Weekly Bird Report
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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.
This week on The Bird Report, sometimes birds take the wrong exit off the freeway.
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?”
This, after all, was the 40th anniversary of the Cape Cod Bird Club’s Waterfowl Census, and they would not be denied their ducks.
That big, lemming-loving Arctic bird has finally been sighted again on Cape Cod. Just in from some tundra breeding ground in northern Canada or Alaska, this fierce and seldom-seen raptor of big, open areas is getting local birders excited for winter, with sightings of different birds in Dennis and Orleans.
At this turkey-oriented time, I’m here to take your mind off the fact that you have no plans to brine, or spatchcock, or deep fry a turkey in peanut oil, or whatever the gourmet types with endless free time tell us we should be doing to our turkeys.
I’ve been on enough offshore boat trips in fall that I’ve seen someone with an actual oriole on their baseball cap.
As so often happens, Facebook brought us word of the latest rare bird. A post in the Cape Cod Birders group on Monday showed clear photos of a hawk that, in the parlance of its native lands, ain’t from around these parts.
Though we’re back to short-sleeve weather and barely a leaf has reached the ground, I assure you it is indeed late October, which means that All Hallows Eve is upon us.
Lately I’ve been looking for birds in a small community garden near my daughter’s school in Orleans — as we saw with last week’s state-first Virginia’s Warbler, community gardens can yield a bountiful bird harvest in fall.
Ornithologist Mark Faherty says the fall season of rare bird sightings on Cape Cod has just started.
Ornithologist Mark Faherty says the fall season of rare bird sightings on Cape Cod has just started.
On Monday morning, as my son and I walked to the bus stop a little before 7, I was already hearing warblers. Specifically, I was hearing the flight calls these little songbirds give during migration.
I finally have a little time to watch birds each day, and it’s all thanks to the Monomoy School District. Between my kindergarten-aged son’s absurdly early bus time of 6:52 AM and the time we have to get my daughter up for pre-school, I have one deliciously unstructured hour.
Hurricane, then Tropical Storm, then “Post-Tropical Cyclone” Lee has come and gone. Lee barely grazed us with some ho-hum 50 mph gusts that downed a few trees, having passed well to our east. But how did it score in storm-birding terms?
Birders are all secretly hoping Lee comes, and that Lee is bringing lots of gifts in the form of rare, storm-blown birds.
