Weekly Bird Report: Recent Episodes
Mark Faherty
The Weekly Bird Report with Mark Faherty can be heard every Wednesday on WCAI, the local NPR station for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the South Coast. Mark has been the Science Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary since August 2007 and has led birding trips for Mass Audubon since 2002. He is past president of the Cape Cod Bird Club and current member of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee.
Shorebird migration is picking up, but the world's friendliest rare bird stole the show. This week, the famous bridled tern toured Cape Cod and the Islands before returning to Scituate.
A rare tropical seabird has spent weeks charming its way around Scituate Harbor, perching on cars, deck railings, and even the heads of beachgoers and their dogs. Bridled Terns almost never show up in Massachusetts outside of hurricanes, let alone linger all summer acting like a friendly parrot. This week we dig into the sighting history, compare it to a more standoffish bird that's been working the coast of Maine and New Hampshire since 2024, and consider a few Cape reports from earlier this summer that may be connected. Plus a theory involving a marooned sailor and a rottweiler named Flotsam.
A Crested Caracara, a tropical bird of prey rarely seen north of Florida and Texas, turned up at Race Point in Provincetown this week, one of several surprising sightings across the Northeast this summer. A look at the species' odd habits, its wandering history in Massachusetts, and a running debate about whether it really belongs with the falcons.
It's all about water. One refilled bird bath brought a flood of orioles, a Wellfleet Bay stream draws in warblers and bluebirds, and a volunteer's photos of daytime owls bathing have to be seen to be believed.
As Whip-poor-wills grow scarce in the region's pine woods, a larger and considerably ruder cousin has taken up residence: the Chuck-will's-widow. Once found no farther north than Virginia, this bird-eating nightjar is now breeding across the Cape and Islands in ever-increasing numbers.
Despite its reputation as a quiet month for birding, June delivers a string of surprises on the Cape and Islands this week, led by multiple rare Gull-billed Tern sightings along the coast. From an unexpected Red Crossbill heard from a driveway to a Mississippi Kite studied from a standstill on the Sagamore Bridge, the birds are overachieving.
A short stop at a Mass Audubon nature playground becomes an insect safari full of parasites, predators, mimics, and a tiny fly with a very big name.
A spring storm delivers rare seabirds, massive flocks of songbirds, and the Cape’s first confirmed Prothonotary Warbler nest.
Wildlife photographer Diane Palomba noticed something strange at Long Pasture: hummingbirds nesting suspiciously close to a Cooper's Hawk. Turns out they knew exactly what they were doing.
Mark Faherty recaps an exciting week of spring migration on Cape Cod, featuring rare ibis sightings, a surprise Chestnut-collared Longspur, and the unofficial arrival of “Ibisfest.”
This week’s spring migration reached spectacular heights as rare southern visitors mixed with huge numbers of songbirds pouring into Cape Cod from across the Atlantic.
Mark Faherty talks about a few of the long distance travelers that he has spotted this May from the Nashville Warbler to the Blue-headed Vireo and many more.
Mark Faherty talks about the different types of birds returning to the area this time of year from the Golden-crowned Kinglet to the Ruby-throated Hummingbird
Ornithologist Mark Faherty talks about the return of a Tufted Titmouse making its return to Nantucket.
What we lacked in numbers of the common owls, we made up for with encounters with some of the more sought after species.
Back on September 29, a boatload of birders clutching backpacks and sleeping bags headed out of Hyannis at dawn, bound for the continental shelf and its deep, warm water canyons some 130 miles to the south.
This past weekend I was unchained from my desk for a rare opportunity to get out and take some folks birding – in this case it was a weekend-long “Birding the Fall Migration” Field School for Mass Audubon.
Erratic, swirling flocks of flying gulls look like a Hitchcock film. They're actually just catching bugs.
