At the rate winter is going, this year’s Down East Spring Birding Festival may be conducted on snowshoes. Washington County has had so much snow, residents are leaving the house through the second-floor window.
Nonetheless, festival season has already started, and the early bird gets the worm. Registration is open for Maine’s three premier festivals. Don’t ask me for my favorite. Like children, each is different but all are precious. The reason for haste is that each has special trips, including boat trips, which are popular and fill fast. Several van excursions quickly reach capacity, too.
The Wings, Waves, Woods Festival is the youngest event, and I can’t believe it is now 8 years old. They grow up so fast. Deer Isle and Stonington host the three-day affair, which happens over the middle weekend of every May. Island boat trips are a big draw, with visits to Swan’s Island, Seal Island and Isle au Haut. The two trips to Seal Island mark the earliest puffin excursions in Maine each year. The island also is the second largest pupping ground for gray seals in the eastern United States and contains the largest colony of nesting great cormorants. There has never been a dull trip there.
Wings, Waves, Woods comes at a time when the flood of migrants is beginning to wash over Maine. However, many of our winter birds are still lingering, because their arctic breeding grounds are still frozen. Most purple sandpipers and many sea ducks will be gone by the time the other festivals begin, but they’ll be present for this one.
One week later, the Down East Spring Birding Festival spans Memorial Day Weekend. I went on the first walk of the first festival 12 years ago, and I haven’t missed one since. I make no secret about my love for birding in the Cobscook Bay area. Quoddy Head State Park, Campobello, Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge and numerous land trust properties are within minutes of each other. I guide for the festival, and my annual instruction to the organizers is: work me hard.
Fortunately, it can’t be done. It’s not hard work when you know where all the birds are. Take the North Trail in the Edmunds Division of Moosehorn. I start from the entrance, knowing that there will be a chestnut-sided warbler in the bushes on our left and another ahead on the right. A northern parula is customarily in the tree above the parked van. Just ahead on the left, a blackburnian warbler should be at the top of the tree, and a black-and-white warbler is going to be singing about 50 feet beyond. Down the hill and around the corner, an alder flycatcher will be at the top of some shrubbery, and a pair of common yellowthroats will be at the bottom.
After two more minutes of walking, we will have racked up Nashville and magnolia warblers, several black-throated green warblers, a couple of American redstarts and our first bay-breasted warbler. By now, it is time to check on a spruce grouse that has chosen the same mating spot in the woods for the last couple of years. I’ve named him Ed. The road continues for 2.5 miles, and we’ll stop for predictable northern waterthrushes, yellow-bellied flycatchers, palm warblers, boreal chickadees and a variety of other songbirds.
The Acadia Birding Festival enters its 17th year with a big list of walks, rides, boat trips, lectures and marquee speakers. Typically, birders can circle the first weekend of June on the calendar for this festival, but because Memorial Day comes so early this year the 2015 Acadia Festival runs May 28 to 31. This festival has earned such a national reputation that it has outgrown Acadia National Park. Day trips along the coast and a post-festival trip to western Maine for the rare Bicknell’s thrush have extended the reach of this event.
Two featured speakers will draw crowds. Kenn Kaufman arguably is one of the most famous birders on the continent. He has written a dozen books and his own series of field guides. He is the only person to have received the American Birding Association’s lifetime achievement award twice — what, did the first award wear off? David LaPuma is the Director of the Cape May Bird Observatory, and he excels at instructional presentations.
Festivals are a great way to see a lot of birds and develop skills. Get online and sign up soon. Regardless of which festival you attend, I’ll see you there.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. Bob developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. Bob can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.