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

In Provincetown, that Spotted Towhee sure likes an airport with no planes. A Sandhill Crane continued in the West End marshes, and birders are still watching the Thick-Billed Murre at MacMillan Pier in Provincetown Harbor.

Birds at Race Point this week included 2 Pacific Loons, 15 Black-Bellied Plovers, 2 Black Guillemots, 7 Common Murres, a Dovekie, 65 Razorbills, 25 Iceland Gulls, 25 Horned Larks, 50 Snow Buntings, and 14 Lapland Longspurs.

Piping Plovers aren’t the only ones we’ve got. This Black-Bellied Plover, right, with checkerboard wings is a high-latitude shorebird (hanging out in this picture with a Mountain Plover). They’re fairly common, but like other high-Arctic nesters that rely on tidal wetlands, they will be affected by rising sea levels. That’s because they feed on tidal flats and estuaries where they pick worms, crustaceans, and bivalves from muddy or sandy ground. Its movements as it hunts are similar to the tiny pipers we know well here: they run forward, pause, look and listen, and then seize their prey quickly. (Photo by Peter Pearsall/USFWS)

A Black-Headed Gull and 6 American Pipits were reported in Eastham.

Birders in Truro and Wellfleet are in Nola for Mardi Gras and ask that you please not bother them until tomorrow.

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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