Three Weeks In Maine
At 300-acre Metinic Island, seven miles off the coast of central Maine, it’s currently raining sideways with a steady 30-mph wind. I arrived on a Fish and Wildlife powerboat three days ago for three weeks of migratory bird banding with a small field crew, but the weather has made that difficult this week; even our large bank of solar panels can’t keep up after several days without sun, so we are crawling around the island’s two-story cabin with headlamps to save power.
But things are already looking up. This morning we were able to open a third of our mist nets and captured 161 birds, mostly colorful eastern warblers – awesome! And sunshine is in the long-range forecast. They tell me that this is just the beginning of the busiest month of the year here, so fingers crossed. And sitting in a rustic cabin feels pretty luxurious after spending the last four months hiking through the western wilderness!
Noah, this is great. I was wondering if we were going to hear from you, so I am glad you are able to blog once in awhile. If you have a chance to photograph any of the birds you are catching and you can put them on your blog, we would love it. I am glad you are adjusting to a change in scenery, and I look forward to hearing about your adventure there.
P.S. I just read your article in the Register Guard. You did a great job summarizing your PCT adventure, maybe a prelude to your book? Anyway good luck with this new adventure.
Looking forward to your newest adventure. Can’t go wrong with a net full of eastern warblers!
Hi again. I just went in search of the article Diane Strycker wrote about. It can be found at
http://www.registerguard.com/web/sportsoutdoors/26962938-44/trail-noah-strycker-crest-pacific.html.csp
A must read for all who followed Noah’s adventure.
If interested here are a couple of other sites to visit that you might enjoy:
http://www.kval.com/outdoors/active/130313038.html
This one is a video interview of Noah from KVAL news from 9-21-11. With a written article and pictures.
http://blog.aba.org/2011/09/index.html
This one is an article from American Birding Association on 9-29-2011 entitled “finishing the 2665-Mile Bird Walk” by Noah Strycker.
I hope I have written these down correctly, as I am not internet savvy. Denise, if you try these and I haven’t written them down right, you can correct me. You can also find these if you Google search “Noah Strycker 2011 articles on Pacific Crest Trail” and look around a little.
Well, you’ve had 4 months of conditioning for this next episode of adventures; sounds like you should be right at home…headlamp and all! Glad to see the blogging is back!!
Thanks Diane and Denise for posting those websites! I especially enjoyed the video.
Noah, I’m so glad you’re blogging from Maine. The numbers of birds you’re mist netting is incredible! You just find one exciting adventure after another…Thanks for letting us come along for the ride (without getting tired, wet, or hungry.)