Our esteemed editor sent us a photo recently of a bird that he wondered might be a house finch. Alas, it was not; the bird in question was in fact a pine grosbeak. A far more uncommon…

You’ve got to love a bird with a name like “Bufflehead.” The Bufflehead, for those of you who don’t know, is a small (the smallest of our diving ducks), black-and-white duck that spends the winter…

With the beginning of a new year comes the start of another go at New Year’s resolutions. Losing weight and exercising seem to be annual favorites. 

Those are well and good, but here's an…

It’s not often that you receive a gift without knowing it. But a few weeks ago it happened.  The people of Quebec gave us (well not just us in Maine but in fact the people of the whole world), an…

We received an email last week from a young local birder who asked about the idea of doing a Christmas Bird Count in the Boothbay area. 

It occurred to us that many area residents might not…

East Boothbay reader Allison Barter recently sent in photos of a barred owl that was hanging around the yard, and it made us think that it was time to give a little space to one of our favorite…

We just returned from a vacation on the island of Aruba where, along with the warm weather, we enjoyed seeing many of “our” birds on their winter grounds. 

There were lots of the long-legged…

Even without knowing the full origins of the word “grosbeak” you can probably guess it refers to a critter with a large beak. And anyone who has seen any species of grosbeaks in Maine knows well…

On the way to drop off our son at school the other day, we made the sad discovery that our favorite bald eagle nest had disappeared from its high perch atop a stately old pine tree. The…

They appear about every two years. 

They come in groups, sometimes numbering more than a hundred, and may stay in backyards for weeks. They arrive without invitation and with no advance…

Just the other day we were driving down Route 27 toward Wiscasset admiring the red and gold autumn hillsides when a football-sized bird, its short wings in a blur, came bursting from the roadside…

It may be hard for the average backyard birder to believe, but the field of “hardcore birding” can be subdivided into extremely fine ranks. For example, there are those who love to study the…

“It’s just a sparrow.” 

Bird enthusiasts hear and use that phrase a lot this time of year. 

Every October here in Maine, we are inundated with sparrows. Just about every weedy field,…

The nights are getting chilly, the leaves are turning orange and yellow, and the kids are back in school. All signs of autumn. 

But for us, one of the most telling indicators that fall is…

A soft plaintive “puwee” echoed in from out over the water as a small group of swift-winged birds, a tad smaller than robins, came zipping in to land on the shore. With their mud-brown backs and…

Not long ago many people referred to them as wild canaries. Maybe some folks still do. We like to call them “potato chip birds.” But the official name given to these little yellow birds…

When most people think of the world’s great wildlife migrations they might think of herds of zebras and wildebeest crossing the African plains or the march of the emperor penguins across the…

A whimbrel is a large brown shorebird that's almost as big as a laughing gull, with a distinctive long, down-curved bill and black stripes on the head. Whimbrels nest in the tundra of Canada and…

Common nighthawks are fairly large birds, shaped like small falcons with long, sharply pointed wings. Despite their name, they are not closely related to hawks at all. And, sadly, they are also…

Coming back from a Fisherman’s Island tour last August, we noticed that there were hundreds of laughing gulls fluttering in the air above the spruce trees as our boat passed Spruce Point. We might…

The other day while we were out and about in our yard, our neighbor wandered over from across the street. 

“Hey, can either of you tell me what this is? It was in my flower garden.” He held…

Have you ever wondered why birds rarely sing in the winter? Why their songs coincide with the arrival of warmer weather, longer days and blooming flowers?

It’s nice to think that maybe, like…

Someone recently sent us an email about the robin nest in their yard. They also mentioned the eastern phoebe nest under their neighbor's porch eaves.

It got us thinking about less well known…