Twelfth Annual Down East Spring Birding Festival May 22-25, 2015

TRESCOTT TOWNSHIP, Maine - Jan. 14, 2015 - PRLog -- TRESCOTT, ME, January 14.  The organizing committee for the Down East Spring Birding Festival is hard at work on the 12th annual event to be held over Memorial Day weekend, May 22- 25, 2014. The festival, which features guided bird walks, boat rides, and presentations for advanced, intermediate, and beginning birders has been rated one of the best in the country by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Our region sports the greatest variety of habitats on the East Coast, including boreal and northern hardwood forests, bogs, fresh- and salt-water marshes, grassy and shrubby fields, streams and lakes, steep rugged headlands, extensive tidal flats, and coastal islands. These habitats provide nesting, wintering, migration, and year-round homes to a majority of the 418 bird species that have been seen in the State. Our festival bird list notes over 230 birds you might see in late May.

One of the most popular features of the Down East Spring Birding Festival are boat trips to Machias Seal Island, one of WildBird's Top 50 Birding Hotspots. WildBird called island, "the best location in America to see Atlantic Puffins." Not only are there hundreds more puffins on there (http://www.neseabirds.com/machias.htm) than on any other island off the Maine coast, it is the only island on which visitors routinely land. Besides puffins, you may observe Double-crested and Great Cormorants; Common and Thick-billed Murre; Leach's Storm Petrel; Razorbill; and Arctic, Common, and Roseate Terns.

Though the festival is headquartered at the Cobscook Community Learning Center in Trescott this year, events are spread across the region to allow participants to experience the region’s habitat and diverse bird species found here. Guided birding walks take place in Eastport, Perry, Baring, Columbia, Edmunds, Indian Township, Red Beach, Lubec, Cutler, Trescott, and Campobello Island, and Grand lake Stream.

Over the coming weeks, the full schedule and event descriptions will be made available. For more information, or to volunteer, visit the festival website at: www.cclc.me/page/911-1304/birdfest (http://www.downeastbirdfest.org/), call the CCLC at: (207) 733-2233 ext 330, or email birdfest@thecclc.org.