Rare sightings increase with fall migrations Dunlins visited Orono recently

The cold season is here and in birding circles, that means the prospect of exciting fall migrants and rare sightings. So far we have not been disappointed!

As I had written two weeks ago, red-bellied woodpeckers seem to be invading Maine. As of this writing, there have been more than three dozen sightings of this bird around the state – from Kennebunk to Orono, Roque Bluffs to Woodland. Thanks to Bill Sheehan in Woodland for sending in his careful spreadsheet tally of the sightings, which also included reports of several red-headed woodpeckers as well. Also thanks to all of you who wrote in to add your reports of this lovely woodpecker.

To answer some of your (and my own) questions as to how unusual the number of these sightings were, I wrote to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I received a reply from Dr. David Bonter, leader of Project FeederWatch, one of the lab’s several “citizen science” endeavors that has been in operation since 1987. He confirmed that red-bellied woodpeckers are indeed moving beyond their former range limit of upstate New York and Massachusetts.

“In Maine, we have 120 participants [of Project FeederWatch] reporting. Last season only a few red-bellied woodpeckers were reported; back in the mid-1990s, the species was not reported in Maine. While populations are still small in Maine, we do know that red-bellied woodpeckers are moving north,” he said.

Much of the information on bird movements and migration has come out of such projects as FeederWatch, from people who feed birds or do birdwatching as a hobby. That’s the beauty of it – anybody can make valuable contributions to science by sharing their observations. In today’s world, such information is critical in light of increasing threats to bird populations around the globe. To find out more about these projects, and others such as “e-bird” – which allows you to add your sightings to a national database – go to http://www.birds.cornell.edu/.

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On another note, recently my friend Ed Grew shared his observations of the last remnants of shorebird migration. He had visited Taylor Road in Orono and noted four species of sandpipers: pectoral, white-rumped, and solitary sandpipers plus one other that had special meaning for him: a dunlin – more specifically, three dunlins.

Dunlins are small sandpipers with long thin bills. In summer they sport beautiful breeding plumage: black bellies are set off by a light chest, flanks, and rump; their backs are covered by gorgeous rufus and black mottled feathers. Outside the breeding season it changes to a nondescript gray, and often the primary clue to identification is that they tend to gather in large flocks, often numbering in the thousands. However, since Ed only had three to work with, he explains how he came to his identification:

“They kept pretty close together, they were greyer and black-legged, but their long, down-curved bills clinched the identification as dunlin. I was really delighted with this sighting as dunlin are not usually found inland,” he said, adding, “It really helped to have four species together to compare size, color and behavior. And the birds allowed fairly close approach repeatedly so I could assure myself of these identifications.”

Dunlins breed in the Arctic and winter along the east coast of the United States down to the Gulf Coast and South America and also along the west coast of Canada, stretching down into the United States and Mexico, including Baja California. They are not reported to winter along Maine’s coast, so it would be a treat to see them here at all, never mind so far inland. However, it makes sense they’d stop at the Taylor Bait ponds, using them as a migratory stopover site to rest and refuel for their continuing journey.

NEWS bird columnist Chris Corio can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net