Pine Point

Pine Point is where Scarbrough Marsh meets the sea. It is often extraordinary, as the outflow from several streams mixes with the incoming tide, squeezing through a narrow channel to the Atlantic. This concentrates a rich food source for birds (and harbor seals). Gulls and shorebirds are the primary benefactors. Herring, ring-billed, and great black-backed gulls are abundant year-round. From August through October there are often over a thousand Bonaparte’s gulls here. Common black-headed gulls and little gulls offer rare sightings among them. Semipalmated sandpipers and plovers are plentiful in late summer, to be replaced by dunlin later in autumn. In the height of the season, Hudsonian godwits sometimes turn up. Stay alert for white-rumped, pectoral, stilt, and Baird’s sandpipers.

Be sure to check the oceanside beach at Pine Point. From fall through spring, the waters usually contain scoters, eiders, grebes, and loons. This beach is good for sanderlings any time of year, and piping plovers nest in this area. The jetty on the far north end of the beach is attractive to terns and it is possible to find any combination of species roosting here in August and September. The jetty and channel are top sites to look for roseate terns, particularly around breakfast time. Forster’s tern is rare in the state, but it regularly shows up on the jetty in autumn.

Directions: From Route 1 in Scarborough and Scarborough Marsh, continue along Pine Point Road (Route 9) until it bends abruptly south right toward Old Orchard Beach. Instead, turn left and follow to the town landing. There are two lefts - the first is East Grand; the second is King Street. Both end at the town landing.