The much-heralded Brood XIV 17-year cicadas have finally arrived. Have they been serenading you? If you’re in the emergence zone, this is really old news at this point, as they emerged weeks ago and most have probably laid eggs and kicked the bucket at this point. But how does this apparent bonanza affect birds?
For several years, I’ve had a mostly unoccupied screech-owl box on an oak tree in the narrow strip of woods in my backyard. I hung it about 14 feet up, positioned so we can see the hole from the house, and have monitored it expectantly ever since.
Back on Memorial Day, as we Harwich Fahertys discussed what to do, I coyly suggested a family hike with some Upper Cape friends of ours. But where?
This has been one of those rare weeks where enough happened to fuel several weeks of bird reports — a spring nor’easter that poured rare seabirds into Cape Cod Bay, a colony of at least five apparently nesting Swallow-tailed Kites in Mashpee that also shattered the state high count, and, most importantly, the cuteness overload of baby owls fledging in my very own yard.
Rebekah Ambrose was asking for help identifying a bird she photographed in Barnstable, and her photos showed the first-ever Anhinga for the Cape and Islands.
After a bleak winter, and a reluctant, rainy spring, we Cape and Islands year-rounders deserve a flowery and mild May.
While the turn of the calendar to May brings an avalanche of phenological change to yards and woods, maybe none is so obvious, and welcome, as the change in the morning soundscape.
It’s not even May, and the “Swallow-tailed Kite triangle” of Cape Cod is already popping off with early sightings. There were no fewer than five reports of this improbably graceful hawk over the last week.
Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite garden accessory, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Quite a few have been reported already, with the first sighted back on the 17th in Brewster.
It’s a classic birding bummer — sometimes a rare bird comes to light too late for birders to see it, to the chagrin of those who missed out.
On Sunday, a rare bird was discovered on Great Pond in Eastham, driving local birders loony. This unassuming gray and white waterbird was in the wrong kind of water in the wrong town on the wrong coast.
This year it turned out that, as I was heading to Florida, Florida was heading to Cape Cod. As soon as I got down there I saw the rare bird alert from back home blowing up with Florida birds, most of which I didn’t even see while I was in Florida.
March may come in like a lion, but around here it goes out on the crooked wings of an Osprey.
They’re baaaaack! Here on the cusp of astronomical spring, those adorable little beach goers that certain people love to hate have arrived, or at least the first few scouts have. Piping Plovers have been seen in Orleans, Hyannis, and Sandwich, and more are likely out there on the bleak beaches of March
When Bald Eagles took over an Osprey nest on the Outer Cape two years ago it meant that, for the first time since the 1800s out here, the eagle had landed.
A lanky and mysterious stranger arrived in Provincetown last week, where he is often seen loitering near the famous Boy Beach at the west end. Flamboyantly arrayed in feathers, this visitor has developed quite a following, but it’s not for a drag show at the Post Office Cabaret.
With just a few days left in 2024, the undisputed bird of the year for Cape Cod was found in Chatham.
Amidst the silent majesty of this cold Christmas morn, I can only assume you are all gathered around the radio, in the warm embrace of kith and kin, waiting to hear the latest results of the local bird counts.
This is one of those cases where a bird in the hand was going to be worth at least two in the bush. We needed a licensed hummingbird bander to catch and examine it.
On Nantucket this week, the birders are all having flashbacks to October of 2012, when Hurricane Sandy famously devastated parts of the East Coast.
It’s Thanksgiving Eve, so I suppose you expect me to dish out the usual stale, leftover poultry puns sandwiched between the same old turkey fun facts. Well, you’re right. So let’s not mince words and get right into to the meat of the topic.
Cory’s are the biggest of our four shearwaters, a group of wind-surfing seabirds who navigate the trackless oceans by smell, riding the wind deflected upwards off waves to effortlessly cover hundreds of miles in search of fish and squid.
Let’s face it, we all woke up this morning with the same question: what’s going on with seabirds right now? I’m glad you asked, because the answer is “a whole helluva lot.”
