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.
.JPG)
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!
Hi @birdbanter Beautiful photographs and excellent post.
"Phaethon aethereus": A sea bird famous for its long-distance migrations between the North and South Poles makes the equivalent of three round trips to the Moon in its lifetime, scientists have found.
The Arctic tern makes a return trip of around 44,000 miles from pole to pole each year, flying between its breeding grounds in Greenland in the north and the Weddell Sea on the shores of Antarctica in the far south, in a lifetime spent in perpetual summer.
Small tracking devices attached to the terns' legs have allowed their movements to be monitored in more detail than ever before. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey found that the birds do not immediately head south from Greenland, but first spend almost a month at sea, in the middle of the North Atlantic, before continuing down the coast of north-west Africa.
Around the Cape Verde Islands, the researchers were surprised to find that about half the birds carried on south along the African coast while the rest crossed the Atlantic to follow a parallel route down the east coast of South America.
Have a nice night
I´m wishing you success and happinees.
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Awesome photography
Thank for the sharing post
Thank you so much My Dear steemit friend
Amazing photography of Tropicbird.lovely.
good post beautiful birds
nice article
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Nice Picture birdbanter ! :D
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A very nice photo of an interesting stuff that I've done everything I like
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good photos, and article about birds, greetings
:)
I like your bird pictures
I have never seen the haven. But you have introduced haven on earth here with your photography. I am surprised to see your photography. That's are really fantastic. You have introduced like haven on the earth. Thaks for sharing.
que hermosas fotos se ve que te apasiona ese maravilloso mundo de las aves me encantaron lo felicito