Date: 7/9/26 9:17 am From: Sean S <therefromhere168...> Subject: [Maine-birds] Brown Thrashers as feeder birds
I really wasn't expecting them to keep coming back for suet, but for a week now there a family 4 Brown Thrashers coming out into the yard frequently and behaving comfortably around the feeder station. They've always been in our area but usually secretive in the way the species normally is. These ones sometimes don't care if I open the window 10 feet away from them. They are still a bit wary, but I'd put these ones below the Cardinals in terms of general flightiness. Brown Thrashers hop in an unusually fast and powerful way, something I never noticed about the species until seeing them so frequently.
Date: 7/3/26 9:18 am From: Richard <rlgarrigus1962...> Subject: [Maine-birds] Drones
I was birding Basket Island causeway last evening and noticed a significantly diminished presence of birds which I initially attributed to the ebb and flow of such things and didn’t pay it much mind. Then I was puzzled by a sudden flush of the birds that were roosting on the main sandbar that lifted off for no apparent reason. I wasn’t close enough to even register to them, there were a couple dogs running but also distant, no BAEA coursing through. So I went about my walk and then heard the cause—the high-pitched whirr of a drone. These things automatically set me off regardless but when they’re in areas where birds are stressed by them, forget it. So I locked on to the drone in the bins and watched and watched and watched, a very tedious exercise, until it paid off by seeing it come in for a landing at a house fronting Hills Beach. So I went and paid a visit. There was a couple sitting on the deck. I asked them if they were flying the drone. It was their son. I requested they keep the drone away from the beach, that it stresses the birds and there are at least three nesting sites for rare birds currently that have recently hatched young. They asked if there was a height limitation above which they are allowed to fly it. I responded that any height is a disturbance and walked away. Knowing full well I don’t know the first thing about the legalities of drones in questionable places.
Does anyone have any insight on this? Or know where I might get information. I would like to come to it with more than just my utter contempt for these things.
Date: 7/2/26 8:32 am From: Sean S <therefromhere168...> Subject: [Maine-birds] Brown Thrasher hot weather behavior
Today 3 Brown Thrashers were hopping around, feeding and exploring the back yard in a way more comparable to the way Catbirds act than the usual secretive skulking associated with this species. This leads me to believe that very hot weather motivates this atypical behavior, as back in the 1990s I observed 10-12 Brown Thrashers acting the same way on a scorching July day, hopping and clowning around under lawn sprinklers at a house adjacent to Portland Head Light. It's always cool to see them out in the open.
