Fort Foster - Birding

Kittery Point, Maine

Overall Experience:

We arrived at Fort Foster at 9:00am. We parked outside of the gates and walked down the entrance road and didn't have to pay a fee! We immediately began to explore the shoreline. The tide was out, which I think gave us more sightings than normal of the shorebirds. We then explored the nature trails and just walked along the roads that lead to other parts of the park. We got a couple of surprises on our visit to Fort Foster.

At The Shore:

• 3 Double-crested Comorants
• 1 Brant: This was extremely unexpected and a relatively rare sighting in these parts! He was feeding with the gulls and I thought at first glance that it was a Canadian Goose.
• Gulls(numerous): Herring, Ring Bill, Great Black Backed
• Great Blue Heron
• 3 Common Terns: This was a first for us! We usually don't take a close look at the gulls, but when we did we found these very chatty small birds among them.
• 10 Killdeer: This large group was feeding near the shore on the dry sand. They were not displaying, they hardly noticed us!
• 2 Purple Finches: They were speeding past us as we walked under the 560 foot pier.

On The Trails:

• Numerous Red-Winged Black birds
• Barn Swallows
• Warblers
• Catbird
• Vireo
• Black-crowned Night Heron: Another amazing sighting! This beautiful bird was roosting on the edge of a swamp off one of the roads that lead into the park. In the trees, its large white breast caught my attention. What a great experience.