A bit incongruous to be hanging silk longjohns and wool shirts on the line to dry in this 110-degree heat! But my virtue in doing my laundry so promptly was rewarded by an adult Golden Eagle that turned a wide circle over the yard this morning.

Bangor, Boston, Chicago, Tucson. It was a great 10 days in the Pine State, but what pleasure to step out of the airport to Great-tailed Grackles and White-winged Doves! And when I got home this afternoon, not only were my Verdins and Gambel’s Quails here to meet me, but a burly Brown-crested Flycatcher was hunting bugs on the ground (!) outside the kitchen window.

The idea of driving for the Bicknell’s Thrush trips was pretty exciting when I volunteered to do it several months ago: I figured it would be my only chance this week to get into high-altitude habitats, and it wouldn’t break my heart to see the thrush again, a couple of years after Alan and I undertook our successful expeditions to the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

I was having pretty serious second thoughts at 1:45 this morning. It was cold, it was dark, it was an organizational nightmare (I mean “challenge”) getting all those sleepy birders into the right vans. But we pulled out into the darkness, bound for Big Moosehead Mountain, two hours from Bangor. My “shotgun” rider did a great job of keeping me awake on the drive, and a good thing, too, especially when a really big moose stepped calmly into the road in front of us.

But we arrived safe and relatively chipper, and the group set out up the steep and beautiful trail, accompanied by the finest chorus of birdsong I’d heard the entire convention. Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, and Blackburnian Warblers sang along with Blue-headed and Red-eyed Vireos, and the leafy maples sheltered a few Rose-breasted Grosbeaks and Scarlet Tanagers. Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers beat their tatoo, and a couple of Pileated Woodpeckers yelped as we walked by. By the time we reached the realm of Blackpoll Warblers and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, the sun was out and the views of the lake below us and the rest of Maine in the distance made me glad I’d heeded my wake-up call and stumbled out into the dark 5 hours earlier.

Swainson’s Thrush serenaded us all the way from parking lot to summit. When I arrived at the old firetower at the top, a Bicknell’s Thrush was singing quietly in the distance (probably loudly, come to think of it, but it was a long, long ways away); another invisible bird responded later to a tape (not mine!!) with a few bzeer calls. So our target essentially eluded us, but what we did find up there was even better. A pair of Boreal Chickadees was buzzing around the path at the summit, and most of us enjoyed spectacular looks at this endearing little bird. And somehow, one of the participants spotted a Spruce Grouse perched low just a few feet off the trail; Eric very generously came back to get me, communing with nature with my eyes shut and my mouth open, and I had fantastic views of a life bird! The walk down was pretty strenuous, but no one complained.

The long drive back was easier, and I was awake enough to pay attention to the road and to do a little birding along the way. A Broad-winged Hawk got on the wrong side of an Eastern Kingbird at one point, but the best sighting was an American Bittern that flew right in front of the van, the last addition to my list during this Convention.

Another rainy day, periods of drizzle alternating with patches of mist so fine that we could even get out of the vehicles once in a while. The dim skies let the birds sing longer into the morning than they would have on a clear day, so our late start didn’t hurt us in the least. “Late,” by the way, only by the idiosyncratic standards of an ABA Convention: we were in the van by 5:00!

We ran out Kittridge Road to start, where we were able to bird from the cars, and found most of the species we’d seen yesterday morning, including Bobolink and Indigo Bunting. The owners of a well-visited feeder, yesterday proud and eager to have us admire their birds, seemed to have changed their mind overnight: where they’d been all smiles and hospitality when Darlene talked to them yesterday morning, today when we pulled up they opened the front door and let out a snarling, barking, chain-straining brute of a toy poodle. Retreat: hasty.

On down the coast to Acadia. The wet weather meant that there was no real reason to visit some of the sites we’d scouted last week, and instead, with Turk in the lead, we headed straight for the Seawall Picnic Area. There were several hundred Common Eider in residence, including several new broods, and a careful scan of the largest gang produced 5 Black Scoters, a good enough bird for summer. But as we were admiring the sleeping scoters, Jane caught up with us to say they’d found the King Eider. And there he was, head tucked in a flock of half a dozen Common Eider just offshore. We watched him for half an hour, as other groups of ABA’ers came and went, and were rewarded eventually with good views of the bill and head when he awoke for moments at a time. A life bird for many of the participants, of course, and, ironically, the farthest north I’d ever seen one: all my other sightings had been in New Jersey or Massachusetts.