I never thought I would complain about perfect weather, but here it goes. One day each spring, my birdathon team known as The Cardinal Sins takes on a mission to find as many different bird species as possible in 24 hours. OK, 20 hours. We’re wusses. The team is accustomed to rain.
In 20 years, we’ve seen more rain than Noah.
But not this year. May 26 was a sunny, beautiful day, neither cold in the predawn darkness nor unreasonably windy later. It was perfect. Naturally, we had our worst score in years.
2:15 a.m.: Our foursome assembles in Old Town, already 15 minutes behind schedule because of an incorrectly set alarm. By 2:45 A.M., we have our first bird of the day — a whippoorwill on the Stud Mill Road in Milford. Minutes later, I have my first mosquito bite.
3:45 a.m.: We need an owl. The Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge is infested with northern saw-whet, barred and great horned owls, but we’ve been searching for an hour and have not heard one. The whole point of starting a birdathon in the dead of night is to find owls. We are getting skunked. Shortly after 4 a.m., a barred owl takes pity on us and calls weakly in the distance. But by this time, the horizon is brightening and the warblers are singing. We are in trouble, and the sun isn’t even up yet.
4:30 a.m.: The score is 23 birds and four arguments. Arguing about route and timetable is kind of our thing. We need a Swainson’s thrush. They like singing early, but we’ve heard none. It turns out, they were late migrating this year. It would be another week before I would hear one.
8 a.m.: We are up to 63 species — not bad but not good. We are getting many of the expected birds, but we are missing some uncommon birds we commonly find, and we are missing a few rarer birds known to be in the places we are looking. We head to Bangor City Forest, desperately needing to find six new birds for the day’s list. We find three. The Canada warbler, Lincoln’s sparrow and northern waterthrush are right where they are supposed to be, but six other likely birds are missing. Sullenly, we head for Essex Woods in Bangor.
11:30 a.m.: Jackpot. At Essex Woods we get most of our target birds effortlessly. Sora and Virginia rails are in a calling contest when we arrive, easily heard over the highway noise. Northern rough-winged swallows can be tricky, but a pair buzz us. We’ve missed Baltimore oriole before, but not this time. The most exciting discovery is a trio of short-billed dowitchers loafing on a log — the first I’ve ever seen there. Things are looking up.
Then — down again. We miss green heron, hooded merganser and willow flycatcher. We want to have a hundred species by noon but we are stuck at 83. By 1 p.m. a turkey vulture is only enough to get us to 90, as we turn toward the coast.
2 p.m.: We get lucky in Steuben. Through a spotting scope, we spy a mixed flock of least and semipalmated sandpipers. Black-bellied plovers roost on a distant rock. A pair of lingering buffleheads paddle aimlessly in the bay. Over the next half-hour, we add common tern, surf scoter and a pair of lingering long-tailed ducks. Most buffleheads and long-tailed ducks have flown north by now.
2:30 p.m.: We finally reach a hundred species — a feat we had achieved by noon the year before.
5:30 p.m.: We throw away whatever shred of a plan we have left and stay a little bit longer on the coast. Our original scheme would have taken us into deeper woods to look for forest species, but we are too late. The best we can do is circle back toward Bangor in hopes of grabbing some birds we’ve missed earlier. We scoop up wood duck, ring-necked duck and pied-billed grebe along the way, but by 6 p.m. we are only at 114 species.
7 p.m.: We snag white-breasted nuthatch and eastern bluebird at Fields Pond Audubon Center but miss pine siskin and scarlet tanager.
8:42 p.m.: We’re in total darkness behind the BAM bookstore at the Bangor Mall. A bird calls “WHIT.” I ponder a moment and turn to the group. “Do you know what makes a ‘WHIT’ call note like that? A willow flycatcher.” Whereupon it sings and removes all doubt. We end the day at a measly 117 species.
Bob Duchesne serves as vice president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley Chapter. He developed the Maine Birding Trail, with information at mainebirdingtrail.com. He can be reached at duchesne@midmaine.com.