Doldrums.
It’s dead quiet, save for a few red-eyed vireos who never seem to know when to shut up, and the cooing of a few mourning doves who never seem to know when to stop making babies. We’ve reached that point in summer when birds see no point in singing anymore. Mating is over. Nestlings have fledged.
Even my bird feeders are hanging unloved. The flocks of finches, purple and gold, have dispersed so that they can raise their own families in private somewhere.
Meanwhile, my backyard chickadees and nuthatches eat mostly insects, spiders, caterpillars, and beetles this time of year, gleaning them from branches and bark. In fact, a family of chickadees just worked its way through my driveway, youngsters waggling their wings, begging to be fed a juicy caterpillar. It’s a good source of protein. They’ll switch to energy-intensive foods, like nuts and berries, as winter approaches. They don’t need me right now, if they ever really did.
I look forward to this season of doldrums with all the anticipation that I do a colonoscopy. I am basically a lazy birder. From Mother’s Day through the Fourth of July, bird songs tell me where everybody is. I don’t have to work too hard. But by the third week of July, the woods go silent. I’m bored.
Fortunately, this is Maine. The second half of summer is about to get exciting. I’m not sure there’s a name for it, but I’ll call it a “collision of birds.” Birds of the north are flying south. Birds of the south are flying north. Bearing in mind that the 45th parallel passes through the heart of Maine, we are halfway between the equator and the North Pole. In fact, somebody just pointed out to me recently that the 45th parallel runs through the rear corner of Rogers Market in my hometown of Hudson.
Shorebirds are already infiltrating our mudflats. In spring, they rush to their nesting grounds in Canada. Some go all the way to the Arctic Circle. They largely bypass Maine during northward migration. It’s a different story coming south. In August, Maine’s mudflats provide a bounty of tiny crustaceans and invertebrates. Shorebirds linger along our coast, fattening up for their continued journey. After spending several days in Maine, some will fly all the way to the southern tip of South America.
This spectacle peaks around the third week of August, when thousands of shorebirds gather on a single mudflat. Most of this peak consists of the abundant least and semipalmated sandpipers that pass through in a big wave. But as summer approaches autumn, other groups of less common shorebirds gather on these same mudflats. The overall abundance of shorebirds will decrease, but the variety of species increases into mid-September.
Meanwhile, if it is summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, what is it in the Southern Hemisphere? Right. Winter. The Gulf of Maine is now filling with birds that breed in the South Atlantic, who have fled their winter for our more hospitable summer waters. Most numerous of these are the great shearwater, sooty shearwater, and Wilson’s storm-petrel.
As these Southern Hemisphere birds come north, some of our northern breeders retreat from the Arctic and join them, and not always in a friendly way. Parasitic and pomarine jaegers are bullies, preying on these southern visitors by harassing them and stealing their food. The jaegers have bigger relatives that do likewise. Great and south polar skuas maraud the high seas. There’s serious drama offshore, much of which can be witnessed from one of our whale-watch boats.
All the while, our own Maine breeders are in the mix. Puffins leave their nesting islands in August, and merely wander out to sea. Their cousins, the razorbills, do likewise. Some North Atlantic breeders that don’t nest in Maine are also likely be in our waters in August. These include northern gannets, northern fulmars, and Manx shearwaters. Red and red-necked phalaropes can swarm in flocks of a thousand offshore, too.
As for my backyard birds, they’ll be invisible for the next several weeks, but I know their behavior will change again soon. Finches with their babies will again be mobbing my feeders. Hummingbird youngsters will slurp nectar. A few adult warblers will sing again just to give their fledglings an inkling of the songs they will need to know as grownups next year. Hark: I just heard a pine warbler and blue-headed vireo, doing exactly that. All is not lost.
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.