This.

Looks like hurricane Lee may be dead on centre for ME. Hope meloncollie is OK--she's probably not looking for lobster at this point, nor are the boats even out!

Too many cats and not enough insects. Over development and insecticides.

Thanks for the good thoughts, Bossybaby.

Back home just ahead of Lee - which, fortunately, seemed to have petered out before making landfall.

We were in Acadia /Mt. Desert Island. I am once again bowled over by the National Park Service.

Even though it was later in the season than they usually hang around, we got lucky and saw puffins. And ospreys. (And an osprey vs bald eagle rumble!) And a belted kingfisher. And all manner of our feather-y friends on land and sea..

If you are a birdwatcher, what a wonderful place to explore!

The only possibly Lee-related issue we ran into was we didn't see any whales in their usual feeding grounds off the islands. They are likely smarter than we were and scuttled off to deeper waters to wait the storm out.

I don't do lobster, but boy - lobstering is certainly a way of life out here. Instead, I indulged heavily in Maine blueberries, the small wild ones, which were everywhere, and in everything, this time of year.

An off-season visit to Maine, and specfically Acadia, is highly recommended.

With migration in progress, lots of birds of prey here. Lots of red kites, a few black kites, kestrels, as usual, and also last few days, two goshawks.

Put sunflower seeds out on feeder and our resident sparrows loved it, and nuthatches, marshtits and lots of other tits, greenfinches and chaffinches (feeding on the ones thrown on the ground). Still have many redstarts around, and wagtails, but they never visit feeders.

I so miss our resident swallows, swifts and house martins- their constant chatter, and flying in and out of barn and back of roof, is mesmerising.

Long eared owls busy at night in the big trees around the meadow.

TA article:

“Is a car alarm blaring from your neighbor's chimney? Or is a cell phone ringing on top of the high-voltage line? In all probability you have a starling. And where there is a starling, there are guaranteed to be many more.

As the days get shorter, the Sturnus vulgaris and its fellow species gather in ever larger flocks, for example, in the Zürcher Weinland, By mid-October at the latest, they head off in huge swarm clouds towards the Mediterranean for the winter”.

Naturphänomen in der Region - Alle Stare sind noch da
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/spektak...a-723516433562

https://youtu.be/RuB5Df4k5nU

Could have sworn I saw two Golden Eagles during a run along the Limmat today, although this seems unlikely, as they are usually only seen in more Alpine regions here. But they were huge - far too large to be the far more common kestrel or red kite in Zürich, and so majestically sweeping-in just above the surface of the water.

But of course by the time I’d stopped being awestruck and tried to get a video they were already gone.

Birdwatchers visiting the UK might be in for a rare sight in the next days.

More than a dozen species of North American birds rarely seen in Britain and Ireland have been spotted along the countries’ western shores after being blown off their usual migration routes by remnants of Hurricane Lee and surviving the perilous journey across the Atlantic, experts said.


Story in the NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/u...k-ireland.html

That's a crazy cause for missing birds. Blown away by a hurricane

At least they were blown into a country that speaks the same language

In the days before Lee made landfall we saw an unusually large number of land birds many miles farther out to sea than one would expect. Some caught a ride back to shore on the boat with us, but I imagine many more tried to keep going.

Heck of a journey even with hurricane winds at your tail.