Moose Cove Birding HikeII

My blogging is getting put on the back burner, both because I'm working a LOT - I was cleaning the bunkhouse and doing woodcock surveys around other work - and also moving from the Fire House to my own trailer, which I'm sure I'll like much better, now that the summer techs and interns are starting to arrive.  And our weather has been so rainy that I don't want to take pictures.  So most of my pictures are work related, and show the culverts I'm locating and the places where we need to remove fallen trees from out trails.  So, while I'm having a good time working, it doesn't make for a good story.

However last weekend I got to take part in the Down East Birding Festival. I helped with two refuge hikes and and a children's activity about how birds are adapted to eat different foods and live in different habitats. But I also got to take a hike to look for birds. It was a fabulous hike, and we got to see a lot of birds, at least for this area. But one of the things this Texas wasn't expecting was that we have to identify most of our passerines by their calls. The birds are mostly hiding high up in the now leafy trees. And the few birds we did catch in our binoculars were far away and moving around quickly in dim light - the day went cloudy soon after we started the hike and I got rained on just after I got back into my car. We did find 26 species.  If you are interested, click here to see my e-bird list.

Our leader, Eric, explaining where we'll be walking

The clouds were coming in quickly - this trip started at 6:30 A

Our first stop was this beautiful bay

Looking over the bay for seabirds

We got long looks at this cedar waxwing 

We traveled through a wide variety of habitats from open fields to deep woods and including hardwoods and evergreens

I thought this fiddlehead of Cinnamon fern was gorgeous

There is a loop here - we didn't do this part as it is harder to do

I love this new growth - but last Sunday I was helping with a Rhodes Scholar hike in rain showers so didn't have my camera while I was watching a porcupine sit at the end of a branch and feast on the little brown cones. 

We are walking along a ridge and getting views of the cove to our right 

A view across the cove

I loved the tenacity of this tree - I made a hook, crawled across the ground, and finally got to a place where it could grow in the sun.

Another of the many habitats through which we passed 

We finally reached the rocky shore of the cove - but across the way was a clammer on a mudflat

A herring gull flies off with breakfast

A white variety of a pink lady slipper

This hike was led by Erick, a staffer at Maine Coast Heritage Trust.  Click on the link to find all their properties and perhaps go explore some of their special areas. I'm planning to use this link for to find more hikes.

I  stopped to write this for Sunday's blog on the way to Acadia National Park. I didn't know they were also having their bird festival  this week but found out in time to register to go on a sea bird tour on Saturday.  And I brought my bike and hiking poles and plan to try and fit in a lot of activities between Thursday and Monday, in spite of a prediction of partly cloudy to cloudy skies and showers for all the days I'll be playing.  Stay tuned.