Down East Spring Birding Festival

The 23rd Annual Downeast Spring Birding Festival (May 22–25, 2026) is a prime destination for birders and nature photographers at all levels of expertise. This year’s schedule features four days of guided hikes, boat tours, and skill-building workshops, all led by local guides with local knowledge. Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife has named the Downeast Spring Birding Festival one of the finest in the country, and Yankee Magazine listed it as an Editor’s Choice event.

While birding, festival participants will enjoy the tranquility and natural beauty of Washington County and the Cobscook Bay area. This region offers a wide variety of birding habitats to explore, including boreal and northern hardwood forests, bogs, fresh and saltwater marshes, grassy and shrubby fields, streams and lakes, steep rocky coastlines, extensive tidal flats, and coastal islands teeming with nesting seabirds.

This festival regularly tallies resident and migratory bird species that can be hard to find elsewhere. Of the 400+ bird species officially recorded in Maine, almost 75 percent have been spotted in Washington County and its coastal waters. On boat trips to offshore islands, participants are likely to spot nesting alcids (Atlantic Puffin, Black Guillemot, Razorbill, and Common Murre), Common and Arctic Tern, Common Eider, and Great Cormorant. Boat trip participants may also encounter Northern Gannet, late-migrating sea ducks including Surf, Black, and White-Winged Scoter and Harlequin Duck, Black-legged Kittiwake, and American Oystercatcher. Back on shore, the wide variety of warblers will delight and amaze: 25 species of warblers have thrilled previous festival attendees, including elusive boreal species such as Cape May, Bay-breasted, Mourning, and Tennessee. Spruce Grouse, American Woodcock, and American Bittern all breed here, and all three are easiest to find and observe during late spring. Tidal mud flats often yield late-migrating sandpipers and plovers, and Upland Sandpipers breed and vocalize on the scenic blueberry barrens that cover large swaths of Washington County. The 2025 festival turned up a Sandhill Crane, a species that is rapidly expanding its Maine range. Boreal Chickadee and Canada Jay are still possible, but sightings have dwindled in recent years, as these once-common resident species continue to move farther north and west in the face of climate change.

Festival organizers extend a warm welcome to come see for yourself why Downeast Maine and the coastal waters around Machias Seal Island and Petit Manan Island (both hosting large colonies of breeding Atlantic Puffins!) have been identified as “one of the important bird areas in the US” by the American Bird Conservancy.