Local birding report

As daylight wanes and the weather turns unpredictable, late fall can feel like a challenge for birders. Yet this season offers something rare—a chance to slow down, sharpen our senses and deepen our skills. With fewer birds and muted landscapes, every field mark, call and behavior becomes a puzzle piece. And in Cape Elizabeth, the avian stage is never empty; it’s just waiting for us to step outside and tune in.

My limited notes over the last two weeks include, on the chilly morning of November 16 I spotted two female Hooded Mergansers in the Pond Brook Corridor flashing their warm cinnamon crests and on November 15 along Trundy and Dyer Points, several flocks of diving Harlequin Ducks, three Red-breasted Mergansers and a solo Black Guillemot. Also, Great Cormorants have arrived in solid numbers while their slightly smaller relative, the Double-breasted Cormorant, has since departed for warmer waters south.

The day prior, November 14 on Great Pond and from a distance I spied four foraging Ring-necked Ducks. I determined these smallish ducks to be Ring-necked Ducks because of their visibly prominent head shape and white ring around the bill. Other ducks of interest spotted around Cape recently include Northern Pintails, Ruddy Ducks, Gadwalls. American Wigeons, and both Greater and Lesser Scaup.

Lastly, and most notably, on November 17 around sunset along the upland section of Gull Crest I came upon a bird sitting high atop a leafless White Ash Tree. Its shrill chirps gave it away as I had heard this same call months back and recalled the Merlin app had stated at the time the call in question was coming from a Titmouse.

I quickly scanned the upper regions of the tree and spotted a smoke gray colored bird with white and black wings, an Evening Grosbeak! Almost as soon as I laid eyes on the bird its calling paused, just long enough for my eyes to be distracted by a tiny darting creature just ahead on the path, a female Common Yellowthroat! When I looked up again the Grosbeak was gone.

I have always felt that there is something about being in the presence of an Evening Grosbeak that stirs a sense of wildness deep within. Ornithologist and Civil War army surgeon Dr. Elliot Coues once stated, “This is a bird of distinguished appearance, whose very name suggests the far-away land of the dipping sun, and the tuneful romance which the wild bird throws around the fading light of day.”

New England ornithologist Edward H. Forbush stated upon first laying eyes on this special bird, “seen for the first time amid the snows of winter or against a background of darkling pines, these strange and beautiful waifs of the northland seem somehow out of place, as would some rare and singular exotic plant blossoming in a New England winter.”

True to its winter wandering ways, Hesperiphona vespertina does not stick around any one place too long. Originally a bird of the far northwest and unknown east of the Rocky Mountains before the late 1800s, this species expanded its presence eastward through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. What likely facilitated this expansion of the grosbeaks range was the planting of non-native ornamental berry trees.

In recent decades the eastern population of Evening Grosbeaks have declined by 92%, the steepest decline of any landbird in the continental U.S. or Canada. There are several reasons for this species' decline including boreal forest logging, disease, and lack of forest insects due to aerial spraying in the U.S. and Canada. This winter listen for the heavyset finches running patter of call notes, which can be sharp, warbled or sweet. You may just catch a glimpse of an Evening Grosbeak.