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birding

    MORNING FLIGHT

    Breakfast With the Birds

    Seeds and suet fuel migrant flocks and year-rounders

    By

    A couple of weeks ago, I felt a chill in the air, and I knew it was time. I drove to Orleans, purchased a 40-pound sack of sunflower seeds, and returned home to assemble my bird-feeding station.

    I started feeding birds before I could ride a bike or tie my shoes. When I felt the first inklings of a fascination with birds at age six, my parents dug out a green metal hopper feeder that had been languishing in our basement, filled it with hardware-store seed mix, and hung it in our back yard. It didn’t take long for the birds to find it. I spent many afternoons watching chickadees and house finches squabble on the feeder while juncos and sparrows scratched the ground below.

    Their gathering seemed like something of a miracle to me. I didn’t have my own binoculars yet, so it was hard to get a good look at the birds I heard in the bushes and treetops. But with a feeder, they came right into the open, and I could watch to my heart’s content. Now and then, a rare or unusual species would pay a visit to our yard.

    I still feel the same kind of wonder when I set up my bird-feeding station in Wellfleet.

    A black-capped chickadee shares a platform feeder with a tufted titmouse. (Photos by William von Herff)

    Every morning from fall through spring, I eat breakfast in front of the feeder. The list of birds that I’ve seen there in just the last year has grown to over 30. I’ve seen a red-bellied woodpecker tackle a blue jay, flocks of a dozen chickadees gang up on the feeder at once, and a lingering orange-crowned warbler survive the winter by eating suet cakes — a mix of seed and animal fat.

    For some birds that end up wintering farther north than they’re used to, like that warbler, feeders can be an essential source of food. Studies have shown that bird feeding has significant effects on bird behavior. Some have even argued that part of the reason that southern species like Carolina wrens, northern cardinals, and tufted titmice have colonized the Northeast is because of the 20th-century rise in bird-feeding. The other part, of course, is climate change.

    It seems clear enough that birds have learned to recognize feeders as a reliable food source. When I set my feeders up for this fall — I take them down during the summer, when birds focus more of their energy on finding bugs to feed their growing young — it took all of 20 seconds for a pair of chickadees to start chirping in the hedges. Another 10 seconds went by and they had flown to the feeder to check it out before I had even put seed in it.

    I don’t know if these chickadees were the same ones that visited my bird feeder last spring or if chickadees in general have simply learned to recognize bird feeder-shaped things. Either way seems amazing to me.

    The chickadee selects a seed that it might eat or cache somewhere for later.

    There’s something innate in us, I believe, that drives us to feed birds. This reason transcends time. Thoreau tossed corn to chickadees and blue jays in Walden. Ancient Egyptians cultivated fields and set them aside for sacred ibis to feed on. The Vedas, the most ancient Hindu scriptures, advise orthodox Hindus to feed rice cakes to birds as well as to “dogs, insects, wandering outcasts, and beings of the invisible worlds.”

    According to The Birds at My Table, a history of bird-feeding by Darryl Jones, the Vedas are the earliest written record of people feeding wild birds. The Vedas were written around 2,500 years ago, which makes bird feeding at least as old as glass or rubber and significantly older than physical money.

    I like to imagine that the millions of people across the U.S. who feed birds today are following that tradition. In doing so, they are making birds accessible in a way they rarely are otherwise.

    The thing about birding is that it’s just not for everyone. Birds are most active during the early mornings. They can be hard to tell apart. They tend to hang out in places that are full of bugs, or cold winds, or marsh stink. If you set out with the goal of finding a specific bird, more often than not, you’ll be disappointed.

    But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t enjoy watching the birds at a bird feeder. So, by all means, hang yours now, be it a massive feeder array or a milk carton-crafted job you made with your kids. The birds will come — just as long as you add seeds.

    MORNING FLIGHT

    Breakfast With the Birds

    Seeds and suet fuel migrant flocks and year-rounders

    By

    A couple of weeks ago, I felt a chill in the air, and I knew it was time. I drove to Orleans, purchased a 40-pound sack of sunflower seeds, and returned home to assemble my bird-feeding station.

    I started feeding birds before I could ride a bike or tie my shoes. When I felt the first inklings of a fascination with birds at age six, my parents dug out a green metal hopper feeder that had been languishing in our basement, filled it with hardware-store seed mix, and hung it in our back yard. It didn’t take long for the birds to find it. I spent many afternoons watching chickadees and house finches squabble on the feeder while juncos and sparrows scratched the ground below.

    Their gathering seemed like something of a miracle to me. I didn’t have my own binoculars yet, so it was hard to get a good look at the birds I heard in the bushes and treetops. But with a feeder, they came right into the open, and I could watch to my heart’s content. Now and then, a rare or unusual species would pay a visit to our yard.

