Local birding report

October is a busy month for birds across Cape Elizabeth. We have winter residents now arriving, migrant songbirds and shorebirds are still trickling through from further north, the breeding season residents have departed, and off course birds from outside their normal range, referred to as accidentals or vagrants may show up As for observations over the last two weeks, the delightful stretch of weather starting on the first of the month brought a solo southbound Magnolia Warbler and not one but four Eastern Towhees to our yard.

Towards dusk two males appeared from the tangles to join to two females foraging under our seed feeders. A very large sparrow-like ground bird from the finch family, the “Chewink” as it was once called spends most its time in the thickets. The Eastern Towhee is a bird of special concern in Maine, and over the last fifty years the species’ population has seen an alarming decline.

The following day my son and I spotted nineteen Sanderlings and seven medium sized, stockier shorebirds with stubby bills (Black-bellied Plovers) dining on marine worms along the wrack-line towards the far end of Crescent Beach. Although quite plain looking in non-breeding/winter plumage, this plover’s summer attire includes a striking jet black belly and face against snow white.

Interestingly, the Black-bellied plover is a sentry of sorts when in groups of other foraging shorebirds. The bird’s shy nature and quick to sound the alarm mentality also allowed it to stay away from eager market hunters in the heyday of shorebird hunting and remain common when others specie numbers plummeted.

The autumn Yellow-rumped Warbler migration phenomenon along our coastlines stretched well into the second week of October with thousands of these tiny gems blanketing the maritime forests and shrublands of Crescent Beach State Park and Two Lights State Park.

Ducking into one of the picnic nooks we were surrounded by sharp chek calls and fluttering, sallying warblers in every direction. Ornithologist Edward Forbush once wrote that “when they take wing again and wend their southward way, clothed in modest vesture, each little bird retaining, however, a yellow spot just above the upper tail-covers, by which, whenever his wings are spread or lowered, he discovers his identity to those who know his secret.”

On many of the early days of October the fall inchworms delicate lines of silken threads glistened throughout Robinson Woods as kinglets and creepers darted about.

On one particular outing I spied six different types of warblers, including a single Cape May Warbler and two Blackburnian Warblers high up in an old White Birch and six male and two female Black-throated Blue Warblers foraging within a lush fern grove.

Later in the afternoon on October 5 I flushed a woodcock from a boggy area on our property and counted five singing Blue-headed Vireos.

In the second week of October along the Spurwink Marsh I recorded seeing a Belted Kingfisher, a first of season Northern Harrier, a single Lesser Yellowlegs, eight Great Egrets, two Great Blue Herons and one Snowy Egret.

Other observations include significant numbers of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and Ruby-crowned Kinglets passing through. Regarding Sapsuckers, I saw at least one bird every day throughout the first eleven days of the month, in some days between three and five birds, mostly immature.

As for Ruby-crowned Kinglets, these frantic little foragers full of chattering musical notes have also been very abundant, more so than in the past five fall seasons.