We're looking for someone to do this challenging Mountain Birdwatch route in June
Edited to add: If this sounds awesome to you but you can't do it this year, sign up here to hear about open routes first thing next spring.
Hello hikers! I'm here about a Maine hike, but someone suggested I crosspost here because this is where New England high-elevation hikers hang out.
We are a wildlife research nonprofit based in Vermont that relies on community scientists for a lot of our long-term monitoring. One such program is Mountain Birdwatch, a 25-year-long program where volunteers hike 100 short mountain routes across eastern New York and Northern New England in June to listen for ten bird species. Together, the data points collected by volunteers paint a picture of how bird populations in the Northeastern U.S. mountains are changing.
Mt. Coe's high-elevation route in Maine in the spruce-fir zone is the least surveyed of all 130 routes—just once in the past 16 years. It's our most important data gap to fill, and would provide valuable information for both Mountain Birdwatch and Baxter State Park.
Jason, the principal investigator for Mountain Birdwatch, has all about given up on this route getting covered, and I (VCE's Communications Director Alden) want to prove him wrong.
For almost all of our volunteers, who are mainly birders—not hikers—and heavily skew toward retirement age, this route is outside their capabilities. It is steep and rugged, and a five-hour drive from civilization. There's no backcountry camping allowed on Coe, so you have to stay in one of the park's campgrounds, and then start your 2.5 mile hike (to the first survey point) in the dark, around 4 am. Survey points 1-2 are on the rock slide on the west face of Coe. The slide is navigable (going upwards) in dry conditions only, but not safe to descend, so you have to keep hiking and descend via the North and South Brother Trails (which actually makes a nice loop). Details on the route here.
Now, here is the other complicating factor: the birdsong listening. You cannot use the Merlin app, because that would mess up the data. You must use your ears. If you've never birded before, it is possible to learn the 10 birdsongs in the next three weeks before you go. But also, you need to be the kind of person who, after scaling in the dark (because you have to start listening predawn!) can switch to Zen monk mode and stand still for 20 minutes at a time, listening for birdsong and noting down what you hear. The typical adrenalin junky might get bored. That's Jason's fear, anyway.
We do have one 60-something volunteer who does our second most dangerous route (with a huge camera to boot) who has offered to try to fit this one in as well, but we would rather expand our volunteer base to some new, younger folks and not lean so heavily him. We also have three other routes in northwest Maine that are less risky, but equally remote.
So, do you think you might be the one: a very experienced hiker and bird nerd in the northeast who is down to travel in June? Make sure you can hear the high-pitched song of the Blackpoll warbler, then Email Jason Hill at jhill@vtecostudies.org.
For science!
Alden, VCE's Communications Director