Greg LeClair looks for birds through his scope Saturday in Clinton during the Christmas Bird Count. Hannah Kaufman/Morning Sentinel

WATERVILLE — Volunteers traversed a 7.5-mile radius of towns, neighborhoods and fields Saturday, making note of every bird they saw or heard as part of an annual Christmas Bird Count.

Organized by the National Audubon Society, a bird conservation nonprofit facilitated by Maine Audubon and other local chapters, the volunteer-led counts take place in over 35 locations across Maine, running from Dec. 14 to Jan. 5.

Waterville’s count gathered about 20 volunteers Saturday to cover a region spanning Clinton, Fairfield, Vassalboro, Sidney, Belgrade, Winslow and Benton. Some of the volunteers work in wildlife and conservation fields and are regarded as local bird experts, while others are just getting into the hobby.

The count helps state wildlife entities track bird populations, monitor fluctuations and understand long-term trends. At the end of the day, all of the data is reported to the count’s coordinator, which then gets sent to National Audubon to be consolidated into a state report.

That data informs many of the state’s conservation decisions, said Doug Hitchcox, staff naturalist at Maine Audubon.

“Whether it’s the programs we do, the things we talk about — we use so much Christmas Bird Count data,” Hitchcox said. “The wonderful thing about it is it’s the longest-running community science project, so that long-term data set really does a good job of showing you the trends, and that is just so beneficial to us and arguably anyone doing the larger scale conservation work.”

Christmas Bird Count participants can be identified as either feeders or fielders, said Greg LeClair, coordinator for Waterville’s count. Feeders stay at home and monitor the birds that appear at their feeders, while fielders venture out to count the birds.

“Fielders drive around, walk around and go looking for birds that way,” LeClair said. “Some of them are even out before sunrise and after sunset, looking for owls. We have a lot of different corners covered. We get people out in wetlands and forests and open fields and in the city, and we just try and tally every bird we can find.”

On Saturday, the conditions for birding were almost perfect. It was cold but not too cold, with low wind, reasonably clear skies and snow concentrated around food sources, causing birds to feed near roads and at bird feeders. By 10 a.m., LeClair had gotten eyes — and binoculars — on multiple turkeys and hawks, four cardinals, three juncos, a merlin and two savannah sparrows, which are uncommon in the winter due to their preference for grasslands.

A savannah sparrow sits in a tree Saturday, an uncommon sight during the winter in Maine. Photo courtesy of Greg LeClair

Already, groups of volunteers were exchanging excited texts about their findings in each territory. For many, that excitement builds on years of data from past Christmas Bird Counts.

LeClair said that Waterville’s count has helped to identify new bird population trends.

“What’s been really cool with Waterville is we’ve been able to see new species kind of trickle in with both habitat and climate change,” LeClair said. “So if you look back in our data, you can see when the first northern cardinals started showing up, and more recently, it’s been things like red-bellied woodpeckers and Carolina wrens that are pretty new to the count, but they’re reliably showing up every year now, which is pretty cool to see.”

Spotting rare birds during the count is an exciting bonus. If something rare does show up, LeClair said that taking photos is heavily encouraged, as well as the use of Merlin, a bird sound identification app.

This is Audubon’s 125th Christmas Bird Count. The first count happened on Christmas Day in 1900, proposed by ornithologist Frank M. Chapman, and it’s been an Audubon holiday tradition every year since.

Greg LeClair looks through binoculars from his parked car Saturday during the Christmas Bird Count. Hannah Kaufman/Morning Sentinel

With the state of Maine poised to update its Wildlife Action Plan in 2025, up-to-date bird data is important. Hitchcox said Christmas Bird Count data can be compared with data from the Maine Bird Atlas, a recently completed five-year catalog of birds from citizen scientists across the state.

“We have the best data on Maine birds that we’ve ever had, and then also being able to look at the long-term data through Christmas Bird Counts, through breeding bird surveys, that gives us a very complete picture.”

