Hey tweets, Just got back from the icebox of Maine, where I traveled on
business last week. Maine birders have their own bulletin board
(maine-birds at mainebirding.net), and I had asked them for advice before I
headed out. In return, they asked me to report what I found on my trip. I
thought all you tweets might like to read about my trip, too. Please see
below. - Connie, Seattle
csidles at isomedia.com

Dear Maine birders, I want to thank all of you for being so very helpful to
me and my husband when we visited your beautiful state last week. Many of
you took a lot of time to help us by giving us tips on where to find our
target bird: the purple sandpiper.

Alas, we did not find one. I'm beginning to think this bird is going to
become our newest bete noire. I tried pretty hard to find it the last time I
was back east (in New Jersey), and all I got then for my pains was a twisted
ankle, which I got by falling in-between the cracks of a jetty.

Our miss this time also involved a jetty. We were advised to hike out along
the jetty at Rockland, where apparently purple sandpipers hold regular
conventions every day. We did the hike in the howling winds of Thursday,
when I had to hold my knit ski hat on my head with one hand to keep it from
flying off.

Do you ever get the feeling when you're doing something stupid that the
locals are standing at the windows with curtains twitching while they stare
at the crazy out-of-towners? "Hey, Maude, come and look at these crazy
people. You won't believe what they're doing."

Well, that's how I felt on Thursday. I think the only birds I saw on the
long slog out to the lighthouse and back were one bufflehead, one
red-breasted merganser, and a herring gull. I hope you will pardon me for
saying so, but I could more easily have seen these birds while sipping a
latte in a cozy dockside restaurant right here in my hometown. Ah, the
pleasures of birding.

Actually, my husband and I enjoyed ourselves enormously on that jetty walk -
I guess it was the fun of surviving. We had even more fun the previous
afternoon, when we saw a little flock of great cormorants at Cape Elizabeth,
and a gorgeous black guillemot close in to shore there. Both of these were
life birds for us, which of course was a giant thrill. But I would have to
say that the hit of the trip was the common eiders floating around
everywhere. Nobody on Maine-birds mentioned them before we came out, I
imagine because they are as common as dirt out your way. I had seen one
before in my life, a lone male in winter plumage swimming about a
quarter-mile offshore in Puget Sound. This experience in no way prepared me
for the hordes of male eiders in breeding plumage, with their outrageous
green napes. We just couldn't get enough of looking at them.

In case you are interested, I have added a trip list of all the birds we saw
in our day and a half of birding (business took up the rest of our time,
darn it). Thanks again for your wonderful Maine hospitality. - Connie,
Seattle

csidles at isomedia.com

common loon
great cormorant
horned grebe
Canada goose
mallard
American black duck
common eider
black scoter
white-winged scoter
surf scoter
long-tailed duck
common goldeneye
Barrow's goldeneye
bufflehead
red-breasted merganser
herring gull
ring-billed gull
great black-backed gull
black guillemot
bald eagle
ring-necked pheasant
rock pigeon
mourning dove
hairy woodpecker
American crow
common raven
horned lark
black-capped chickadee
American robin
northern mockingbird
European starling
northern cardinal
house finch
house sparrow