It all started with the drive failure on one of the Volvo engines on Dovekie, my husband Flip Harrington’s boat. We found the best place to take it for repairs was East Edgecomb, Maine. Luckily, we were able to get a ferry off-Island on Thursday but were unable to book a return until Monday! Welcome to Vineyard summer. Instead of wringing our hands and moaning, we decided to make a trip out of the delivery.

We dropped the drive at the repair shop and headed for Brooksville, Maine to visit a Vineyard girl, Anne, and her husband Benny. They had moved to the area and built a beautiful home on the Bagaduce River. We were in the land of birch and white pine and gentle sloping land to the river. As we enjoyed breakfast on their porch, we were greeted by several ruby-throated hummingbirds buzzing around the bee balm plants. Great blue herons hunted the edges of the rivers and flew by frequently during the day.

The following day we drove to Bass Harbor and took a 40-minute ferry ride over to Swan’s Island to meet another Vineyarder. We spotted our favorite bird of the trip during the ferry ride: the black guillemot. Pat and her husband, Hal, had bought a small home on a rise overlooking Long Cove and Burnt Cove Harbor. We were in the land of steep rocky shores and evergreens. The spruces in their yard had summering black-throated green warblers. We wandered around the small island and ate delicious crab from local fishermen and cucumbers from their garden.

We then headed south to Scarborough, Maine to a third Vineyard woman. Val lives in a great little community that has bird feeders everywhere and backs up to a vast marsh. We were greeted by white-breasted nuthatches. When we drove out to explore the area there were great egrets in the marsh and belted kingfishers on the utility lines. At Cape Elizabeth we watched eiders shell-fishing in the surf. It amazed us that we found such a diversity of habitats in the State of Maine in a relatively small distance.

The final leg of our trip was in Plymouth, Mass., where we visited Flip’s brother Brian, the red knot guru, and his wife. We heard that up to this date the number of red knots coming through the Monomoy area is down from previous years. We also had heated conversations about what actually causes birds to migrate; is it food or change of light? Amazingly we ended up agreeing that it was both! I doubt we will try another off-Island trip in August, but it turned out to be a great excuse to see old friends and check out new habitats!

Bird News

On July 24, Tara Whiting spotted a Wilson’s snipe near Black Point Pond. Alan Wilder called in a report from our neighboring island, Cuttyhunk. He was happy to see that the killdeer that nested produced four young, and although they have not yet taken flight, Alan was pleased that they made it this long without being taken by the aggressive black-backed gulls.

Dick Jennings called in the final count on the Vineyard osprey population. He was ecstatic to report that there were 74 pairs of ospreys that bred this summer. This is up from 65 last summer. Of the 74, 19 nests failed but even so the Vineyard ospreys fledged 104, which is an average of 1.89 per nest. A very good average! Dick added that they added a new category this summer for nonbreeding ospreys, house hunters. These are pairs that only throw a couple of sticks on a platform and then come and go. They have lousy nests versus the housekeepers, which have well constructed nests but aren’t ready to lay eggs and raise a family. This summer the Vineyard had five housekeeping pairs and seven house hunters.

Rob Bierregaard placed one new transmitter on a Vineyard osprey. Her name is Belle and she comes from the same nest that Isabel came from at Tashmoo. Rob will be posting her movements on his Web site at http://wwwlbioweb.uncc.edu/bierregaard/migration10.htm. Penelope, the osprey that was fitted with a transmitter at Long Point last year, is still flying all over Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire trying to decide where she will nest next year. Bets are still out, although she seems to prefer rivers to ponds or the ocean.

While we are talking about raptors, Eleanor Waldron reports that she has not seen the northern harrier family, a female with three young, at the Priscilla Hancock Preserve since August 2. Sarah Mayhew spotted a female harrier at Quansoo on August 5 — might or might not be the female Eleanor has been watching since March. Last year the northern harriers remained by their nest site until August 18 — so they have fledged and departed over two weeks earlier than last year. We wish them well and hope to see them back next summer.

Doc Engles found that there are two red-tailed hawks near his house that have been screeching steadily for the last three days. Why, he asked? These are young birds that have recently fledged and are still begging for food.

Eleanor Waldron reported a huge flock of tree swallows at the Priscilla Hancock Preserve on August 7. The next day Matt Pelikan, kayaking on Chilmark Pond, spotted five great blue herons, two green herons, 12 greater and one lesser yellowlegs, many hundreds of tree swallows, about 800 common grackles overheard and “an unusual concentration of yellow warblers: a flock of about 30 warblers passed over as I went up one of the coves, and based on all the C notes and a few visual ID’s, I feel confident they were all yellows. I have no idea if these were local birds that had flocked up, or if it was a single-species flock of migrants.”

On August 5, Sarah Mayhew spotted an American redstart in her West Tisbury yard and an eastern kingbird at Quansoo.

On August 6, Bill Lee reports a black-billed cuckoo calling on Flander’s Lane, sanderlings on Menemsha Beach, a great egret, greater yellowlegs and a family of American oystercatchers at West Basin. On August 9, Bill found a barn owl in his Menemsha Hills yard — the crows are harassing something in the neighborhood daily and it is probably the barn owl.

Also on August 9, Laurie Walker spotted a peregrine falcon at the Gay Head Cliffs in Aquinnah around 1:30 p.m.

Join me on Tuesday, August 17, at 8 a.m. for the last Chilmark Community Center walk of the season. On the 10th, we again concentrated on shorebirds and spotted 11 species, the most interesting being white-rumped sandpiper, piping plover and short-billed dowitchers.

I caught up with Rob Pecchia of The Trustees of Reservations to get the fine details on the black skimmer and terns’ nesting activity at Norton’s Point. Lanny McDowell and crew photographed the activity at Norton Point. It seems that one pair arrived in June and laid eggs in the least tern colony. That pair now has hatched one chick. This makes it the first successful black skimmer nest on the Island. Then on August 2, a second pair of black skimmers arrived and they scraped a nest and promptly laid three eggs in it! Then to add more to the pot, a third pair arrived on August 8. So far, the last pair is just hanging out. The last two pairs are probably participating in post breeding wandering, although it is strange to have a pair lay eggs this late in the season. Maybe they know something about the fall and early winter that we don’t.

Rob Pecchia added that they estimate that 1,800 to 2,000 least terns were fledged on Norton Point this year. The common and roseate terns did not do well as their first nesting was wiped out by predators. Rob figures that there are forty common terns that renested and ten roseate terns that renested — a significantly lower number from last year due to the predation.

Penny Hinkle e-mailed me the following: “This is not a happy-ending story. I may have found the budgerigar you mentioned in your July 30 column. I was able to catch and cage this little guy who was pecking around near our backyard bird feeder in East Chop. This was on Sunday, July 25. Two days later, Tuesday evening, we found him dead in the cage.”

Starting on August 4, large flocks of mixed blackbirds are moving around the Quansoo woodlands and migrating across Tisbury Great Pond in the evening. The flock is mainly common grackles, but also includes red-winged blackbirds, European starlings and brown-headed cowbirds.

Please report your bird sightings to the Martha’s Vineyard Bird Hotline at 508-627-4922 or e-mail to birds@mvgazette.com.

Susan B. Whiting is the coauthor of Vineyard Birds and Vineyard Birds II. Her Web site is vineyardbirds2.com.