Return of the Bobolink

Male Bobolink

May each year we head to one of our favorite Maine birding spots: Great Salt Bay in Damariscotta, to see (and hear) a remarkable display . . . the return of the Bobolink!!!

Great Salt Bay is acres and acres of meadows, abutting a salt-water lake and a fresh water pond . . . an environment that leads to diversity of species (warblers, ducks, sandpipers, raptors, song birds) all year around.  But spring is special as the Bobolinks have returned and are nesting on the ground in the meadows.  Nearby trees and shrubs are filled with the tuxedo wearing males, while walking through the fields will spook the more plain looking females (don’t worry we keep to the paths to respect the nesting birds).

[ngg src=”galleries” ids=”261″ display=”pro_mosaic”]To salute the Bobolinks . . . my favorite Emily Dickinson poem:

The Way to Know the Bobolink

The Way to know the Bobolink
From every other Bird
Precisely as the Joy of him—
Obliged to be inferred.

Of impudent Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence subordinate
At times to Majesty.

Of Sentiments seditious
Amenable to Law—
As Heresies of Transport
Or Puck’s Apostacy.

Extrinsic to Attention
Too intimate with Joy—
He compliments existence
Until allured away

By Seasons or his Children—
Adult and urgent grown—
Or unforeseen aggrandizement
Or, happily, Renown—

By Contrast certifying
The Bird of Birds is gone—
How nullified the Meadow—
Her Sorcerer withdrawn!

We also saw dozens of Savannah Warblers, and about 30 others in an evening stroll.

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