Birders report recent sightings

A recent weekend found many of Audubon’s best birders scouring the landscape and the Penobscot River for birds in the Bangor-Bucksport Christmas Bird Count. Audubon volunteer Jerry Smith fielded nearly 30 birders, assigning each to a territory within the 144-square-mile circle. Many more were watching their feeders.

That day, the entire river between Bangor and Brewer was iced in. All birders love to count birds along the river; Jerry Smith has to determine how many birds were actually there.

At least four birders were counting a big flock of gulls, visible from both shores. Most gulls were standing on the ice; a few were bathing in a hole in the ice. Careful scanning determined that most were gray-backed Herring Gulls and Ring-billed Gulls. The remaining dozen were Great Black-Backed Gulls. These are our common gulls.

One gull stood out from the rest – a treat to see – a first-year Iceland Gull. This all-white visitor with a black bill arrived from Greenland or Baffin Island to sit on the ice with the other gulls. Jerry determined that four birders had triangulated on the same gull.

Most gulls evolved as scavengers and predators of the intertidal zone. But gulls are versatile, now taking advantage of food that people leave, in Dumpsters, in fast-food parking lots, near fish processing plants, even in the Bangor Wastewater Treatment Plant. This young Iceland Gull undoubtedly learned where to find food in the Bangor area from the older Herring and Ring-billed Gulls.

Enough of gulls! Time to go up the Kenduskeag Stream to look for ducks. The moving water had not frozen over yet.

Upstream of the Valley Avenue Bridge we found a male and female Barrow’s Goldeneyes. Beautiful ducks, and rare in the East, they have come from north of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. They were diving actively for small insects and mollusks on the stream bottom. A female Common Merganser was sitting on a rock nearby, a lovely sight with her russet head, bright orange bill and white throat.

At the Court Street parking area we walked upstream to the pedestrian bridge over the Kenduskeag Stream. A large hawk with short wings and a long tail perched on a branch over the stream – a Cooper’s Hawk! Presumably a female – female hawks are larger than males. She was watching for pigeons to fly in or out from under the bridge. We saw signs of her recent success – a partial pigeon wing and several clumps of pigeon feathers on the path.

This was a day of slow birding for all birders on the count, with fewer birds than usual. But every birder finishes the count with a highlight or three. The memory of those highlights will keep them participating in Christmas Bird Counts next year, and the long, cold hours spent will be quickly forgotten!

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden, call 989-2591.