Local birding report

Before lawns green up, and before fields and meadows come to life, many of the first signs of spring across Cape Elizabeth can be found in our tidal and inland salt marshes, wooded swamps, bogs, wet meadows and vernal pools. In 1990 the town adopted rigorous local wetland regulations that today serve as a model statewide for communities that value environment protection.

Of the total 30% of the town that is located in a Resource Protections District, 14% is located in RP-1 district and 15% of the town is in a RP-2 district which includes wetlands of less than one acre in size with poorly drained soil and regularly occurring wetland plants. Our future preservation efforts should consider enhanced measures to continue to protect our RP-2 wetlands from development as these natural places are birding treasure-troves and function as feeders to RP-1 districts such as the Pond Cove Brook Corridor.

A few notes from the yard and field over the last two weeks include, on the morning of March 16 my first Fox Sparrow of the season arrived in the backyard to scratch about. Fox Sparrows that pass through Cape are a rich reddish chestnut color. This is one of the few of our sparrows that kicks and scratches with both feet at once. Ornithologist Edward Howe Forbush once wrote of the bird, “ The Fox Sparrow is a bird of the lingering snow. It arrives in New England commonly in March, while there is still much snow in the woods, and may be seen along the edges of woodlands, working often in the thickets where the ground is bare, and scratching away as if for dear life.” These retiring sparrows are common to uncommon migrants that arrive every spring for a brief period across Cape, departing for the Canadian boreal forest or the far reaches of Northwest Maine by late April. Although still common, the North American Breeding Bird Survey estimates that Fox Sparrows population has declined by 51% between 1966 and 2015. On March 18 I noted seventeen Cedar Waxings and four Wood Ducks along Shore Road. As the Wood Ducks passsed over me one of the ducks gave a thin, high-pitched whistle call that caused the waxings to take wing from a tree below. Additionally, on March 23 along the Sawyer Road stretch of the Rachel Carson Wildlife Preservation I caught sight of a flock of tiny ducks feeding in the tidal marsh. With a wingspan of only twenty-three inches, the Green-winged Teal is the smallest dabbling duck in North America. The male ducks have a chestnut-colored head with a Metallic green streak behind the eye and a vertical white stripe on the side. Green-winged Teals have been recorded nesting in all Maine counties except Androscoggin.

On March 24 I spotted a lone American Tree Sparrow on the town green and on March 26 I finally caught up with the reported Brant geese foraging the choppy rising tide for eelgrass and auqatic vegetation in Kettle Cove. These handsome mid-sized geese are long distance migrants down from their breeding grounds in the central Canadian Arctic. At one point two flocks totalling twenty one geese came ashore, their pleasing ‘ruk-ruck and crronk’ calls carried across the cove.

Lastly, on the afternoon of March 31 along the tangles boarding Gull Crest and Runaway Farm, I came upon a male Ruffed Grouse. Of note, I had seen a Ruffed Grouse in this same general area two springs ago on March 26. Locally uncommon in Cape and known colloquially as “partridge,” this upland bird is about the same size as a crow. One good reason that a Ruffed Grouse would be in this particular neck of the woods is that there are stands of young Aspen Trees (between 5 and 20 years old) nearby that provide dense cover for protection, good visibility for predator detection and food. Once an Aspen tree reaches a certain age, it begins to produce catkins (dormant male flowers) which the grouse depends on for food during the early spring.