Lupine Time
We journeyed north back into the spring to the Acadia Birding Festival , despite my gardening injury and needing crutches to get around! The new green of the trees contrasts with the evergreens, but the star is the Lupine on the roadsides. We made our way past the viburnum, Russian olives and wild cherries while avoiding the huge 18 wheelers on the interstate 95 en route to Mount Desert Isle. Some favorite highway sights: osprey nests on high tension towers; a bald eagle at the top of a tree; egrets in a marsh, crows and red-tailed hawks perched.
We passed through Trenton’s avenue of flags, and arrived on Mount Desert Isle, where the lilacs and horse chestnuts are huge and healthy and blooming. Cottages (or are they “camps”?) have huge ferns as foundation plantings. At our first birding stop at Pretty Marsh, there was a rocky beach at low tide, and the surprise of a dozen crossbills in the wood.
At Mountain of the First Light: Stunted cherries and Rhodora canadense in bloom, and many Common Yellowthroats singing. Now called Cadillac Mountain, it is the highest point on the Atlantic north of Rio DeJaneiro!
On our walk with Michael Wood at Otter Point, the most common birds are black throated greens warblers and Northern Parulas, which we run after to catch at Mount Auburn Cemetery. They breed and spend the summer here. Yes, there is lobster and fish chowder here in abundance , but also guillemots in breeding plumage on Somes Sound out my window. I’ve barely got a glimpse of them through a scope off Gloucester! Highlights are the blueberry barrens of McPartland Hill, an eagle fishing in the Union River, the Labrador tea at Wonderland, the warblers in the oak tree over our porch, the squeeze of brown creepers at the Jordan Homestead.
I loved meeting and talking with the guides: Don Lima, a retired Game Warden from the USFish and Wildlife Service, Dan Gardoqui and Craig Kesselheim, educators, and Michael Wood, author of many Bird Observer articles on birding Mount Desert Isle. What acute hearing! Stellar guides and birders: Michael (#1), Craig (#4) and Don (#6) birders in Hancock County, Maine. They discuss the southern birds that have moved north: northern Cardinal, Carolina wren, Turkey vulture…becoming more common here.
No bird pictures because I couldn’t handle camera and crutches at the same time. We experienced warm sunny and cold stormy weather. Only one new lifer: alder flycatcher, but warblers in abundance!
Next time: Petit Manan, Schoodic Peninsula, more northern outings, more islands, more hiking!
Driving home: ox-eyed daisies opening, a sign of summer’s arrival!
