Bill Sheehan was 10 years old when he fell in love with birds. It came at the end of a long, hot June day in 1973, when his family moved from Long Island, New York, to an abandoned Patten farmhouse on 180 acres of played-out potato fields.
“Moving to northern Maine was culture shock,” Sheehan, 53, said. “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 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.”
The County is pleased to feature content from our sister company, Bangor Daily News. To read the rest of “Moving from New York to rural Maine inspired this boy’s love of birds,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writerRon Joseph, please follow this link to the BDN online.
