Stephen Ingraham (who?)
the unofficial site for birders and digiscopers using Zeiss equipment.
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ABA Convention 2006
Even more, from a rough impression of the raised hands when "First Timers" were called on to indentify themselves at the banquet on Monday night, it looked like fully a third of the attendees were new to ABA conventions. There is something uniquely magical about ABA banquets. Other festivals may equal the ABA's attendance, and the quality of the fieldtrips (a few), but no one has yet to equal the experience of sitting down in a huge room with 600-700 other birders. The feeling of community, of sared interests and passions(and often, at least on some levels, shared values), can be experienced elsewhere, but not in the shere "mass" that it is expressed at an ABA convention. For a birder, beginning or experienced, in my opinion, that feeling is worth the price of admission alone. The image gallery below attempts to capture some of the festival...just a very small slice really, as it depends on my having been there...but a slice non-the-less. I "lead" fieldtrips to The Borial Forest two days, and one to Popham Beach and Reid State Park the other. The Borial Forest was hot, muggy, buggy and quiet one day, and rainy, cool, very buggy, and a bit more active the other. Still we had fun. The light on the second day was miserable for digiscoping, as the images will testify (the birds in the gallery, by the way, have larger versions of the images linked. Clicking on one will bring the larger version up). We had, perhaps as a highlight of both Borial Forest trips, excellen scope and close bino views of a wide variety of warblers. Nothing matches a scope view of a Blackburnian male, or a good close look at a Canada or Magnolia Warbler. Even the Black and White, on close examination, is a spectacular bird. We also had Chestnut-sided, Bay-breasted, Yellow-rumped, Pine, Palm, Northern Parula, Common Yellowthroat, and Ovenbird. Mammals were also on view. On the first trip we had a Black Bear. On the second trip we had Moose, Cayotte, Racoon, White-tailed Deer, and Red-Fox. Popham Beach and Reid State Park was a delightful trip with at least two unexpected birds to enliven it for all (Royal and Gull-billed Terns...perhaps only a second or third state record for the GBT, and perhaps the first photo documented one)...and a 600th life bird to really enliven it for two of the participants (Nelson's Sharp-tailed Sparrow). (We had at least 2 lifers on the Borial Forest Trip as well.)
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Who knew Bangor, ME would be such a popular destination for American Birding Association members? From the very first day it was evident that this was an excited group...eager to see new birds, to visit the vendors, and to catch up with birding friends from around the country. 
