Birding Notes

Reflections on birds and other wildlife on the edge of a southern woodland

Friday, August 07, 2009

Acadia National Park


On a five-day visit to Acadia National Park in Maine in late July, birding wasn’t our main focus. Most of our time was spent exploring the park – our first visit there – and biking on some of the 45 miles of wide, beautiful carriage roads that wind through it. But we took the scope along and enjoyed the birds we encountered along the way – most notably for me, Black Guillemots and Great Black-backed Gulls along the shore, Common Loons in quiet lakes and ponds surrounded by forest, and Hermit Thrushes singing in the woods in isolated spots along the trails. We also saw Common Eider, two Bald Eagles, and several Osprey, and it was fun to hear the songs of White-throated Sparrows and the calls of Golden-crowned Kinglets and Red-breasted Nuthatches – winter birds for us in Georgia – in their summer homes.

Unfortunately, we were just a few days too late to see the Peregrine Falcons that nested on Precipice Cliff. Park rangers still had scopes set up in the parking lot below the cliff, but the young birds were no longer staying close to the nest, and the popular Precipice Trail had been re-opened for use by hikers the day before we arrived. Although we stopped by three times, just in case, the falcons had not been seen on those days, and we never saw them.

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