For my annual autumn visit to Monhegan this year I brought along a fellow birder who had never visited the island despite living in Maine for over thirty years. I’d been talking the place up for a long time, so I had my fingers crossed. Fortunately luck was on our side, and for his three-day stay my friend Brian experienced Monhegan at its very best. The excitement began on the boat ride from Port Clyde, with a milling cloud of diving gannets, a minke whale, and several shearwaters (Greater and Cory’s) seen from the deck.

After dragging our bags up to our cozy, rustic rooms at the Trailing Yew—only on Monhegan can you have a water-view room with wifi but no electricity!—we headed out to bird in earnest. A walk back through the village produced a handful of warblers in the lilacs: an obliging Wilson’s, a bright yellow, two parulas, and a pair of vocal rusty blackbirds cruising the Meadow. While waiting for our eggplant panini at the Monhegan Store, we saw Tom Martin, the patriarch of Monhegan birders, holding court on his porch across the road. When he saw us, he bellowed, “There’s a lark sparrow in a tree over here!” We got on the sparrow, and within half an hour of landing on the island, my friend had his first life bird (and a great sandwich).

We were just finishing up when world-class birder Will Russell ran by shouting, “Say’s phoebe on Manana.” When Will gets excited, people pay attention. Birder friends quickly set up scopes on Fish Beach and trained them on the roof of a shed on Manana’s ridgeline. Lifer #2 for Brian. I couldn’t resist telling him that, yeah, I’d already seen a Say’s phoebe on Monhegan two years ago. Next on the itinerary was the lighthouse, the red and white buildings of which crown the hill behind the village. A short steep walk rewards with the island’s best views of the village. Below us, around the tiny island cemetery, flickers flashed from tree to tree. A kestrel teetered on the tip of a spruce. A small flock of orioles chirped and disappeared into a grape arbor. Brian drained his camera battery.

From the lighthouse, we continued on to the ball field, an open space that serves as helicopter landing pad and islander softball diamond. On the field’s edge near the cell tower, a small flock of pipits flew over. We flushed half a dozen sparrows and were able to pick out a clay-colored among the chippies. Lifer #3 for Brian. We were gratified to also pick out two horned larks, and a Lapland longspur. (The next day we found another lark sparrow mixed in with the chipping sparrows.) We eventually continued on through the ball field out the trail to White Head, which offers one of the most dramatic vistas on the island. To the southeast there’s nothing but open ocean. Up island, the gull guano-spattered cliffs of Black Head loom. Down island, Burnt Head slopes upward through weather-beaten spruces. From our perch high above, we watched a small group of porpoises and a minke whale, their fins flashing in the sun. A birding group from Mid-coast Audubon (our local chapter: more friends) arrived and set up a scope to successfully pick out a great cormorant on the lower ledges.

That was just the first few hours of day one. Our “slow” day. During the night the wind shifted and the next morning we were blessed with a true fall-out, one of the birdiest, most ecstatic days I’ve experienced in my 12 years of birding Monhegan. Words cannot convey what it feels like to watch birds literally pour out of the sky into the trees. As the sun rose behind us, we watched warblers from the lawn of the Trailing Yew for over an hour. Friends reported seeing birds that had overshot the island in the dark streaming back over Lobster Cove at first light: dozens of thrushes, flickers, vireos, warblers, orioles. Yellow-rumps and palm warblers in particular were everywhere. Orioles and sapsuckers graced every tree. And later, as we sat at a picnic table eating the world’s best pizza from the Novelty, we marveled to see four peregrine falcons cruise past. It really doesn’t get much better than that. In fact, the birding was so good that we didn’t even make it out to Lobster Cove—a must-see inlet famous for crashing surf, a rusty old shipwreck, and a front-row seat of Jamie Wyeth’s house (and an ever-shifting gannet and shearwater show)—until the last two hours of Brian’s stay. Leaving the island with eight lifers, he hardly minded.