Preparing for Campobello Island

In less than a month, Sharon and I will be vacationing on Campobello Island, N.B. A solid nine days of birding the former summer home of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, DownEast Maine and the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge.

Our schedule includes: October 6-10 at Campobello Island and October 11-14 at Mount Desert Island. Hopefully the weather will be prime, but you always risk having mother nature throw a few surprises your way when vacationing.

I would love to do daily blog entries while on our trip, but the cabin we are staying in on Campobello does not have internet service. If I do get a wireless signal while driving around the area, I will be sure to post on our birdwatching progress.

Here at the home front, I have busy installing a new computer system and have not had much time to go birding. My old reliable PC took a fit and could not be fixed. A new one was procured with all the bells and whistles, but more importantly, plenty of RAM and hard drive space with a Quad processor was the selling point for me. My workflow in Photoshop CS2 is a lot faster now, with no waiting for tasks to be performed. My weather station is back on the air at BiddefordWeather.com after being down for 2 weeks because of the computer issues. Finally, as of the time I wrote this article, I have read and answered all of my email that had been piling up. With a very busy week at work and the computer issues, this has been one week that I am glad to see go into oblivion.

We did get a chance to bird Granite Point this morning. Cloudy skies with intermittent showers did not allow for any photography. Thunderstorms could be heard in the distance somewhere over Saco Bay. During a break in the rain, a Broad-Winged Hawk buzzed a large flock of Whimbrels on the banks of the Little River. A few Snowy Egrets flew above the river, fighting a strong northeast wind. A stray Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, a few peeps and a bunch of Crows winds up our sightings at Granite Point.

Our next stop was Biddeford Pool, where we spotted approximately 80 Snowy Egrets and 9 Great Egrets feeding in the nearly empty Pool, along Mile Stretch Road about 200 yards before Hattie’s Restaurant. A very large number of unidentified shorebirds were also present. Further along, near Eastern Point, several hundred Double-Crested Cormorants were on the islands just off shore more than likely staging for southerly migration.

It is a good day to curl up at home, watch some TV, and make some Country Style Ribs in the crock pot. Bon Appétit!

Happy birding!

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