Another week, another lost flycatcher from some far-flung locale has turned up. This one had been flung further than most, having perhaps started its journey as far away as Argentina.
With an exceedingly rare Gray Kingbird that played hide and seek with birders in Eastham this week, the Cape reclaimed the title of rare bird capital of the region, but sadly this Caribbean visitor kept moving - it was last seen on the 19th at Nauset Light Beach.
Last week’s Vermilion Flycatcher, the briefly famous female photographed at South Cape Beach in Mashpee, turned out to be a one-day wonder, as we birders say – she hasn’t been seen since. Beyond a wayward Western Kingbird that’s still hanging around Peterson Farm in Falmouth, it was a quiet week on the Cape for fall rarities.
As we turn another calendar page, we’re also turning a corner in the fall migration. I’ve always preferred October to September, mainly because we tend to get more birds later in the fall.
You may have noticed that it rained recently, for the first time in what seemed like years. In addition to a satisfying, multi-day soaking of our parched soils, this weather also brought the kind of winds that get the attention of storm bird chasers, that hardy and quirky subset of the already quirky subset of society that is birders.
When it comes to bird photography, experienced practitioners know that sometimes it’s best to shoot first and ask questions later. What I mean is, even expert birders don’t always know exactly what they’re looking at until they get home and look at the photos.
More than 300 species of birds have been recorded from Race Point, the second-highest list of anywhere on the Cape and Islands.
It’s not just back to school time for kids, all those billions of young birds that hatched over the spring and summer need to learn how to be birds, and it’s a real school of hard knocks.
In all my years of camping and doing field work around the US I never knew that flying squirrels could be camp scavengers.
The birds, being well-versed in Shakespeare, know that all the world’s a stage. Maybe not, but what they do know is that some of the world’s a staging area, and one of the most important staging areas is right here on the Cape and Islands.
In case you haven’t heard, the Globetrotters are in town. Not the basketball ones, in case you thought of them first for some reason - I’m talking about the actual globe trotters, the Arctic-nesting shorebirds.
Let’s face it, insects suffer from a likeability deficit akin to that of most politicians, what with the biting and the disease transmission and the landing on your food right when you’re about to eat it and all. But I think we can all get behind butterflies, those harmless, even beneficial, and undeniably beautiful ambassadors for the insect world.
About 20 years ago I was doing bird surveys for my graduate research all through the Cape Cod National Seashore – I had over 300 survey points from Fort Hill in Eastham to Wood End in Provincetown, and I knew the park, including deep, off-trail areas, as well as anyone.
On Monday, though it’s full-on tourist season and many of my local friends had been putting out “shelter in place” warnings on social media, I bravely ventured from the Lower Cape to deep in the heart of the Upper Cape.
Recently, Mass Audubon has turned its conservational gaze upon an inconspicuous and imperiled coastal resident. This saltmarsh sprite lives life on the edge, only nesting in the daily-flooded coastal marshes from southern Maine to Chesapeake Bay, where they struggle to complete their nesting cycle between the monthly high tides.
While kite-o-rama continues on the Cape, with both kite species still turning up from Mashpee to Harwich, the Vineyard scored this week with an even less likely bird with a long, bifurcated tail.
Mid-June is kind of like the slack tide in the Cape ornithological calendar. Songbird and shorebird migration are over, with most birds now busy breeding across the Northern Hemisphere.
We have a backlog of old business to attend to here at Bird Report central, namely, what’s going on with breeding birds right now? The answer is, they are battling for their lives and the lives of their children in this war zone we call the suburbs.
What’s lanky and lost and pink all over? It’s the American Flamingo that spent Sunday afternoon at Chapin Beach in Dennis. Only a lucky few got to see it, but this real, actual flamingo was indeed there. But how did it get there, and where did it come from?
It finally happened, for me anyway, on Friday morning. By “it,” I mean some clear evidence of newly arrived migrants of a number worthy of mid-to-late May.
