During the heat of summer, one of the most enjoyable birding pursuits is at its best. The temperatures on land may be oppressive and the songbirds may have nearly stopped singing, but hop on a boat and head offshore about 20 miles or so and you’ll find a very different scene.

Here, the temperature will be more comfortable with winds to cool you further still. Though the birds may not be singing, but the trade off is that here, offshore, you can see some bird species you may not otherwise see, visiting from places so far away it’s hard to believe.

These are birds that rarely come close to shore, typically referred to by birders as “pelagic” species. Whale-watching boats are generally the easiest ways to see them (although occasionally birding groups will charter a boat for a day just to focus on finding pelagic birds). There are whale-watching boats up and down the coast of Maine, from Kennebunkport north to Bar Harbor and east to Eastport and Lubec.

But we are fortunate in our area to have whale-watching trips offered right here out of Boothbay Harbor. With these modern, comfortable boats, it’s possible to get well offshore pretty quickly, and most boats have naturalist guides on board who know how to identify whales and birds.

Of course the sea is a fickle environment; the weather and sea condition can change drastically from day to day as can the food supplies that the birds rely on for survival. Pelagic seabirds must be able to move long distances quickly to find their food. The distances some of them move are mind boggling! Great shearwaters and sooty shearwaters, roughly crow-sized birds with long wings, nest in the Southern Hemisphere in the sub-Antarctic during our winter season, which is summer in that half of the world.

To escape the brutally cold conditions of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, these birds make an eight-thousand-mile journey to arrive along our coast in summer. The Wilson’s storm-petrel, a dark, swallow-sized bird with a white rump, makes a similar journey; in July and early August, our offshore waters can swarm with dozens, even hundreds of them flying low over the water.

There are some species that breed in the Northern Hemisphere that can also be seen. One of the favorites is, of course, the Atlantic puffin, which breeds over on Eastern Egg Rock off New Harbor. Puffins that are out foraging for fish for their young are sometimes seen on whale-watching trips, although the best chances for finding that species up close will come from taking a specific puffin-watching trip to Eastern Egg.

The Leach’s storm-petrel is another common species that breeds on offshore islands along the Maine coast. It visits its breeding colonies only at night (presumably to avoid predation from gulls) but can be seen feeding offshore during the day. It looks very similar to the Wilson’s storm-petrel but has longer wings and a different flight style. Immature northern gannets often show up in numbers off our coast in summer. That species looks something like an oversized gull with a huge, long bill. Northern gannets nest in Canada but take four or more years to reach breeding age so sub-adults roam around during summer and are joined by more and more of the pure-white-with-black wingtip adults as the summer progresses.

Summer in Maine is short, so get out on the water and enjoy some of our exotic birds of summer!