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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, June 18 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

A Franklin’s Gull was seen at Race Point in Provincetown, where other sightings included a White-Rumped Sandpiper, a Royal Tern, a Black Tern, 12 Roseate Terns, and a Lesser Black-Backed Gull.

Clapper Rails are hard to catch sight of, according to the folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, because they are shy. They emerge briefly from dense marsh grasses onto mudflats and vanish just as quickly. Listen for their loud, clattering outbursts as you move carefully along the edges of salt marshes in hopes of spotting one. Among their remarkable ways: Clapper Rails have special salt glands that enable them to drink seawater; their eggs can still hatch after being submerged in up to 18 inches of water during high tide; when chicks are about a week old, the parents divide the brood and each looks after half the offspring. (Photo by Tony Castro/Wikimedia Commons SA 4.0)

A Black Skimmer was seen at the Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary and a Pine Siskin elsewhere in Wellfleet.

Someone saw a Clapper Rail in Eastham.

 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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