Patch Birding: Foreside Estates

My little family moved back to Maine from DC in September 2018 and rented a two bedroom apartment in a complex in Falmouth while we looked for a permanent home. I was born and raised in Falmouth and knew about the apartment complex before we moved into it; called Foreside Estates, it had a reputation as sort of a way-station for families in transition. It's nickname was "Divorcide Estates."

I did not have huge hopes for many birds during my morning and evening dog walks, but things were actually pretty lively. I should have expected as such, considering Foreside Estates is on a pretty good piece of land.

That's the complex at the top, just to the left (north) of Route 1. To the south is Maine Audubon, my employer (oh man I'll miss that commute!), and to the left of them both is the mouth of the Presumpscot River, which drains from Sebago Lake into the sea, just on the other side of this peninsula to the right. The presence of this tidal river meant there were good numbers of birds flying over the Estates. However, there's no actual viewpoint of the water from anywhere on my dog walk except for one tiny, very important sliver, which I'll get to in a bit. 

Here is a closer map, with my usual dog-walking route in red. I wouldn't do the whole thing every day, but parts of it every day. 

In yellow are some numbers indicating good spots. Here's a little breakdown.

1. A nondescript corner of the complex, between a couple of dumpsters, with a weedy edge and a small ash tree. I didn't give this area a second glance until one snowy morning in February when eight Common Redpolls were just hanging out at the base of the ash. Redpolls are pretty uncommon and hard to come by in Cumberland County, and so this was exciting. I spooked an American Woodcock out from under that ash a few months later. Good corner.


2. Speaking of Woodcock, I was treated to an incredible mating display here out front of the tennis court on April 1. With the chain-link fence and parking lot in the background, and the whole scene lit by an orange street lamp, it was a pretty surreal scene. This is not where woodcocks are used to displaying. But, circumstances be dammed, these birds had work to do, and I respect them for it.


3. Easily the best bird I ever saw from Foreside Estates I saw from here, Point 3. It's a fairly insane story, actually. So, this is a little road that goes down a hill to some sort of utility substation or something. It's not owned by the complex, and we're not actually allowed down there (the utility roped off the road, I think after some people were going down there to, like, smoke weed or make out or something teen-y). But it's the only place to get an actual look at the wetland marsh, and from certain vantages out onto the open water of the river. The woods on either side of the road down the hill were the thickest around, and good for migrant warblers in the right season. One of those seasons is spring, and in the thick of spring migration -- May 15 -- I did something I never do on these dog walks: brought by binoculars. So, I am walking around and there are a couple good things around, and I get to the top of the hill here above Point 3 and look out at the tiny sliver of shoreline visible across the bay. I put my binoculars up and look at a flock of gulls on the far shore. One of the gulls is huge. Is that...is that a pelican?? I think it is! White Pelicans are super rare in Maine! I know that the bird will be much easier to see from Maine Audubon property down the way, so I turn around and hustle back to the house to drive over there. As I'm halfway back I get a text from Maine Audubon's ED Andy, it's a picture he's taken about 10 minutes before on the other side of the peninsula while he was on his morning kayak, and he says "Hey is this a pelican?" It was! He had spooked the bird up off an island and watched it fly into the bay, where I miraculously saw it! So, I cruise over to Audubon and march down to the river overlooks, but no bird. Bogus. BUT, a couple miles inland, my colleague Doug was leading a free bird walk at Evergreen Cemetery (like I said, it's spring migration) and his group looks up to see...a white pelican! Three Audubon staffers were pretty much the ONLY people in Maine to see this individual, and we saw it in three different locations. Good times.


4. Uhh ok phew no really good stories here, but this is where I got good looks at Cape May Warbler in migration. That's it.


5. And uhh this is where there are woods for like Ovenbird, and Black-throated Green Warbler etc. 

That's about all! In the 10 months I lived there, I saw 92 species. Not bad. That's for the memories, Foreside Estates, but I've already started my new list here in Cumberland.

New Patch Record

I know you don't care about the few species I see on my daily dog walks, but screw you, I've got a dog that I need to walk and I may as well look at birds while I do it.

TONIGHT I SET A NEW PATCH RECORD WITH TWENTY-GODDAMN-FOUR SPECIES.

Reminder: I walk my ten-year-old dumb awesome dog Gibson (most) evenings after work up The Yards Park along the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, DC.  As I've covered before, I count birds when I leave my apartment building on South Capitol Street, past Nationals Park, along Yards Park up the Anacostia River to the dog park, then down along the Navy Yard to where the USS Barry (recently!) was located. Then I turn around.  Technically, I am counting birds on more than The Yards Park, but I don't care because screw you I don't care.

