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This Week’s Bird Sightings

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Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, March 19 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

The first Ospreys, Piping Plovers, and American Oystercatchers were reported this week, “a few days ahead of schedule,” writes Mark Faherty, although he’s only partly serious about the schedule.

Sightings at Race Point in Provincetown included a Pacific Loon, 4 Piping Plovers, 2 American Oystercatchers, 537 Razorbills, 16 Common Murres, a Thick-Billed Murre, 2 Dovekies, a Glaucous Gull, 5 Iceland Gulls, 156 Red-Throated Loons, and an early Barn Swallow.

The practice of housing Purple Martins goes back to the indigenous people of the Eastern U.S. Our species have co-evolved here, where all Eastern Purple Martins count on human-made housing. (In the West, they build nests in cactuses and tree hollows.) They’re fascinating to watch, hunting insects and even drinking in flight by scooping water from ponds, and popping deftly into their gourd homes. They nest in colonies. But their relationship with humans isn’t entirely happy, according to Mass Audubon. It’s a dependency based on loss of saltmarsh habitat and competition for nests that began after the introduction of non-native and more aggressive House Sparrows and European Starlings. (Photo by Jamie Chavez/UPenn)

A Townsend’s Solitaire continued at High Head in North Truro, where other sightings included a very early Purple Martin, 3 Common Ravens, a Marsh Wren, 5 Gray Catbirds, a Brown Thrasher, a Common Yellowthroat, and 50 Yellow-Rumped Warblers.

There was a Lincoln’s Sparrow in Wellfleet.

If you have questions about these sightings or want to report a sighting, call the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at 508-349-2615 or send an email to [email protected].

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