Outdoors
The BDN outdoors section brings readers into the woods, waters and wild places of Maine. It features stories on hunting, fishing, wildlife, conservation and recreation, told by people who live these experiences. This section emphasizes hands-on knowledge, field reports, issues, trends and the traditions that define life outside in Maine. Read more Outdoors stories here.
Stop the presses. A grey heron has been identified in Cape Elizabeth. Hundreds of birders have already rushed to view it in its adopted farm field. If it lingers, more people will go.
The grey heron is strikingly similar to our great blue heron. They are common and widespread throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, but very rarely seen in North America.
That makes sense. The Atlantic Ocean is a nearly insurmountable barrier. Birds that swim might make the jump. Northern birds occasionally leapfrog from Europe to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland. It’s exceedingly rare for a wading bird to make the crossing. One exhausted grey heron found its way to Canada in 2018 by landing on a ship 200 miles east of Newfoundland. This new grey heron is the first recorded visitor to Maine.
Or should I say, “gray” heron. I looked it up on eBird, and apparently we spell it correctly over here. The Brits incorrectly spell it “grey.” But then, the Brits also say the bird’s “colour” is grey. And the Brits also misspell “common loon” as “great northern diver.” Spelling is hard.
Let me be frank. I probably would have misidentified this gray heron. I would have passed it off as a slightly odd great blue heron, and thought nothing further about it. According to Maine Audubon, here’s how to recognize one of the rarest birds ever seen in Maine.
“Gray Herons have clean white on the wrist and thigh, where these feathers are rufous on Great Blue Herons. In flight, the white wrists are often described as looking like bright headlights on the bird. The neck pattern is also fairly distinctive, with more contrast on young Grays than you see in Great Blues. Proportionately Gray Herons are also smaller, with shorter legs (in flight the feet barely stick out beyond the tail, while you see more of the legs [the tarsus] on a Great Blue Heron), and a smaller bill that is not as “heavy” or long as on a typical Great Blue Heron.”
We’ll see what happens next. In 2018, a great black hawk astonished birders by showing up in Portland’s Deering Oaks Park. This tropical hawk held on for several months before finally succumbing to Maine’s frigid winter. It became so famous, Portland erected a statue in the park, commemorating the visit. The dead bird’s carcass was mounted, and it’s on display in the Maine State Museum.
People still talk about the Steller’s sea-eagle that first appeared in Maine’s mid-coast on December 30, 2021. This wayward raptor left its Siberian home range and wandered across the Bering Sea to Alaska, then down to Texas, and finally here. That bird is still alive, and living permanently in Newfoundland. It’s made a lot of money for the professional bird guides in the area.
I’m racking my brain, trying to think of what might be the fourth rarest bird seen in Maine. Candidates could include the tufted puffin that has been showing up along the Maine coast for the last several summers. That’s a species native to the Pacific Northwest. Its appearance in Maine is further evidence that the planet is warming. Arctic sea ice is not quite the barrier it used to be.
Melting sea ice also likely facilitated the passage of a yellow-billed loon that showed up in Portland Harbor in 2010. That’s another bird with a range limited to the arctic regions of the northwest. The last yellow-billed loon I laid eyes on was in Seward, Alaska.
At least the puffin and loon live on this continent. A little egret that wandered into Maine in the spring of 2011 doesn’t. This Eurasian bird spent several summers around Scarborough Marsh. Ironically, it was on Maine Audubon property when I stopped by to see it.
Little egrets bear a close resemblance to the snowy egrets found on this continent. They can interbreed, and as I recall, this one did. Every summer since then, hybrid egrets have been reported in the marsh.
I am in awe of the people who first identified these very rare birds. Admittedly, nothing else looks like a Steller’s sea-eagle. It’s hard to misidentify a bird so big it could swallow a bald eagle whole. But the other rarities resemble species normally found in Maine. It takes a keen observer, likely someone with birding experience on the other side of the Atlantic, to recognize some of these interlopers. I’m not one of those people. I would have screwed it up.
