Mokka mit Schlag » Birding

Lately I’ve been learning about the Boreal Forest, a large area of Northern Canada (with small pieces extending into Maine and Minnesota, depending on exactly how you define it) that is the breeding grounds for billions of birds every year. (That’s not a made up number by the way. There really are billions that breed there.) For a long time the inaccessibility of the boreal forest protected most of it, but that’s beginning to change. They’re a number of pressures on it. One of the most significant is paper production, mostly for consumption in the United States.

There are several things you can do to help reduce the pressure on the Boreal Forest. The first is to unsubscribe from catalogs you don’t want. Instead of just tossing all the unwanted catalogs you receive in the trash, take a few minutes to call up the company and tell them you don’t want their catalog any more. The way I figure it, every catalog I unsubscribe from equals approximately one bird saved. (That is a made up number, by the way; but it feels about right.)
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This morning I arose at an almost leisurely 4:00 A.M. to accompany the ABA Bus B to Schoodic Point. Unfortunately it was raining; fortunately not too much to send the birds running for cover. I put on my waterproof boots and red poncho, and headed out of the bus into the rain.
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All the early morning field trips at the ABA Convention have completely kerfuzzled my internal clock, even more than usual. I woke up this morning about 3:00 A.M. even though the first workshop wasn’t till 8:30. However, at this time of year dawn starts breaking around 4:00 A.M. up here so I drove over to the Bangor City Forest, parked outside the locked gates on Kittredge Ave., and hiked in.
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This morning I got to sleep in till almost 3:20 A.M. before I had to get up to catch the bus for the ABA Convention’s Boreal Forest trip. We drove north from Bangor, almost to the Canadian border, before entering the Baskahegan Co.’s timber lands. Warblers abounded, as did the mosquitoes and other insects they were feeding on. Heavy DEET was a necessity.

I was hoping for some of the Boreal specialties: Black-backed Woodpecker, Gray Jay, and Boreal Chickadee. Sadly that was not to be. None of those species made more than brief appearances; and none of them showed up anywhere I was looking. (No one saw or heard a Boreal Chickadee at all; and only a few people caught fleeting glimpses of Gray Jay and Black-backed Woodpecker.) However our leader Mike O’Brien did quickly find and point out a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher, my life bird for the day. (Our Australian and South American visitors did better with between 10 and 20 life birds apiece. The prize, though, was taken by an American on his first birding trip who picked up 32 life species.)
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This morning before the conference workshops started, I followed a tip out to the Bangor City Forest. (No, that’s not a typo. Most cities have city parks; but in Maine, or at least Bangor, they have City Forests instead.) This seems to be a forestry research area situated around a landfill so there’s habiat for both forest birds and grassland birds. I only had about an hour to spend there, but it was productive. As soon as I parked outside the gate and stepped out of my car, I could hear numerous species singing. Almost immediately I picked up American Robin, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, and Red-winged Blackbird.
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This morning I took Donald Kroodsma‘s Singing Birds workshop at the ABA convention. During the course of the morning he let out one bombshell. “Unequivocally, there are two species of Marsh Wrens.”
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