We’re entering the home stretch of spring migration, but, here on the Cape, it still feels like a sputtering engine that can’t quite turn over.
Last week I predicted our first real migrant songbird fallout of May on Thursday morning. Sadly, that did not materialize, probably because of too much rain between us and the birds that night, stopping them short of New England.
When did your “spring is finally here” birds arrive? At my house, spring came Monday, April 29.
This past weekend I was lucky enough to get in on an overnight junket to the island of Penikese, at the far end of the Elizabeths chain, courtesy of Dr. Andrew Gillis of the Marine Biological Lab and our hosts, the Penikese School.
The first hummingbird was reported on the Cape, as expected for mid-April, but this eagerly anticipated annual event was overshadowed by spring overshoot fever — southerly winds brought, well, a windfall of rare birds to the Cape and Islands.
April isn’t my favorite month in the birding calendar, especially when its weather barely outperforms bleakest March, but it has its charms – the first hummingbirds and seabird migration among them.
You probably haven’t seen anything in the news about it, but I have reliable intel that a royal has quietly taken up residence on Cape Cod. In the Sagamore area, away from the gaze of paparazzi, a prince is spending some time along the canal and trying to blend in with the locals.
On two occasions over the last week I found myself driving slowly around some back streets in Yarmouth Port, craning my neck, looking like a cat burglar casing the neighborhood. Or more likely around here, an overly aggressive realtor looking to pounce on a potential new listing.
As the season of mud settles in, this seems like a good time to talk about one if its biggest stars. This worm slurping dumpling of a bird dances its way back into our lives each March, when the aerial displays of the male become staple program fodder for nature centers and bird clubs everywhere.
I’ve been getting a lot of mixed signals from Mother Earth lately. On my early morning walk yesterday I saw an optimistic chipmunk, then a freshly dead garter snake that probably should have stayed in bed another two months.
As I write this, Red Knots feel very far away. To be more precise, 7000 miles and three months away. These Arctic nesting shorebirds are marathon migrators, traveling from well above the Arctic circle to wintering areas at the other end of the planet each year.
It’s Valentine's Day, which means it’s time to sort through the picked over remains of the greeting cards to find the least groanworthy one. But us people aren’t the only ones suffering though – I mean reveling in love this time of year – it’s also courtin’ season for many species of birds.
It’s Valentine's Day, which means it’s time to sort through the picked over remains of the greeting cards to find the least groanworthy one. But us people aren’t the only ones suffering though – I mean reveling in love this time of year – it’s also courtin’ season for many species of birds.
This past weekend I was tasked with leading a duck and eagle safari on behalf of the remarkable Harwich Conservation Trust. With a full roster of 15 hopeful birdwatchers, my plan was to check various spots around the big pond complex in Harwich and Brewster, a great area to see winter ducks and the eagles that eat them.
Yesterday was a typical Tuesday. I was working at my desk at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary, while trickling through the back of my mind was that little stream of anxiety about what this week’s bird report should be about.
This time the snow stuck. It was the perfect snow – not enough to shovel but enough to fuel a weekend of sledding and several days of successful wildlife tracking.
Yesterday morning I thought I might make this week’s piece about birding in snow, then, in true Cape Cod fashion, that lovely snow was gone within a few hours.
On a frozen morning last week I stopped to sort through ducks at Town Cove in Orleans, a place that accumulates all sorts of waterfowl when other spots start to freeze.
While this is the season of Christmas Bird Counts, wherein highly trained hit squads of birders comb all the birdy hotspots and seldom visited back roads of the Cape and beyond, it is not correct to think of one of these counts as a complete census.
It’s that “most wonderful” time of year when a birder’s fancy turns to Christmas – Bird Counts, that is. This past weekend began the 124th year of National Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count, and the 93rd year of counts here on Cape Cod.
Where are my birds? When you work in the bird industry, it’s often the most common question you get, right up there with “how do I stop the woodpeckers pecking my house?”
