Seal Island Today and Red-Billed Tropicbird Yes

Red-billed Tropicbird Phaethon aethereus seen today at Seal Island.

Today I woke up first at 12:30 AM to hear a pair of Barred Owls calling and hooting just south of the camp where I’m sleeping on the porch. Next I awoke at 4:45 AM to hear a woodpecker working. It turned out to be this Pileated Woodpecker. PIWO have a special place in my memory banks, as they were the species Kay and I saw in the parking lot at the Everglades Entrance Ranger Station in 1987, and that was the day I first started birding. This guy was working in a Red Oak tree in the driveway here at camp.

Male Pileated Woodpecker Hylatomus pileatus

This was all preliminary as the task at hand today was to drive the 2 ½ hours to Stonington, Maine where my brother and sister-in-law and I took the Puffins and Pelagic boat trip out to Seal Island. Seal Island is a seabird breeding island in Penobscott Bay, and is the place Atlantic Puffins were first reintroduced to the coast of Maine, after they had not been known to breed there for over 100 years. This is a great success story, and was the first of several successful breeding locations off Maine today. The boat ride was on a fairly small boat that looked like a repurposed lobster fishing boat. There were 10 paid customers plus the captain and a mate. Seal Island is not nearly as far off shore as Petit Manan that I visited and wrote about recently here on #Steemit, so we did not get to see any tubenoses nor any whales. The hoped for target species was a Red-billed Tropicbird that has spent summers in the Gulf of Maine for the last 13 years, and at Seal Island for at least the last 6 years. Nobody has any idea why this bird comes here, as they are primarily a bird of warm Pacific waters, rarely seen in the Atlantic off the southern east coast of the U.S., but not this far north. This bird was the photo star of the day.

All of the other expected breeding alcids were also seen, and two species of terns, Common and Arctic were seen too. I’m going to keep this post fairly short as I’m again tired, and may post some more photos tomorrow.

Common Murre Uria aalge

Atlantic Puffins. Fratercula arctica I learned that in the Gulf of Maine this species, which elsewhere nests in burrows, here nests in crevaces in the rocks. The islands here are granite, with shallow grassy tops, and burrowing would not be possible. It is some sort of adaptive behavior that works here.

Raxorbill. Alca torda

Nesting Great Cormorant. Phalacrocorax carbo Both Great and Double-crested Cormorants breed on Seal Island.

Until next time, good birding. Steem on!