NATURE NOTES FROM ACADIA

BIRD BRIEFS

On October 9 while picking my way carefully over Dike Peak on Cadillac Mountain - a terrific wind making progress over this exposed ridge very difficult - I flushed a Horned Lark which after a short sweeping flight, soon descended to the barren wind-swept rocks near by and permitted me to see it to good advantage. In spite of the gale the bird walked about quite unconcernedly in search of whatever food there might be. It was my first Horned Lark of the season, and to see it under the conditions which prevailed at the time made it doubly dear to me.

When, on October 14, Mrs. Franklin Anthony, bird-lover residing at Great Head, telephoned me that a Scarlet Tanager was feeding just outside her window, I hurried to the scene and was favored with a good view of the bird at very close quarters. It proved to be a male in the yellowish-green winter plumage. The Scarlet Tanager is a very uncommon bird on Mount Desert Island, and I know of no autumn record which is as late as this one.

On October 26 Ranger Louis R. Fowler and I observed the rare Hawk-Owl at an elevation of approximately 1100 feet on Cadillac Mountain. The bird, a diurnal owl whose flight resembles that of a hawk, proved to be quite approachable and was seen at close range in a low and fairly compact growth of gray birch.

A Little Blue Heron, an immature bird in the attractive pure white plumage, appeared at the Sand Beach lagoon on about September 10 and remained in the immediate vicinity for a period of three weeks. This feathered notable from the southlands, an uncommon bird in the region, had good fishing in the sheltered unfrequented cove. One day while I was watching the heron at its fishing in the shallow water, with the fog rolling in heavily from the nearby ocean, a raven's nasal "Kronk" came from somewhere in the sky overhead, and I could not help but think of the extreme climatic regions which these two birds are known to frequent - the white bird from the tropic land of palms; the black bird to be expected in the frigid northland of perpetual snow and ice.

- Arthur Stupka