Birders are all secretly hoping Lee comes, and that Lee is bringing lots of gifts in the form of rare, storm-blown birds.
Hundreds of thousands of shorebirds and seabirds breed, feed, and rest on Chatham’s barrier beaches. Importantly for these ISS surveys, thousands of normally kinetic shorebirds take a break from feeding to rest in certain parts of Monomoy during the high tide, at which point they are relatively easy to count.
Fall migration is an Irish goodbye – by the time you notice you’re not hearing the catbirds anymore, they’ve been gone two weeks.
The Lesser Sand-Plover, that enigmatic Asian visitor who brought birders from at least as far away as Canada, was ominously absent from South Cape Beach in Mashpee after 8 AM yesterday.
Rhode Island is no slouch in the rare bird game - places like the Charlestown Breachway, Napatree Point, and Block Island have produced many a rarity that sent Massachusetts birders speeding down I-95.
I highly recommend paying attention to the bees visiting your yard. Just like with birding, you never know what you may find. Some tiny bees I noticed visiting male winterberry at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary last month turned out to be armored resin bees, a group never before recorded on the Cape and Islands.
As we round the corner of mid-summer, with Labor Day now dimly visible at the horizon, it’s time you got serious about shorebirds.
The bird was indeed a plover, but not the one they were tasked with watching. This was a Mountain Plover, a scarce species of the high, dry plains east of the rockies, and one that eluded me thus far in my birding career.
It’s now high season for that traditional tourist activity, the whale watch. Us jaded locals probably don’t take advantage of this activity enough, though we live in one of just a handful of places in North America where it’s easy to see whales close to land.
It’s summertime on the Cape’s beaches, which for me always brings to mind that famous old song about seabirds – Tern! Tern! Tern! At least I assume it’s about the seabirds – it’s by the Byrds, after all.
This past weekend, the wife and I packed up the kids and headed west, bound for adventure in the exotic lands beyond the bridges. As much as I love the Cape, I need to head to places with richer woods and bigger wildlife now and again.
In the birding calendar, late June is a great time to sit back, relax and watch some chicks.
Last week, full of foolish confidence, I declared that migration was over. This week’s report is about various migrants that are still passing through.
I am officially calling it – spring migration is over. With migrating birds, as with people, there are always stragglers and wanderers who keep things interesting, but for all intents and purposes, it’s now simply breeding season.
May is a month of intense and concentrated bird migration. Unlike fall, when legions of younger birds take their sweet time heading south over a period of several months, spring migration is short and serious – taking too long could mean you don’t get to breed this year.
As the dust settles on another Mass Audubon Bird-a-thon weekend, it’s time to catch up with all that went down.
The last week or so has been an odd one in Cape Cod birding. While we were sitting and waiting on the songbird migration floodgates to open, pouring forth warblers, orioles, hummingbirds and such, the bird world came at us from a different direction.
Though, as usual, I didn’t have any actual birding plans, my weekend somehow ended up a triumphant birding success.
Before last week’s summer weather, I made lofty predictions about various early and southern overshoot migrants we might see around here with that warm southerly air flow.
The lowly horseshoe crab – due to laziness or extreme stubbornness, somehow it hasn’t managed to evolve perceptibly in over 400 million years. And yet, somehow, people love them.
While the Osprey versus eagles saga continued last week at Cedar Pond in Orleans, we finally had a resolution to this high-profile local property dispute.
The eagle has landed. Or rather, the Osprey has landed, and he found an eagle squatting in his nest. Now what? A couple of months ago I covered the topic of Bald Eagles hanging out on Osprey nests around here during the winter.
Spring, that cold, wet joke played on us Cape and Islands folk, begins in less than two weeks.
A locally famous Bald Eagle from up in Arlington fell ill on Monday, and is now being treated at Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable. The reason this eagle is sick has more to do with you and me than you might realize, and the common denominator is rats.