It’s impossible for volunteers to count every bird in a 15-mile diameter. But even incomplete data gives biologists an understanding of population and climate trends.

Over the last few decades, new species have been expanding northward and are breeding in Maine, spending harsh winters where they formerly only stayed for summers. This year’s data may also give an early picture of how avian influenza is impacting different bird populations.

While counting birds is the primary focus, Hitchcox said the Christmas Bird Count also brings people together.

“I really like it because it brings a lot of the experts — the people who have been doing it for 30 or 40 years — and often pairs them up with people who are brand new to it,” Hitchcox said. “And it’s one of the best multigenerational opportunities as well. It’s an amazing opportunity to kind of see what a cool, diverse hobby this is, and we’re doing it in this long-running tradition of collecting data, which I think is one of the best ways we can be giving back to birds.”

There will be more opportunities to get involved in birdwatching across Maine next year. The Great Backyard Bird Count is in February, and Global Big Day, an event where birdwatchers around the world record as many species as possible, is planned for May 10. In the meantime, anyone can download the Merlin app as a first step in identifying birds.

Waterville’s Christmas Bird Count will culminate with a tally rally at 5 p.m., sharing pizza and findings. But until then, as LeClair continues to circle the region, he said there’s one bird in particular he’s hoping to spot.

“Really, I think the one that makes it for me every year is the snow bunting,” LeClair said. “It’s a cute little white bird that forages in fields, and they look like little toasted marshmallows, and that’s my quintessential Christmas Bird Count bird.”

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This story has been updated.

A crash involving a chain reaction pile-up of four vehicles sent one driver to the hospital by helicopter and closed the southbound lanes of the Maine Turnpike in Scarborough on Friday evening.

Police learned of the crash near mile marker 42 at about 6:04 p.m. after receiving numerous reports.

Traffic was already congested in the area because of other crashes, when a U-Haul driven by Jason McAvoy, 59, of Old Orchard Beach, hit a tanker truck driven by Kenneth Openshaw of Massachusetts, Maine State Police Lt. Aaron Turcotte said.

The force of the collision pushed the tanker forward into a Subaru driven by Thomas Gillis, 32, also of Old Orchard Beach, whose car then rear-ended a Dodge Ram driven by Zachary Taylor, 31, of Searsmont.

Police found McAvoy trapped inside the U-Haul. Emergency workers extracted him, and he was flown by LifeFlight helicopter to Maine Medical Center in Portland, Turcotte said. Other drivers were treated at the scene.

Investigators believe driver fatigue and inattention were the main contributing factors to the crash, Turcotte said.

This story first appeared in the Midcoast Update, a newsletter published every Tuesday and Friday morning. Sign up here to receive stories about the midcoast delivered to your inbox each week, along with our other newsletters.

The Maine State Ferry Service is coming under fire for proposing a change in where its boats dock at night, even as it has made progress at resolving other sources of frustration for the island communities that it serves: namely, the staffing shortages and mechanical breakdowns that contributed to many trip cancellations this year.

Since the ferry service’s inception in the 1950s, many of its boats have spent the night at their respective islands’ ports off the midcoast and Hancock County, which has helped islanders with medical emergencies get quickly transported to hospitals on the mainland.

But as part of a broader set of changes that are planned in the coming years, the Maine Department of Transportation has raised the possibility of docking all of its ferries overnight on the mainland and instead providing funds for new emergency boats to serve the islands at night.

While the ferry service has not made any final decisions, it says that such a change would help it to cut costs, operate more reliably and attract more workers, who wouldn’t have to spend the nights away from their mainland homes.

However, union officials and residents of some island communities are concerned by the concept, arguing that it could create new barriers to emergency medical care and potentially deter workers from joining the service. Officials from Islesboro and North Haven have sent letters to the service sharing their frustration.

