Today Kay and I joined our Maine birding friend Don Mairs, drove south to Biddeford, met a fellow WA birder Pete Walker from Sequim, and birded Biddeford Pool. This is one of the premier shorebirding areas in ME, and has seawatch possibilities too. Targets for the day were the Little Egret that has been seen in the area off and on for a few weeks, but we had no success on that attempt. Still, it was a drop-dead beautiful day and we got to see lots of east coast birds.
Best birds of the day for me were a first year Lesser Black-backed Gull, a long flyby of a Northern gannet at Biddeford Pool Beach, lots of Common Eiders, a Blue-gray gnatcatcher in a flock of chickadees and YRWA that swarmed in to Don’s owl-chickadee recording, and several good looks at Semi-palmated sandpipers.
It was really nice to bird an area Kay and I have been to several times from a local’s perspective. What I had thought was the “pool” is actually the area from East Point to the Biddeford Poll Beach, and the pool is a bid sandy tidal area accessed through Hill’s Beach.
Other cool things were a huge flock of at least 1500 Tree Swallows at the island by the pool, and finding a Marbled Godwit on the mud flats.