maybe some early goldeneye ducks or scaup. We hoped we’d see the resident bald eagles or the Cooper’s hawk that has hung around town in winters past.

At first, everything was silent and still. Even the chickadees were absent – until we stopped at a quiet backwater of the river to listen and wait.

In the distance we heard the muted calls of a barred owl, which seemed even more beautiful and haunting on this late autumn day. A flock of perhaps 20 snow buntings circled above the opposite shore, then headed north toward Orson Island. The calls of chickadees reached us, and before we knew it they were all around us, flitting through the forest.

As we turned to leave, a large finch-like bird flew into a tree nearby. As my attention was drawn to it, I suddenly realized there were five others of its kind right above our heads, busily eating the seeds of a green ash tree. A closer look revealed them to be pine grosbeaks.

“The Birds of North America” calls them “large, unwary finches,” which certainly was accurate, for they seemed completely unconcerned with our nearness. This trait, along with their habit of taking long, stationary rest periods, has also earned them the Newfoundland colloquial name “mope.”

I was later able to get similarly close views of them as they gorged on the fruit of crab-apple trees on the University of Maine campus. Because the fruits were too big to be snapped off and swallowed whole, the finches had to consume them bite by bite – a messy affair. It was comical to see the sticky fruit smeared all over their beaks.

These birds are an irruptive species, normally inhabiting subarctic and boreal forests from eastern Canada to western Alaska. In years of food shortages, whole populations of the birds have been seen as far south as Kentucky. So far, many have been reported throughout the state of Maine in the last couple of weeks.

What I especially liked about these robin-sized birds with their heavy, conical bills were their voices. Their songs and call notes were soft and muted, even from nearby, and had a sweet, whimsical quality to them. This, along with their companionable nearness, made our late fall birding walk a special event.

Chris Corio’s column on birds is published each Saturday. Corio, a volunteer at Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden, can be reached at fieldspond@juno.com