I didn't expect much out of this afternoon. It was drizzling, like it has been for the past frigging forever out here. I left the house in the rain, and the birds weren't cooperating for the most of the walk. Starlings, Fish Crows, Grackles, and House Sparrows at the stadium. Ospreys nesting in their typical spot. Robins in the little yard thing. Six species before the boardwalk does not a record-breaking walk make.

Even after the dog park - usually a hotspot - I was expecting a typical 15-18 species walk. A Common Yellowthroat on the slope was nice, but there were no good sparrows -- the recent Swamp Sparrow, Gray Catbird, and Eastern Towhee were gone -- and not much good habitat left.

But then things picked up. A pair of Goldfinches in the small tree near Due South was a rare spotting, and signaled a crazy run of good birds. An American Crow, rarely identifiable along the river, called as it flew overhead.  Then, a little bird in the birches by the parking lot, where I always expect to see birds but never see a goddamn thing: a Black-and-white Warbler! New patch bird!

Immediately afterwards I saw some white birds flying down over the river. Must by the typical groups of Ring-billed Gulls, I thought, but these have black hoods ... Laughing Gulls! Very unusual in summer, and probably the first time ever I've tripped an eBird filter on my walk. Sweet.

With some dumb Mallards on the river, I was suddenly at 20 species, a mark I'd only reached once before. Then, on the way back down, there was a whistle in the birches: a goddamn Cedar Waxwing! Another bird I'd never seen in the park before. A Barn Swallow (expected), Great Blue Heron flying upriver (fairly expected), and a Great Black-backed Gull under the South Capitol Street Bridge (unusual!) later, I was at 24! A record breaker!

What bird kept me away from a tidy little 25? Frigging Rock Pigeon. Well, gotta leave some for next time.

Here's an image numbered with each new bird I found. Orange are new birds for the park.

1. European Starling
2. Fish Crow
3. Common Grackle
4. House Sparrow
5. Osprey
6. American Robin
7. Song Sparrow
8. Double-crested Cormorant
9. Ring-billed Gull
10. Common Yellowthroat
11. Mourning Dove
12. American Goldfinch
13. American Crow
14. Chimney Swift
15. House Finch
16. Northern Rough-winged Swallow
17. Northern Mockingbird
18. Black-and-white Warbler
19. Laughing Gull
20. Mallard
21. Barn Swallow
22. Cedar Waxwing
23. Great Blue Heron
24. Great Black-backed Gull

On the Patch: Yards Park 2015

2015 was a weird year birding on my dirty little patch of the Anacostia, Yards Park. As I've outlined in (too much) detail before, The Yards Park is my typical afternoon dog-walking-while-also-keeping-an-eye-out-for-birds location.

High Island it ain't. There are no trees, really, and only a few bushes here and there. Lots of gulls roost on the river sometimes, and other times it's barren, even when the nearby Potomac is covered in loons and grebes and whatnots. But that's what patches are, ain't they? You learn to know a place well enough and then even the most mundane birds, the slightest out-of-place "vagrant" becomes a big deal.

I moved to this area in March of 2014, so 2015 was my first full year birding at Yards Park. I hadn't looked at the numbers until today, and when I did I was surprised to see that even though I put in a lot of time with the ol' pup, I saw far fewer species this year than last.

In total, I saw 42 species at the Park this year, the last being a Common Yellowthroat back in September. I had only four new birds for the location: a Cooper's Hawk, American Kestrel, Downy Woodpecker (in the trees by the actual Naval facility), and a Black-crowned Night-heron.

In 2014, however, despite having a three month disadvantage, I managed 55 species.  34 of them were new to the park. (In my first ever visit, after a Nationals game in April 2013,  I managed a whopping 23 species, my biggest single checklist ever!

Would you like to see this represented graphically? Sure you would:

So what happened to make 2015 so light? I'm not quite sure. There was a real lack of birds on the water in 2015, unlike the winter of 2014 with it's huge grebe invasion. Red-necked and pied-billed grebes are all over the place in March 2014, but didn't make an appearance at all in 2015.  I also somehow managed to miss BOTH vulture species in 2015 (?! That can't be right!) And cardinal (!) And towhee. I don't know. Tough year.

But all you can do is keep trying. I just took Gibson for his first walk of 2016 and managed 13 species, including a spiffy Bald Eagle. Here's to many more in the months to come.