Assembling the Species Accounts

The 352 species accounts on this website represent those we believe to have been correctly identified since 1950. The data was derived from personal records of multiple observers, unpublished birds of MDI manuscripts by Will Russell (1977) and Chris Witt (1994), a review of the popular birding literature including Audubon Field Notes and its successors from 1950 to 2010; Maine Bird Notes in their entirety; all of Bill Townsend's Guillemot; the archive of the Maine Bird Records Committee; the Birds of Maine (Peter Vickery et al, 2020), Acadia National Park archives including the Cadillac Mountain Hawkwatch, the Schoodic Seabird Survey and the records of former Park Naturalist, Paul Favour; College of the Atlantic archives including the Mount Desert Rock Whale watch reports; Zack Klyver’s logs from his Bar Harbor whale watch Cruises 2013-2017; all banding records for the region with those of Barbara Patterson in Somesville being by far the most extensive; relevant reports from the Maine Coastal islands National Wildlife Refuge, and especially in the last decade, careful consideration of the data generated by eBird, a bird reporting system developed by the Laboratory of Ornithology at Cornell University and now used by hundreds of thousands of observers worldwide. Information in the Miscellany section came from Birds of the World, a bird life history service (subscription required) of Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology, and from the personal experiences and readings of this website’s creator, Will Russell

Rare species have been documented by images, sound recordings, and written and in a few cases oral descriptions. Records for species deemed reviewable by the Maine Bird Records Committee (MEBRC) have been/will be sent to MEBRC for their review. Two stars (*) means the MEBRC has accepted the record. One star () means the record has been submitted but not yet evaluated. We include a very few species that the MEBRC judged adversely but we felt otherwise. Those cases are indicated with a pound sign (#). 

While gathering data for this website, we came across a few 'conflicted' records which we did not include. The list and an explanation is here. 

Months of occurrence are preceded by 'early', 'mid', and 'late', meaning respectively the first 10 days of the month, the second 10 day, and the last eight to 11 days, depending on the month. 

A number of species accounts include maps with specific locations accurately marked to assist viewers who might want to visit them.

The website will be updated as necessary with the date of the latest revision noted on each species' page. 

Comments are welcome through the Contact Us link on the home page.