When you think about the best places to go birding on the Cape, I’m guessing Hyannis is not first on your list. If you’re from here, Hyannis is the big city – the place you go once a week, the day after bath day, to get supplies for the homestead or sell your wares.
I know Valentine’s Day was yesterday, and that, being a made-up greeting card holiday, it doesn’t get to bleed into a second day like one of the A-list holidays might.
Winters are confusing these days. This winter, for example, fell on a Saturday. For weeks on end we’re never getting below freezing, then for one day we’re making Northern Minnesota seem balmy.
Back in the fall I covered the annual “winter finch forecast”, where a network of biologists across the northern forests put together their best guesses for what northern songbirds will be doing this winter.
If you found yourself heading out to the hinterlands of Outer Cape Cod in the last week, your eagle eyes may have noticed some hulking shapes atop one of the Osprey nests by the Orleans rotary, the ones in the powerlines that cross Cedar Pond.
Last time I covered some of the species showing local, and often also national declines, as shown in the data from the annual Christmas Bird Counts. I half-heartedly promised to cover the increasing trends this week, and, against all odds, this is me remembering to do that.
Every year around this time I can be heard carrying on about the Christmas Bird Counts – which rare birds were seen where, what count had the most species, and so on. This “sports page” account of the counts is fun way to look at it, but it doesn’t mean much in the big picture.
The last of the local Christmas Bird Counts have come and gone, and with the change of calendars, birders are now onto chasing the various rare birds the counts turned up — the new year means a clean slate for those year listers out there.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – Christmas Bird Count season! Birders are digging out their warmest winter garb, polishing their optics, and marking their calendars to prepare for the all-out birding blitz that is the Christmas Bird Count season. It runs from December 14 to January 5, and I can guarantee there’s a count near you.
If you look at a map of the world on your computer screen, thanks to the way we project the curved earth onto a flat plane, at a certain point the map just ends.
Some fowl play was afoot this past weekend in the form of the 39th annual Cape Cod Waterfowl Census.
It’s officially bird feeding season. I usually wait until mid-winter to get into the subject of bird feeders, since there’s not much else to do by then but stare out the window looking for some sign of hope.
It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’ve got that big, brown bird on my mind. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water – it’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often, maybe only once a year.
What a difference a cold front can make – as I write this, it finally feels appropriate to discuss winter birds. One particular group of winter birds is as unpredictable as New England weather, and equally fun to discuss – it’s the winter finches.
After I filed my report last week about the Vermilion Flycatcher I found in Brewster, it went viral — for reasons not clear to me, this rare bird story grew wings.
This week I have the unusual pleasure of talking about a really rare bird recently found here on Cape Cod. That part is not so unusual – some might say I do that too much already.
As the old saying goes, “if you love something, let it go, if it comes back it’s yours forever...” yadda yadda yadda – you know the one. Well, I love birds, and I love the challenge of puzzling out their often secret identities.
Ah, October! A time of crisp air, whimsical gourds, yellow and red-tinged leaves, and wholly unnecessary amounts of artificial pumpkin flavoring. But, I think we can all agree, it is mainly a time when rare birds from the western U.S. begin to show up here on the Cape and Islands.
This past weekend I led a field school on one of my favorite topics, fall birding on Cape Cod. Field Schools are weekend-long courses based out of Mass Audubon sanctuaries, designed to explore some aspect of nature in great detail.
Over the last week, I was lucky on a few occasions to bird one of the region’s great natural treasures, the Cape’s wild elbow, Monomoy.
Over the last week, I was lucky on a few occasions to bird one of the region’s great natural treasures, the Cape’s wild elbow, Monomoy.
Over the last week, I was lucky on a few occasions to bird one of the region’s great natural treasures, the Cape’s wild elbow, Monomoy.
There are certain groups of birds that strike fear into the hearts of beginning birders. Immature gulls; young, perched hawks; sparrows in any context.
There are certain groups of birds that strike fear into the hearts of beginning birders. Immature gulls; young, perched hawks; sparrows in any context.