    I still feel the same kind of wonder when I set up my bird-feeding station in Wellfleet.

    A black-capped chickadee shares a platform feeder with a tufted titmouse. (Photos by William von Herff)

    Every morning from fall through spring, I eat breakfast in front of the feeder. The list of birds that I’ve seen there in just the last year has grown to over 30. I’ve seen a red-bellied woodpecker tackle a blue jay, flocks of a dozen chickadees gang up on the feeder at once, and a lingering orange-crowned warbler survive the winter by eating suet cakes — a mix of seed and animal fat.

    For some birds that end up wintering farther north than they’re used to, like that warbler, feeders can be an essential source of food. Studies have shown that bird feeding has significant effects on bird behavior. Some have even argued that part of the reason that southern species like Carolina wrens, northern cardinals, and tufted titmice have colonized the Northeast is because of the 20th-century rise in bird-feeding. The other part, of course, is climate change.

    It seems clear enough that birds have learned to recognize feeders as a reliable food source. When I set my feeders up for this fall — I take them down during the summer, when birds focus more of their energy on finding bugs to feed their growing young — it took all of 20 seconds for a pair of chickadees to start chirping in the hedges. Another 10 seconds went by and they had flown to the feeder to check it out before I had even put seed in it.

    I don’t know if these chickadees were the same ones that visited my bird feeder last spring or if chickadees in general have simply learned to recognize bird feeder-shaped things. Either way seems amazing to me.

    The chickadee selects a seed that it might eat or cache somewhere for later.

    There’s something innate in us, I believe, that drives us to feed birds. This reason transcends time. Thoreau tossed corn to chickadees and blue jays in Walden. Ancient Egyptians cultivated fields and set them aside for sacred ibis to feed on. The Vedas, the most ancient Hindu scriptures, advise orthodox Hindus to feed rice cakes to birds as well as to “dogs, insects, wandering outcasts, and beings of the invisible worlds.”

    According to The Birds at My Table, a history of bird-feeding by Darryl Jones, the Vedas are the earliest written record of people feeding wild birds. The Vedas were written around 2,500 years ago, which makes bird feeding at least as old as glass or rubber and significantly older than physical money.

    I like to imagine that the millions of people across the U.S. who feed birds today are following that tradition. In doing so, they are making birds accessible in a way they rarely are otherwise.

    The thing about birding is that it’s just not for everyone. Birds are most active during the early mornings. They can be hard to tell apart. They tend to hang out in places that are full of bugs, or cold winds, or marsh stink. If you set out with the goal of finding a specific bird, more often than not, you’ll be disappointed.

    But I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t enjoy watching the birds at a bird feeder. So, by all means, hang yours now, be it a massive feeder array or a milk carton-crafted job you made with your kids. The birds will come — just as long as you add seeds.

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, Oct. 1 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    Birds at Race Point in Provincetown this week included a Baird’s Sandpiper and a Pacific Loon, plus 23 Red-Necked Phalaropes, an American Golden-Plover, 16 Parasitic Jaegers, a Northern Fulmar, 65 Cory’s Shearwaters, 16 Great Shearwaters, 2 Sooty Shearwaters, 14 Manx Shearwaters, and 2,300 Tree Swallows.

    With this bird, courtship roles are reversed, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s listing on the Red-Necked Phalarope. “The larger, brighter females do the courting. In fact, a female has been seen engaging in aerial pursuit of a male, usually in the company of many females. The males always incubate the eggs and raise the chicks.” Also: “Sometimes females mate with more than one male. Where food is abundant and a male is available, females may produce two batches of eggs.” The aquarium’s writeup says these birds are able to swim from birth, so chicks leave the nest soon after hatching. (Photo by Emily L. Weiser/USGS)

    A Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher and a Connecticut Warbler were seen in Wellfleet.

    A Brown Pelican was seen again this week on the bay off South Wellfleet and North 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]

    MORNING FLIGHT

    Turn Your Ear Skyward for Bobolinks

    The birds that helped reveal migration’s secrets are overhead now

    By

    Bink! The sound pinged overhead as I walked along High Toss Road in Wellfleet. It was a crisp early autumn morning, and the north winds overnight had dropped a smattering of fall migrants across the Cape. But while I watched vireos and warblers flit among the chickadee flocks, my attention was regularly drawn to that bink from flyover bobolinks.

    Bobolinks are members of the blackbird family that breed in grasslands to the north and west of here. They get their funny name from the male’s loud, robotic-sounding song, whose crescendo — at least to some people — sounds like “bob-o-link.” The 19th-century poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant in his ode to the bobolink, “Robert of Lincoln,” describes the striking black-and-white male as a “prince of braggarts,” and the plainer streaky yellowish-brown female as his demure “Quaker wife.”

