Day 194: July 12th – Massawepie Mire

Another sunny warm day, high 87

       As we ate breakfast this morning, I gazed out the dining room window and saw a fine specimen of a Purple finch feeding at one of the feeders.  I jumped up, grabbed the Nikon and sat back down at my seat.  The finch had flown up into the foliage just above the feeder and allowed me to shoot a couple of shots through the doube-pane before flying away.  Glass is never friendly when trying to shoot through a window, but the shot was good enough to document the presence of the finch at the feeder.      

       One of the premier birding sites in the Adirondack Mountain region is Massawepie Mire off Route 3, about 12 miles west of Tupper Lake.  The area consists of a variety of habitat including those most conducive to the somewhat rare boreal species like Boreal chickadee, Gray jay, Black-back and Three-toed woodpecker.

       We’ve been fortunate enough to have already garnered the chickadee, jay and Black-backed woodpecker this year, but the always elusive Three-toed is a different story.  We made the journey over to Massawepie this morning in the hopes of picking up this bird……a year-bird for sure, but more importantly, a lifer.

       We were last in Massawepie Mire in June of 2011.  What a difference a month makes!  Last June, bird song was so prevalent that you had to listen carefully to distinguish one song from another.  Today, if it were not for the songs of the Red-eyed vireo and the Hermit thrush, the silence would have been deafening.  We did get a Veery as well.

Veery

       Finally, as I looked in vain, trying to get a good view of the Red-eyed for the blog, I spotted a woodpecker high in a white pine.  The bird had its back to me and showed a mostly black back with just a smattering of white.  A Three-toed?  I could only hope!  These birds are very tough to find anymore due to habitat loss among other factors.  I aimed at the bird and shot a number of shots, figuring that I could more carefully examine the images at home and make a definitive identification and hopefully prove that the bird was indeed the Three-toed.  Well, some you win and some you lose.  Bummer!  The bird was in fact a juvenile Yellow-bellied sapsucker with similar features to the Three-toed, but definitely not the hoped for bird.  Looks like this bird will have to wait for another day. 

       Tomorrow, its off to Montreal and Mt. Tremblant.  We will encounter some more boreal habitat, so we can only hope for another chance at this elusive woodpecker.  Only time will tell…..