{"id":21120,"date":"2022-03-23T14:41:45","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T18:41:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=21120"},"modified":"2022-03-23T14:41:45","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T18:41:45","slug":"vagabond-lovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/vagabond-lovers\/","title":{"rendered":"Vagabond Lovers"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23dbdbdb&amp;d=apr22_portland_magazine&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=10&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Y<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ou\u2019ve got to love birds who fly transoceanic or transcontinental to vacation with us in Maine. You never know who\u2019s going to blow into town.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unlike <\/span><strong>hummingbirds<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who routinely put in serious mileage (4,000 miles) from <\/span><strong>Mexico<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to join us every summer, the rare <\/span><strong>Steller\u2019s sea eagle<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> who flew all the way from Siberia to land on the Maine coast is a spectacular example of a \u201cvagrant\u201d or a \u201cvagabond\u201d\u2014a bird roaming far from its usual migratory route.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s kind of flattering, really.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOh, yeah. Our hummingbirds go to <\/span><strong>Central America<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">,\u201d says Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., a Fellow of the <\/span><strong>Cornell Lab of Ornithology<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole suite of them.\u201d Toward the beginning of their return to Maine, \u201cThey\u2019ll fly across the <\/span><strong>Gulf of Mexico<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a 12\u201324 hour flight from the <\/span><strong>Yucat\u00e1n<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Last summer we were coming back from <\/span><strong>Monhegan<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. From the deck of our ferry we saw a single hummingbird coming across\u201d in formation with the boat for the final few miles to the shore.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOddities,\u201d Wells says, can draw big crowds. \u201cThe <\/span><strong>redwing thrush<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that showed up in <\/span><strong>Capisic Pond Park<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in January 2021 drew hundreds\u2014probably thousands\u2014of birdwatchers to see it. It could be a bird that got off track from <\/span><strong>Europe<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and made its way [west, then] south. My own theory is that it came from<\/span> <strong>Greenland<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Two varieties of pelicans, the brown and the American white, have signed Maine\u2019s guest book as visitors. The earliest record of a <\/span><strong>brown pelican<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> stopping by is 1826, followed by 1914, then 1922. (We won\u2019t talk about the pet pelican that escaped from <\/span><strong>Castine<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to <\/span><strong>Bar Harbor<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 1900 only to end up as a taxidermy exhibit in the <\/span><strong>Maine State Museum<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.) Then the visits stopped. Eight decades later, a brown flew into <\/span><strong>Harpswell<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in 2007<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Does \u201cour\u201d Steller\u2019s sea eagle experience loneliness so far from his native Siberia? Does he shriek for his mate, or is this just a projection we humans are putting on him during COVID?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey don\u2019t typically travel in pairs during migration,\u201d Wells says. \u201cThis sea eagle isn\u2019t unusual for being alone [right now]. Hormones will come into play and he\u2019ll think of a mate in the coming months. He could look at the surrounding <\/span><strong>bald eagle<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> population\u201d for some beautiful music. Does he pause, or am I imagining it? \u201cA hybrid between a Steller\u2019s and a bald eagle has been reported near <\/span><strong>Vancouver<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fascinating. A walk on the wild side?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>April 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21121,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21120\/revisions\/21121"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}