The Birdman of Northern Maine

Bill Sheehan with a Canada Jay, feathered friend and sentry. Photo courtesy Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan was 10 when he fell in love with birds. It happened at the end of a long, hot June day in 1973 when his family moved from Long Island, New York, to an abandoned Patten, Maine, farmhouse on 180 acres of played-out potato fields. 

“Moving to northern Maine was culture shock,” said Sheehan, now 61. “The house was in very bad shape. Chokecherries were growing up through the steps, and overgrown bushes blocked views from first-floor windows. I stepped into my second-floor bedroom and was greeted by new roommates: a pair of barn swallows. They peered at me from their mud nest on a ceiling beam above my bed. For a month, I was enthralled by swallows darting in and out of my broken bedroom window.” 

His back-to-the-lander parents had purchased the Patten farm the year before. “We were ready to move from Long Island where my wife’s family lived,” the late Thomas Sheehan, Bill’s father, told me years ago. “At the time, Long Island’s potato and broccoli fields were being developed. It was getting built up fast. Suburbia wasn’t for us. We wanted to raise our boys with a fishing pole in one hand and a BB gun in the other, and free to roam the woods and fields.”

“We were on a summer vacation in Vermont in 1972,” he remembered. “It rained the whole week and our young boys were driving us crazy. So, we loaded the boys into the car and drove to Patten to inspect a farm that first caught our eyes in the classifieds of the New York Times. When we got close to where I thought the farm was, a woman waved a dishtowel at us. So we stopped, and she asked what we were looking for. I said ‘John McDonald’s farm,’ and she pointed to it across the road.” The Sheehans walked around the dilapidated buildings and overgrown fields, and then began to head south on Route 11 toward home. Just before the I-95 on-ramp in Sherman, the Sheehans turned around and drove to Katahdin Trust Bank to inquire about a mortgage.

“We decided to buy the place if we could afford it,” said Thomas. “We offered $7,500 for the property. It was all we could scrape together. The owner wanted $9,500 but he accepted our offer. Heck, we paid more for our Ford Fairlane wagon than we did the farm.” 

A year later, Bill’s parents loaded their 1953 Chevy truck with furniture and crates of chickens and drove to the Patten farmhouse from Long Island. 

“We looked like The Beverly Hillbillies,” said Thomas. “My mother-in-law, who had never been to northern Maine, drove the kids in her car. When we finally arrived at our new home in Patten, she looked at the place and started crying.”

Bill remembered with a laugh, “My grandmother put down her cigarette and told my mother, ‘your husband’s crazy. It’s not too late to leave him’.” He also recalled, “We’d never experienced blackflies and they feasted on us that first summer.”

Undeterred, the Sheehan family dug in their heels, rolled up their sleeves, and went to work repairing the place over the next 15 years. “Like a lot of old farmhouses in the 1970s, ours lacked basic plumbing,” said Bill. “We had a hand pump in the kitchen and it often froze up in the winter. We had an outhouse, which made for chilly walks in the winter.” 

The oldest of five brothers, Bill’s morning job was emptying the previous night’s chamber pots before school. “One day I tripped carrying a full pot,” said Bill, “spilling its contents on my shirt and pants. I cleaned up as best I could before running to catch the bus. That job prepared me for my Maine DEP career as a wastewater specialist in Presque Isle.” 

Bill’s interest in birds came from his father. “I was raised in Vermont,” said Thomas, “and when the fish weren’t biting, I learned to entertain myself by identifying redstarts and other colorful songbirds. We taught our boys to be observant. Bill really took a liking to birds.” 

Aroostook County birder Bill Sheehan has a range of tools to keep tabs on his feathered friends. Aroostook County birder Bill Sheehan has a range of tools to keep tabs on his feathered friends. Photo courtesy Bill Sheehan

Boy did he ever. Bill is the most accomplished birder in Aroostook County. His list of Aroostook County birds tops 255 species—his life list of birds tops 600. And as his father did for him, Bill instills a love of birds in others. 

Rich Hoppe, retired wildlife biologist of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, is a big fan. “Bill doesn’t look for birds,” said Hoppe, “birds look for him. He’s a bird magnet. His greatest gift, though, is his enthusiasm for birds. It’s infectious.”

Bill founded Aroostook Birders in 2011 and continues to serve as its president. “We have monthly field trips every season except winter,” he said. “We also sponsor lots of Christmas Bird Counts in Aroostook County. It’s a fun winter activity for our 40 members and countless non-members.” The organization’s goal is to introduce the county’s residents, especially young ones, to the joys of watching birds, and to promote Aroostook as a birding destination. 

“Aroostook County is special because of its wide-open spaces,” said Bill. “I love the people here. They’re easy-going, and everyone knows each other. Birding is hectic from May until September. Winter birding is slow, but I like winter. You can snowshoe to places that are hard to reach in the summer, such as swamps and thickets.” 

Each winter day—sometimes three times a day—Bill fills 22 bird feeders outside his Woodland home. “I’ll go through a ton of seed each winter. But in 2015-2016, my birds consumed 3,000 pounds of seed. That winter, I nearly went broke feeding hundreds of evening grosbeaks each day. One year, I spent over $1,000 on birdseed in six months. But it’s worth it because I enjoy feeding and watching birds.”

The Finch Research Network, an international bird conservation organization, noticed Bill’s many eBird winter finch reports. In a show of appreciation for his commitment to finch conservation, the Network now delivers several tons of free bird seed to Bill’s northern Maine home. The conservation group also installed a live internet camera on his property to bolster their research and to enlighten and entertain hundreds of birders watching the comings and goings of evening grosbeaks and other finches. The site is off line during warm weather months, but will go live again in November. Check it out at THIS LINK.

Bil Sheehan spotted a Ross’s goose, which breeds in the arctic, on Mill Pond in Limestone. Photo by Paul Cyr

Bill, though, is widely known for reporting unusual bird sightings in Aroostook County, including an American avocet, a western wading bird, on Long Lake in St. Agatha; an American white pelican, primarily a western bird, also on Long Lake; a Leach’s storm petrel, a bird normally only seen far out at sea; a Ross’s goose on Mill Pond in Limestone, far from its Arctic breeding grounds; and a northern hawk-owl, another visitor from the far north. But five northern lapwings—a Euro-Siberian plover—rank at the top of Bill’s list of rare bird sightings. 

“An Amish birder in Hodgdon phoned me after he’d seen a lapwing in his pasture,” Bill recalled. “Now that I think about it, it’s a toss-up which one is rarer—the lapwing or a phone call from an Amish birder!” Bill immediately left work and drove an hour south to Hodgdon. The Amish birder met him on the side of the road. “I jumped out of my vehicle and saw the lapwing foraging in a field of corn stubble. We watched it for about an hour. I was about to return to my office when four more lapwings glided down into the pasture to join the first one.” The five lapwings doubled the total of all lapwings ever reported in Maine.

“I just love watching birds,” said Bill. “It’s never tiring because each day delivers something new to see and learn. Time seems to stop. And it’s wonderful watching someone’s eyes light up while viewing a species for the first time. Some people stare at fires, others at the stars, and some stare at birds, like me. And birding is a wonderful gateway to a better appreciation of nature. The show goes on every day. You just need to get out and see it.” 

Laurie Sheehan, Bill’s late wife, once told me that her husband postponed their marriage for several months after accepting a job counting birds in Texas. “He had to get his priorities straight,” she said with a laugh. “But how lucky he is to have found his passion. We should all be so fortunate.” 

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Ron Joseph, of Sidney, Maine, is author of  Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist. It’s his first book.