Greater Portland Sightings

[Nathan Hall]

There has been a nice push of spring migrants throughout the week. There were huge numbers of warblers in the Greater Portland area on Monday the 16th. I believe that has already been mentioned. They were still around by the time I got to Evergreen Cemetery in the afternoon and there were moments when it was like standing in a warbler tornado.

This last week, it seems my birding time was spent either at Evergreen Cemetery or taking my students for birding walks. At school I've been having my students go through the eBird Explorers: Biodiversity Detectives curriculum from The Cornell Lab Ornithology. And this last week, we spent a good bit of time outside collecting data on the birds around our school. 

One quick anecdote from last week, after spending time studying images and sounds of the twelve most common birds reported in Falmouth during May, a few of the students came to me and said, "What have you done to us? Everywhere we go we keep hearing Chipping Sparrows, American Goldfinches, and Northern Cardinals. We knew there were birds around before but now that we know their names we can't help but identify them. How do we stop hearing them?" 

  

Here is my list of birds I was able to see this past week that were new to me in the Greater Portland area. Anything listed from the Falmouth High School Fields Hotspot was first found by a student of mine and then id'ed by me. And the dowitchers were a surprise, as I had never seen dowitchers in the Greater Portland area. There was a nice flock of them with a flock of Black-belleid Plovers along the Fore River near the airport around mid-tide one morning.

 

Swainson's Thrush (16 May 2022, Falmouth High School Fields)
Red-eyed Vireo (16 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)
Bay-breasted Warbler (16 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)
Wilson's Warbler (16 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)

Blackpoll Warbler (17 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)
Olive-sided Flycatcher (17 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)

Eastern Kingbird (18 May 2022, Falmouth High School Fields)
Black-bellied Plover (20 May 2022, Fore River Trail/Hobart Street)
Short-billed Dowitcher (20 May 2022, Fore River Trail/Hobart Street)
Eastern Wood-Pewee (20 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)
Scarlet Tanager (20 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)
Mourning Warbler (22 May 2022, Evergreen Cemetery)

Be well and good birding

Nathan Hall