A Peek at Peaks

This past weekend, my sister invited me to spend a couple days with her on Peaks Island in Maine. Peaks is a small island in Casco Bay, about 15 minutes from mainland Portland by ferry. Her husband’s family has been vacationing on Peaks for many years. I’ve been to visit a few times in the past, but my most recent trip prior to this past weekend was about 5 years ago, so I decided to take Jennifer up on her offer.

During the ferry ride, I had a view of the iconic Portland Headlight:

Approach to Peaks Island:

Each morning I was there, Jennifer and I and her cute little cavachon, Ozzie

took an around-the-island walk of about 4.5 miles.

I saw many beautiful flowers in bloom:

This cottage had gorgeous climbing flowers (roses? not sure!)

Probably of no surprise to anyone who reads this blog, sea birds also caught my camera’s attention.
Cormorants:

A blue heron:

and I’m not sure what kind of duck this is:

I’ve spent some time on my bird identification site and I’ve been unable to come up with an exact match. Any thoughts?

I also got to photograph a new-to-me bird, a cedar waxwing:

Isn’t it pretty? It turned around and appeared to be looking right at me:

Here’s a sight you don’t see everyday when you are out for a walk:

Don’t ask me, I really don’t know! 😉

Peaks almost always has a lovely sunset to round out your day:

I hope you enjoyed your little tour around Peaks Island!

P.S. Scott has a new photo assignment! Pop on over and check it out!

On the Beach with Sea Birds

I was very tempted to name this blog post “It’s bleedin’ sea bird flavored” after the famous Monty Python sketch, but I thought that might give the wrong impression of what you will see in this post!  (By the way, I chose not to imbed the video due to a wee bit of bad language spoken by John Cleese.  It is quite funny, so go ahead and click on it; I just didn’t want to get any type of “rating” on this blog.  I don’t know just how that stuff works.)  Now, for our regularly scheduled program.

In addition to the great blue heron, Hills Beach is populated with many other photogenic sea birds, and not just the gulls that we all see everywhere from the shore to the parking lot of McDonald’s.  Sandpipers and plovers were all over the place at low tide, quickly scurrying around to eat up little bits of food in the tide pools and shallow waves.

I would always get confused as to which were the pipers and which were the plovers.  Luckily, the cottage that we stayed in had a nice birding guide with great pictures for identifying birds.  I remember now that the sandpipers are the ones with the long, pipe-like beaks:

And plovers have the short beaks, and are related to killdeer, (what a terrible name!) :

I also had the pleasure of seeing a snowy plover, which I thought was one of the sweetest looking little birds I’d ever seen:

That breakwater that I took you for a walk along was also a roosting spot for some terns and a duck:

I wonder what that duck is about to scoop up?  I also wonder if this is also a tern:

It was much smaller than a gull and didn’t appear to be juvenile.  Any ideas?  Tracy?

In addition to the sea birds, the yards around the cottage were very friendly to the more common birds we see everywhere in the northeast such as the sparrows, chicadees and even the hummingbirds (which of course I didn’t get a picture of).  There were many birdfeeders and birdhouses along the small lawn area of the cottage and surrounding houses.

Many of the birdhouses were occupied with baby birds.  Busy parents spent a lot of time flying back and forth feeding the little ones:

(Sorry that one isn’t a little clearer – I took it through a screen so that I didn’t disturb the scene.)  Looks like a nice, tasty grub the babies are so eager to eat! Yummy!  Speaking of hungry birds:

The girls have a tradition at the end of vacation of feeding the gulls any leftover bread items that we won’t be taking home with us.  It never fails to attract a crowd.

I guess the birds weren’t the only ones who were hungry! Gee, you might think I never feed the kid.  All part of being 13, I suppose!

ETA: I just realized that I tagged this post with “cormorant” and never included my cormorant shot.  Sorry for skipping you, cormorant!