From the plane
Credit: Doug Hitchcox

This year’s Matinicus Island CBC in Maine was held on Monday, Jan. 3rd (view my first blog post about the Matinicus CBC for more background). I was pleased to be joined by the adventurous trio of Charles Avenengo (a Rhode Island based birder who has been spending more time in Maine recently), Mike Fahay, and Doug Hitchcox. It was a beautiful day out on the island though the wind was strong when we arrived and continued mounting throughout the day so by afternoon it was difficult to find much but we did succeeded in rounding up a respectable 45 species. Looking back at the records, it turns out that this is the second highest tally we have had since I started the count six years ago. That year we found 49 species and since then the number of species has varied between 37 and 42. Over the six years of the count we have now documented 74 species.

White-winged Crossbill
Credit: Doug Hitchcox 

This count is always highly variable in what we find for landbirds both in respect to which species and how many. The count of Dark-eyed Junco, for example, has varied from a high of 107 to zero as we had this year. In single years we have had Yellow-rumped Warbler, Snow Bunting, White-crowned Sparrow, American Pipit, Turkey Vulture, Red-winged Blackbird, Brown-headed Cowbird, Pine Grosbeak, Common Redpoll, Northern Mockingbird.

Our counts of most waterfowl and waterbirds were down considerably in most cases this year, probably more because of the high winds which either made viewing difficult or had the birds moved to places out of the wind somewhere so we couldn’t see them as well. The most notable lower counts from the past couple of years were in Common Eider, White-winged Scoter, and Long-tailed Duck.

The crew (from left): Jeff Wells (me), Charles Avenengo, Mike Fahay, and Doug Hitchcox
Credit: Doug Hitchcox

Some of our most notable findings were the repeat from last year of a small number of Harlequin Ducks (4—last year we had 5), a surprising 4 Northern Flickers, two Peregrine Falcons, an apparent “Nelson’s” Gull (Glaucous-Herring hybrid) that we had initially identified as a Glaucous as it quickly flew by but a photo by Doug seems to me to indicated a hybrid, a few Dovekie (6 distant), 48+ large distant alcids that were likely Razorbills, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, a single Winter Wren. Count firsts (along with LBBG) included a single Horned Grebe and two Bonaparte’s Gulls.

Hybrid Glacous/Herring Gull
Credit: Doug Hitchcox

We saw only a single Blue Jay which is not unusual for this count but could not muster up the pair of White-breasted Nuthatches that we have sometimes found in past years at one feeder. I am hoping to post a few of Doug’s photos and maybe some video on my blog later today or tomorrow. The full list is below.

Peregrine Falcon
Credit: Doug Hitchcox

The crew, take two
Credit: Jeff Wells

Here are a few links to previous posts about my Matinicus CBC adventures from 2006, 2008, and 2009. You might also find interesting this article in the Kennebec Journal written by my friend and reporter Travis Barrett about the Matinicus CBC, which he attended in 2009, as well as this article I wrote for Audubon about the Matinicus CBC.

And Charles, Doug, and Mike, please let me know if I have forgotten anything and feel free to add any further comments!

Jeff Wells