Bird watching on Snow pond...soon

one of the best wildlife-viewing paddling experiences in central Maine, head to the marshy southern end of Messalonskee Lake, the second largest of the seven Belgrade Lakes. Follow the Belgrade Road (Routes 8-11-27) north from Augusta to Belgrade. Put in at the state boat launch site on the right just before crossing the bridge over Belgrade Stream.
Because of a severe invasion of aquatic vegetation (milfoil) in the southern portion of the lake, this launch site is only open for hand-carried watercraft.
Refer to the Delorme Maine Atlas and Gazetteer map No. 12. Be sure to bring a pair of binoculars. From warblers to bald eagles, turtles to bullfrogs, cattails to carnivorous pitcher plants, you will experience a wide variety of flora and fauna. But the real show stopper is the colony of nesting black terns.

Black terns have experienced a steady population decline throughout North America the past few decades because of widespread loss of freshwater marshes. Messalonskee Lake is one of only five locations in Maine where black terns return in late May to breed and raise their young before moving on to the coast in July. In September, they will begin their annual flight south to wintering grounds in Central and South America. There are only about 70 breeding pairs nesting in Maine each summer. This is the rare opportunity to see them on their nesting grounds before they leave.
Our plan was to paddle along the undeveloped marshy southern margins of the lake and to stay south of the sprawl of cottages extending up both sides of the lake to the town of Oakland. From the boat launch site, a wide channel leads a mile out through acres of marsh to the open lake. The channel is marked with green and red buoys. There is a good chance that each buoy will be topped by a solitary black tern resting its weary wings from migrating, feeding, and raising a family.
To the left, Belgrade Stream empties into the lake under the Belgrade Road bridge. Starting out in a light fog, we headed out the channel and turned right to explore the eastern edge of the marsh. It became obvious immediately that our plan for the morning was a little too ambitious and that we would not be exploring very far up Belgrade Stream on the return. We would be too busy handing binoculars back and forth, and spending more time sitting and viewing than paddling. We would end up paddling seven miles in the lake and two miles in Belgrade Stream over a five hour period.

If you love the brilliant flash of the red wing patches of the male red-winged blackbird, you will have come to the right place. It seemed that every cattail stalk and maple sapling had a resident blackbird. Their joyous chortling filled the marsh air. Is there anything blacker than the head of a loon, or redder than the patch of a red-winged blackbird? The marsh was also ablaze with the soft pink colors of bog laurel and rhodora. Pitcher plant leaves dotted the shoreside hummocks of vegetation. Mats of yellow pond lilies punctuated the undulating border of the marsh.

We spied a large hawk flying back and forth only a few feet above the marsh grasses, its white underbelly flashing in the morning sun. Given the spring bounty of birdlife and small rodents, we imagined it must have been like a salad bar for the hawk. We looked up into a nearby pine and saw a mature bald eagle calmly surveying the scene below, perhaps letting the hawk do the work, and then later inviting itself in for a part of the meal. The world had been reduced to its simplest terms before our eyes. Eat or be eaten.

STATELY EAGLES KEEP WATCH.

It is possible during high water to follow a narrow channel a mile back into the marsh on the southeastern edge of the lake. At one point we were bordered on both sides by dense stands of dried cattail stalks towering three feet over our heads. We were sealed in from any sounds of civilization. Woodpecker drumming echoed throughout the woods to the east punctuated only by the curious midmorning hoots of an owl whose biological clock must have malfunctioned.
We headed back out into the lake and were immediately greeted by the honking of geese flying toward us. Seven geese splashed down a hundred yards away. A pair of loons slipped under the water as we approached. We headed in a northwesterly direction back across the lake to a small islet with four evergreen trees on it. Two white dots topped the tallest tree. The binoculars revealed two mature bald eagles sitting shoulder to shoulder gazing out over the lake. We paddled over and looked straight up into their steadfast eyes, their great yellow beaks and majestic white heads looking down at us. We felt very insignificant. Directly across the water on the western shoreline stood their huge nest of sticks in a pine adjacent to the railroad tracks that follow the shoreline north toward Oakland.

Following the indentation of the marsh along the southwestern edge of the lake, we encountered many logs with painted turtles sunning on them. On one log, five turtles plopped off one by one as we approached. Black terns were everywhere, wheeling through the sky, swooping down to the surface of the lake to snatch a morsel of food, servicing and protecting their nest sites in the marsh grasses. We made sure to paddle farther out from shore so our presence would not bother the nesting terns in any way.

June will soon be here, and so are the birds at Messalonskee Lake. For one last avian delight, paddle under the Belgrade Stream bridge. Scores of barn swallows are nesting under the bridge and will greet you with a very loud welcome. Further up the stream, paddlers often see river otters.

Michael Perry is founder of Dreams Unlimited, specializing in inspiring outdoor slide programs for businesses, schools and civic groups. He can be reached at: dreams @ime.net