There are certain groups of birds that strike fear into the hearts of beginning birders. Immature gulls; young, perched hawks; sparrows in any context.
Last week, I joined some folks stalking around Chatham looking to catch some birds. Armed with gunpowder, heavy iron cannons, and multiple nets, they were hunting one of the rarest shorebirds in the country.
Last week, I joined some folks stalking around Chatham looking to catch some birds. Armed with gunpowder, heavy iron cannons, and multiple nets, they were hunting one of the rarest shorebirds in the country.
Last week, I joined some folks stalking around Chatham looking to catch some birds. Armed with gunpowder, heavy iron cannons, and multiple nets, they were hunting one of the rarest shorebirds in the country.
Around here we have three definitions of fall. There’s the familiar astronomical fall, which starts around September 21, the date of the vernal equinox. Then there’s meteorological fall, which starts tomorrow, September 1.
After a month of hard-to-believe bird discoveries, I’m almost happy to report that not much happened in the last week. A small amount of an unfamiliar, wet substance fell from the sky at one point, confusing birds and people alike.
This has been a giddy week for the Massachusetts ornithological community, as the hits just keep coming from the Cape and Islands.
Like so many things these days, it began on Facebook. In a group devoted to birds on the Cape, buried in a comment thread, someone from the Upper Cape – I’ll call her “Jo Anne” because, well, that’s her name - casually mentioned she had been seeing a certain big, improbably rare bird hanging out in her yard.
We need to talk about Monarchs. Yes, it’s that time of year when I hijack the bird report to talk butterflies, and it’s come none too soon.
Last week I had the chance to do something I haven’t done in years — camping on the Cape.
Now that summer is fully here in tourism terms, it’s peak time for whale watches — a must on anyone’s list of summer activities, whether you’re a salty local or a wide-eyed weekly renter.
A striking and unusual species has come a knocking on Cape Cod this month, a bird we rarely see. Adults of this mystery species have been seen in Provincetown last month and Falmouth last week.
For years now, I have been trolling my poor wife by refusing to cover the one bird report topic she always requested. I once went so far as to pretend I was doing the requested piece in the opening lines before veering off to a different topic.
For most of the smartphone era people have asked me “when will I be able to just hold my phone up and have it tell me what birds I’m hearing, you know, like Shazam does with music?”. “Ha!” I would chuckle derisively, “maybe never.
Happy first day of meteorological summer! It never really feels like summer here until the tourist explosion in early July, but it helps to think of this last shoulder month, when us locals can get some beach time in, as “summer”.
So this is it. The biggest week in the birding calendar. The week when, as far as topics go, I have 50 rare birds to pick from, a hundred interesting happenings in backyard breeding bird biology to discuss, and two dozen charming birding anecdotes to relate.
If you were out in nature at all this Friday or Saturday, you may have noticed some people with binoculars looking a bit crazed, perhaps more unkempt even than usual, checking their watches and rushing about on trails.
Do you remember what it was like 450 million years ago? Neither do I. But horseshoe crabs, somewhere in their DNA, remember. They were around in some form over 200 million years before dinosaurs first appeared, and 300 million years before birds.
It’s now finally May, which means spring, and spring migration, get serious. Gardens look like gardens again, bees are about, and just like that, familiar birds are back.
What’s happening in the bird world depends a lot on the scale of inquiry. This just means what you see in your neighborhood won’t match the Cape-wide highlights I’m typically crowing about.
Last week, the Cape experienced a phenomenon strangely rare on a peninsula known for its bird migrations. A genuine “fallout” of migrating songbirds began partway through the day on Thursday and continued through the afternoon and beyond.
As we speak, river herring are fighting currents and a gauntlet of anthropogenic barriers in an epic annual struggle to make more of themselves. And many of our newly arriving birds are depending on them.
If I were marketing Cape Cod to visiting birders, late March would be a tough sell. The Ospreys are back, sure, and that’s exciting.