“We have grave reservations as to the process and the substance of this scheme. Substantively, this proposal makes many major changes to the current policies that raise significant and important public safety issues,” Islesboro Town Manager Janet Anderson said in her letter. “Frankly, we expect better than this type of treatment from the executive branch of our state government and find this very disappointing.”

Beyond the debate over where the ferries should dock at night, it has already been a busy year for the service.

It continues to update its fleet, after maintenance issues on some of its older ferries contributed to trip cancellations in the last year. That has included the addition of a new boat on the Matinicus route and plans for a hybrid-electric ferry that will join the fleet next spring. Maine is also closing bids this month for a ferry capable of fully electric operations to take over the Islesboro route in the next three to five years, according to William Geary, the director of the Maine State Ferry Service.

“Last year, unfortunately, we had three vessels out at one time, but we put the money in to make sure that we have safe, reliable ferries for our passengers,” Geary said.

To remedy the shortage of ferry workers, Maine DOT enacted fare increases that have helped it hike wages and hired an out-of-state staffing contractor, Seaward Services, to boost personnel in the interim. While the first Seaward contract was awarded on an emergency basis, the agency issued a request for proposals before hiring the company again for 2025, Geary said.

However, the hiring of Seaward has created some ongoing friction with the ferry service’s regular employees, who fear that it could put the service on the path toward privatization.

On Dec. 2, the union that represents them, the Maine Service Employees Association, sent a letter co-signed by 51 lawmakers asking the state attorney general to scrutinize Maine DOT’s contracting out of ferry labor in recent years.

But Geary pushed back on those concerns. He said that the service has filled seven regular positions since it entered the first contract with Seaward earlier this year, and it hasn’t needed to use any of the contractor’s workers since Dec. 9.

Various pay increases have helped the service to bring in more employees, including raises in January and July for all state workers, and higher overtime rates for captains and crew members.

However, with at least five vacancies remaining in the service’s ranks, Geary said that Seaward has helped to improve the service’s reliability, completing 97.5 percent of scheduled trips outside weather cancellations, and that the contractor will continue to be an important backstop.

“This is not, at all, a step towards privatizing the ferry service,” Geary said. “This is what was being asked of us, if not demanded from us, from the islanders to get the boats running.”

Geary also asserted that the proposal to eventually dock ferries on the mainland could help attract new ferry workers. Those workers must now stay in the crew quarters on the islands while they’re working, separating them from home and families for a week at a time, while also forcing the service to pay for the costs of those quarters.

But that proposal could become another flashpoint.

Anderson, the Islesboro town manager, raised specific concerns about it in her letter to Maine DOT Commissioner Bruce van Note.

Besides criticizing what she viewed as a lack of a communication from the agency, she argued that it can sometimes be important for island residents requiring emergency medical attention to receive constant care on their way to the hospital, which ambulance crews can provide on a ferry ride back to the mainland, but which would be harder to offer if island taxis or Life Flight helicopters have to play more of a role.

Geary suggested that emergency vessels could berth at the islands overnight instead of the ferries, but Anderson said in the letter that an island-wide EMS system could cost some $7.5 million to start and operate, including $5 million to purchase a vessel.

Peter Drury, a former ferry captain who lives on Vinalhaven and is involved with the union representing ferry workers, challenged the notion that berthing ferries on the mainland could help attract new staff. He noted that many service employees live far from the ferry terminals and suggested that some of them would be reluctant to move closer if their crew accommodations on the islands were eliminated.

“I think that the department is just failing to acknowledge the realities of what their employee pool looks like, and they just do not understand how mariners approach their occupation,” Drury said.

While Geary acknowledged that workers would have to relocate if the change happens, he thinks it would help to attract more employees who would want to be home with their families every night.

On a larger level, he noted that medical care is not the ferry service’s core mission, but he said the agency will give the concept more consideration before it makes any final decisions.

Jules Walkup is a Report for America corps member. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.