MONHEGAN — If my birding buddy, Jacquie, and I had only known how many birds were waiting for us on Monhegan Island, we would have been far more vigilant watching all the seabirds around the Laura B, our ferry, on the ride from Port Clyde.  Why more vigilant?  Well, to score a Really Big Bird List that’s why!  But we were totally clueless that a mere 12 miles away, Monhegan was literally dripping with birds. 

Oct. 5-6, 2012 was above and beyond anything I have seen or heard of in my 30 years of Monhegan birding; a true outlier, a major migratory fallout of epic proportions.

Instead of trying to inflate our meager list of no-brainer birds that we did see, including common loons, double-crested cormorants, black-backed and herring gulls with more exotic seabirds such as razor-billed auks, kittiwakes, and scoters we defaulted to binocular watching, instead.  Yes, that’s correct, when birders are not watching birds their next favorite thing to watch are the binoculars around the necks of other birders!  “Do you see the Swarovski’s that guy from Connecticut is wearing? Wow wee, he has really great glass!”  Yet we did put aside our bino-watching to feast our eyes on several adult northerngannets breakfasting on fish.  These largest of Maine’s seabirds were beautifully backlit by the early morning light and passing close enough for us to see the saffron plumage on their heads and necks.  Still, we had no idea what lay before us.

When we arrived at The Ducks, a tasty group of ledges just north of Monhegan, we were already kicking ourselves for maybe having wasted time watching Swaros, Leicas, and Zeisses instead of petrels, dovekies and shearwaters. 

“Wow, there’s a bald eagle and there’s another!”  Jacquie said. “Look at all those falcons over the north end of Monhegan and what is up with all those songbirds in the air and why are they flying so frantically?” I added. 

While the crew was making us fast to the island we knew this day of birding was going to be a spectacularly Big Day indeed!  For starters, half a dozen merlins were darting over and around us like Ninja knives and putting the fear of god into thoroughly spooked flocks of songbirds. 

“This is pretty amazing,” said Lloyd, the guy from Connecticut with the nice Swaros. 

“Here come the peregrines!” said another birder. 

Sure enough, two peregrines strafed through the anchorage scattering the merlins and songbirds to take their rightful place as the Top Guns on Monhegan.

And things only got sicker. Walking up hill from the landing we spied a half dozen yellow-bellied sapsucker crammed into a Rosa rugosa shrub. 

“Check that out Jacquie,” I said. “Sapsuckers typically hang out in apple trees and not inside a thorny rose shrub.” 

The explanation was waiting for us at the first apple tree; it was literally packed with sapsuckers!  The ones hiding in the roses were those cueing for their turn to feast on apple sap and the insects attracted to it.  However, Jacquie was neither listening to me nor looking my way.  Oh no, Jacquie was fixated on the lawn of the Island Inn where every square yard of grass hosted one or more warblers hawking insects. 

“Check out how these warblers bob their tails up and down, that makes them palm warblers!” I pointed out to Jacquie, who is a fledging birder.

Everywhere we went, birds were as thick as cream cheese on a New York bagel.  Every shrub, every tree, every lawn and every patch of blue hosted a warbler, flycatcher, woodpecker or a falcon. And the nuthatches, my goodness!  Along the paths through the village, south to Lobster Cove, down to Fish and Swim Beach, deep into the Cathedral Wood and way out onto White Head and Black Head bluffs; everywhere we went, we were treated to sterling views of a plethora of birds.

Highlights?  So many! But the black-throated blue and black-throated green warblers were topnotch, as were the blue-headed and warbling vireos and the two totally freaked-out flycatchers that Jacquie rescued from the paws of island cats.  And the peregrines and merlins were relentless, so much so that I feared that one might grab a bird while we were watching it.

Dragging our birding-weary bodies back to the Trailing Yew, our digs for the night, Jacquie asked me: “Does any of this surprise you?” 

“Nahhhh,” I tried to answer coolly, followed by my true feelings. 

“This has been insane!” I gushed.  “I have seen a lot of birds on Monhegan but nothing like this."

Monhegan is well-known among birders as one of the great, perhaps the greatest, birding hotspot on the eastern seaboard.  And each spring and fall, boatloads of birders flock there with the expectation of great birding. They invariably migrate off the island satisfied.  But Oct. 5-6, 2012 was above and beyond anything I have seen or heard of in my 30 years of Monhegan birding; a true outlier, a major migratory fallout of epic proportions.  Indeed, this big day was the birders equivalent of the 100-year flood.           

While we waited for the Laura B to come fetch us, our bird list stood at a respectable 67 species.  Not bad for a few hours of birding.  But, I could not help but wonder about all the seabirds we missed while futzing around on our way out.  Rest assured, on the trip ashore Jacquie and I were vigilant. 

“Look”, I said. “Isn’t that the razor-billed auk we missed on the way out?”

Please email Richard Podolsky at podolsky@att.net to receive the full list of birds he and Jacquie saw on Monhegan and for tips on how to bird Monhegan.