Fall always seems like a mysterious time when it comes to birds. The woods and fields are essentially silent of bird song. Only occasionally might you hear a short, high-pitched call, a sound typically given by birds flying high overhead or hidden in the thick, dark vegetation where they may seem impossible to spot.

Migration is in full swing by August, with birds from far away northern lands passing through night and day. Young birds hatched locally may be wandering around as well, a few still begging for food from exasperated adults. But most are now on their own, quietly and earnestly learning the ways of finding food before an inner stirring tells them to fly south.

With this mystery comes the surprise of a new bird, perhaps in your yard or town. Or perhaps even a new bird for your state!

Two lucky birders had exactly this latter experience when they discovered Maine’s first roseate spoonbill in Dover-Foxcroft last week. It’s been there ever since and has been seen by large numbers of excited birders.

Roseate spoonbills are really tropical birds, with a breeding range that includes most of South America and north through Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean, and just barely to the southern edge of the U.S. to the Gulf Coast and Florida. Spoonbills, like herons and egrets, are known to wander, especially young birds and sometimes adults whose breeding attempts earlier in the season failed. Their wanderings have regularly taken them to inland parts of the Gulf States and north to places like Arkansas and South Carolina. Only very occasional records are from farther north.

But lately it seems as though the number of birds with northward wanderings is increasing. And with this increase have come records from farther and farther north. In 2009, there was an incursion of birds, mostly in early summer, with one occurring even into southern Ontario.

This year the tally going north seems to be even greater. In fact, the number of roseate spoonbills reported to eBird in August north of a line from South Carolina to Oklahoma over the last four years looks something like this: 0 in 2015, 2 in 2016, 10 in 2017, and then exploding to 21 in 2018!

Interestingly, just a few weeks before Maine’s first roseate spoonbill was discovered, one was photographed just 15 miles from the Maine border, in Quebec (in St. Martin, north of Jackman).

A roseate spoonbill also found in August has been making headlines in Minnesota as the first-ever in that state. Birders have been thrilled to find birds this month also in Ohio, New Jersey, and New York (the same bird passing back and forth over the border), Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Iowa, and Indiana!

Although the spoonbill has a very unusual bill (as its name attests), the birds eat a variety of aquatic creatures including small fish, crustaceans, and insects—hopefully all things that these wanderers are finding even this far north. One wonders what happens to these birds that have flown so far north of their normal range as temperatures eventually fall. Likely, they begin moving south again until they find the warm climes (from Florida to Texas and south) that they prefer during the winter.

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular book, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Tilbury House) and the just-released “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao” from Cornell University Press.