Boy Scout Road

The Boy Scout Road is designated by that name on newer editions of the DeLorme Maine Atlas. Older maps provide no name at all. A small sign identifies it as a project of the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust. This dirt road provides aome of the area's best birding through a mixture of habitats. Most of its three-mile length shadows an alder stream that is thick with swamp sparrows, northern waterthrushes, veeries, gray catbirds, common yellowthroats, and belted kingfishers.

The road begins in deciduous forest but changes to mixed habitat and then thick spruce over a relatively short distance. This accounts for the good variety to be found here, including Canada warblers, golden and ruby-crowned kinglets, yellow-bellied and olive-sided flycatchers, and both blue-headed and red-eyed vireos. Canada jays are regularly encountered in the spruce stands, and shares these woods with Swainson’s thrushes, boreal chickadees, spruce grouse, and bay-breasted warblers. This road is lightly traveled by a few private landowners and a handful of fishermen.

Directions: The Boy Scout Road is on the east side of Route 16 just 1.3 miles after its split with Route 4 in Oquossoc.