After a much-needed week in sunny Florida, where the birds are so tame that I felt like I was taking pictures in a zoo, it was nice to come home to some signs of spring.
After a much-needed week in sunny Florida, where the birds are so tame that I felt like I was taking pictures in a zoo, it was nice to come home to some signs of spring.
In the coming weeks, one of our most anticipated markers of seasonal change will be arriving – the Osprey.
I recently bore witness to a tender moment between a couple of birds not often associated with romance – Common Ravens. These bigger, shaggier cousins of crows are more linked with the macabre thanks to old Edgar Allen Poe and many others, so it was nice to see the flirtier side of the raven.
On a couple of recent days I spent some time doing what bird watchers are often criticized for not doing – I actually watched a bird. What I mean is, I didn’t just quickly identify it, check it off a list, and move on.
While it seemed back in December like winter may never come, the previously slumbering season has thoroughly asserted itself in the last week. This is not all bad for the bird watching set.
As I write on this coldest day of the season thus far, it seems wise to discuss an indoor birding activity almost universally enjoyed by bird fanciers – backyard bird feeding.
With the final tallies for Truro, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard now in, the 122nd Christmas Bird Count season has come to a close. With little land area and few productive ponds, my Truro count is the little count that could, but the island counts are typically part of a Clash of the Titans each year, vying for top species count honors with the Cape and Mid-Cape Counts.
It appears that Santa has come early for Massachusetts birdwatchers in the form of a truly “Steller” avian discovery in Bristol County.
Get ready, because it’s shaping up to be a Snowy winter! Don’t rush out and buy all the shovels please, I don’t mean the weather - like everyone else, I have no idea what that will be.
The flying penguins are here – have you seen them? This is of course a reference to one of my favorite groups of birds – the alcids! November is when alcids arrive in numbers to the waters of the Cape and Islands, which means I get to tell you all about them.
This Thanksgiving week, while it’s tempting to trot out that tired old chestnut of a turkey piece I usually recycle, I thought I’d try to come up with some new material. But that isn’t easy, because turkeys don’t really change much, plus the Cape Cod Times just scooped me on the turkey topic, even using me a source.
You probably didn’t hear them without a battery-powered radio, but last week I made some predictions about what birds the big storm would bring us, carefully hedged with weasel clauses so I would be right no matter what happened.
Now that we’re past the halfway point here in October, it’s time for donning your fleece vest, clasping your hands ‘round your warm pumpkin spice latte, as leaves crunch beneath your feet on a crisp morning, at least according to all the fall-themed tv commercials. But here on the Cape and Islands, it’s, as always, time for serious birding.
Some old friends and I had a fire on an ocean beach in Wellfleet the other night. It was perfect – the kids were home with my sainted wife, and the night was clear and free of light pollution, so the stars were multitudinous. The moon rose like a blood-orange on the ocean horizon.
Here in our little archipelago, we have opportunity to see birds from all corners of the globe, especially now, in late summer and fall. These birds passing through, unbeknownst to most, often have astounding migration stories to tell.
When it comes to fall birding hotspots around here, the best of the best places tend to fall somewhere between “difficult” and “you’ve got to be kidding me” in terms of their accessibility. These include South Monomoy, Cuttyhunk, Race Point, the Gay Head Cliffs of Aquinnah, and Pochet Island in Orleans.
Each year, untold numbers of shorebirds of mostly remote, Arctic breeding grounds pass through the Cape and Islands. Here they gorge on intertidal fauna and roost on protected sandbars and beaches, fattening up before continuing on to destinations as far away as the other end of South America.
This week on the Bird Report, a trip far out on the water yields some special surprises.
It’s August and shorebird migration is well underway. Small, delicate looking creatures that spent the month of June dodging Arctic foxes and Snowy Owls are now winging their way Cape-wards.
This week on the Bird Report, we're taking a look at a different kind of “flyer” in our region.