An Adventure with Chris and Alex
Our Wildside Birding Tour “ME: Mountains and Coast June 2026” began by meeting the guides, Chris Brown and Alex Lamoreaux at the Bangor airport hotel, the Aviator. We also met the twelve other birder participants. We immediately loaded up into two vans and headed out for our first hotspot, Essex Woods, not far from the airport.
Here we saw forty-one species of common eastern birds, and while the other birders were very pleased with the sitings, we were not as excited. It was then that we realized that these birders were mainly from western states and had rarely or never seen many of the species that we take for granted here in Wisconsin. That meant that most of our birding would be the same as it was at home. It still gave opportunities for photography.
We got back in the van and someone reminded Alex that we needed to eat lunch. We stopped at a filling station and foraged for out of hand fare. We loaded up into the vans with our lunches and headed for Camden, stopping at a few spots on the way.
When we got to Camden we ate lobster at a lovely harbor-side restaurant. There were old fashioned sailing vessel moored in the harbor. They looked old, built of wood, with tall wooden masts and canvas sails. The number of ropes coming off of each master was staggering. One of the larger ships was docked near the restaurant and appeared to be an excursion boat. What a show it would be to watch the sailers at work with all those lines. We took a walk around the harbor and saw the lobster boat, the Periwinkle, that would take us out on the ocean the next morning. It looked too small for sixteen birders plus the crew.
June 2nd, 7:30 am, we boarded the Periwinkle, starting the first leg of our pelagic tour. Dad was prepared with a patch behind the ear. We found no ginger. candy to bring so went without. So far, so good. We left the harbor and circled around a few tiny rock islands, watching the seabirds.
Chris spotted the best bird of the tour! A Thick-billed Murre! Chris’s eBird comments:”Floating with a Black Guillemot at (43.9075480, -68.8853019), close to where checklist is plotted. Smaller murre with thin white line at gape of mouth. Basic plumage with a white throat; likely an immature. Good spring for them in Maine. Photos.” My photo was out of focus but still showed the bird.
We finally started seeing the bird we came for: the Atlantic Puffin. We had driven to Maine in 2024 for this bird but didn’t see it. Here we saw a whole colony of Puffins!! They nest in burrows on the rocky islands. Also nesting were Double-crested and Great Cormorants.
We saw six species of terns. These were hard to tell apart and difficult to identify, especially at a distance. The guides are experienced and can easily tell them apart. We had Common Tern, Forster’s Tern, Least Tern, Arctic Tern, and Roseate Tern for smaller terns, and Caspian Tern for large terns. The Least Terns did not come close to the boat.
Other Seabirds included Common Eider, Common Murres, Black Guillemots, and Razorbills.
The ride was pretty bouncy but Dad did great. The guys who ran the boat were friendly and helpful. In all the pelagic trip gave us five life birds! The remainder of the trip was on land.
The next day started at Starbuck’s for breakfast. This Starbuck’s had an old flooded quarry right next to the parking lot. And this quarry had a nesting pair of Peregrine Falcons. Alex got them in the scope and made this video of the female feeding the chicks.
We stayed near Portland, visiting natural areas nearby. One of our most difficult sparrows to find (and ID) is the Saltmarsh Sparrow. Nelson’s Sparrow is so similar to Saltmarsh Sparrow that it used to be considered the same species. We have searched for this sparrow on every one of our eastern trips and failed to find it. Alex helped us see the field marks that separate the two.
We birded the shoreline and saw the adorable Piping Plover.
Day 4 was all common Eastern species. Nice but nothing exciting.
Friday we were in the van at 5:30 am. The destination was Mt. Washington, New Hampshire to look for the Bicknell’s Thrush and the Black-backed Woodpecker. As luck would have it, the only road to the top of Mt. Washington was the site of a road race on that day. So we went to the next mountain over.
We needed high elevation to get the two target species. So we stopped to grab the usual gas station lunch and started up the mountain. We got to the top at 7:22 am and birded a rocky gravel road for nearly eight hours. At the top was a series of seven wind turbines. They made the sound of an airplane overhead but without the engine.
Alex’s description of the route- “From (Highway) 26 to turbine facility, and back. Starting at 1,361ft and climbing to 3,265ft elevation at the entrance to the turbine facility. Focused on the higher elevations first, and later slowly cruised the road up and down, listening out the windows. Distance is one-way.” The red marker shows the highest point of our route. The pale spots on the map are the wind turbines.
This was the most difficult day of the tour. There were no restrooms or benches, we just hiked up and down sections of the road all day. We did get good looks at the Black-backed Woodpecker and the Gray Jay as well as a number of warblers. The biggest disappointment was not seeing the Bicknell’s Thrush. We heard it several times but it wouldn’t show itself. We can count it as a lifer but it was not a satisfying bird.
We were all happy to climb into the van and drive to the next city for our overnight stay.
Saturday took us to Essex County in Vermont. Here we saw a variety of eastern birds. Nothing exciting for us but the people from the western states were seeing a lot of birds for the first time. We returned to New Hampshire, birding small spots along. the way. One spot had a Snowshoe Hare.
On Sunday we drove back to Bangor Airport. We stopped to bird along the way. We had good looks of the Black Tern who chooses inland lakes for nesting.
We arrived at the airport around ten am for our late afternoon flight. The flight to O’Hare was delayed by an hour and we only had a short layover before our flight to Milwaukee. But, after running to the gate of our connecting flight, we found it had been delayed also. So a lot of hurry up and wait. Fortunately our car was in the Milwaukee airport parking ramp so the final leg of our journey was easy. It’s nice to be home.