    Bobolinks don’t breed on the Outer Cape, but they do show up regularly on their fall migration in September and early October, when males molt their bright plumage and adopt the females’ drab tones. You can find them roosting in overgrown fields and marshes with other blackbirds, but in my experience you most often see them flying overhead — if you look skyward after hearing that first bink call.

    A fall-plumaged bobolink perches on a phragmites stalk. This bird migrates from the grasslands of eastern North America to southern South America and back every year. (Photo by Mike’s Birds/CC SA 2.0)

    It’s unusual for a bird to be seen flying more often than it might be seen perching, feeding, or resting. But perhaps bobolinks are so often observed flying because they are so good at it. This bird’s migration is an astounding feat. Bobolinks breed as far north as Hudson Bay and migrate south, crossing the Caribbean Sea to reach the grassland llanos of Venezuela and Colombia. There, they congregate in massive flocks and feast on rice and other grains.

    After a month or two refueling, the bobolinks continue south. They reach the Amazon rainforest and keep going. They don’t stop until they reach grasslands on the other side of the Amazon, sometimes as far south as Argentina. Then, come March and April, they turn around and fly back. That’s a more than 12,000-mile round trip.

    There is no other North American songbird that flies so far every year. One tagged male that lived to be 10 years old must have flown at least the equivalent of five times around the equator during his lifetime.

    In the mid-20th century, when ornithologists began seriously studying bird migration, such a traveler seemed like a great candidate for study. As early as the 1960s, ornithologists were trying to understand how bobolinks could navigate such long distances. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that ornithologist Robert Beason at the State University of New York at Geneseo finally began to crack the mystery: they orient themselves using a combination of the magnetic field of the Earth and the stars.

    In an article published in Nature in 1984, Beason and his colleague Joan E. Nichols described taking a flock of 27 bobolinks and putting them in a planetarium at the beginning of fall migration.

    When the stars in the planetarium matched with the stars outside, the birds hopped toward the southern end of the enclosure; they wanted to travel south for their fall migration. Then, Beason flipped the stars so that the north star was in the south. For a time, the birds kept hopping south, even though the stars were telling them they were going north, but after a few days they seemed to reorient according to the stars and began hopping north.

    A male bobolink in black-and-white breeding plumage. (Photo by Andrew Weitzel/CC SA 2.0)

    Beason concluded that these birds were using the magnetic field most of the time but would periodically reorient using the night sky. This might be akin to the way you navigate your town by memory but still check your direction every once in a while. Beason confirmed his findings by using powerful electrical coils to generate a flipped magnetic field in the planetarium, and the bobolinks started hopping the way that field dictated before switching with the stars.

    But how could these birds sense the magnetic field at all? Beason thought there must be some organ in the bird that can detect magnetism. So, he dissected birds and found, nestled between the eyes, in the nostrils, and around the olfactory nerve, sheaths of magnetite, an iron oxide mineral — essentially tiny magnets that allow the bobolinks to sense the Earth’s magnetic field. Magnetite was later found in other migratory animals including turtles and whales, according to a 1999 article by Sharon Levy on the National Wildlife Federation website.

    Beason’s research represented a breakthrough in the study of migration. Previous researchers had figured out that birds migrate using the Earth’s magnetic field, but Beason was the first to find the organ that a migratory bird used to sense it.

    We don’t quite know how bobolink brains interpret the Earth’s magnetic field, but Beason’s later research suggests that these birds may sense magnetism visually — for instance, a Bobolink looking north might see the world tinted blue.

    While they ably migrate by the night sky and the Earth’s magnetic field, however, bobolinks are struggling all along the way. These birds are tallgrass prairie breeders, and that habitat is vanishing rapidly across eastern North America because of agricultural intensification and development. On top of that, pesticides are killing off the food supply on their breeding grounds in South America, where farmers shoot them as pests.

    According to data from the North America-wide Breeding Bird Survey, bobolinks experienced a continent-wide decline of around 2 percent between 1966 and 2013. Though that rate has slowed to a little over 1 percent in recent years, it still amounts to a dramatic loss: their population has dropped by more than 50 percent since 1966.

    Once upon a time, the Outer Cape supported breeding bobolinks, but not anymore. A combination of fire suppression and reforestation filled in the open country on Cape Cod, where so many other grassland species once lived.

    But the small patches of grassland habitat left here do seem to attract them. Last May, I spotted a male bobolink, adorned in its spring black-and-white plumage, perched on a goldenrod stalk at Fort Hill in Eastham. It sang loudly, a rich bubbly song that rang through that small patch of open country.

    Bobolinks are inconsistent but annual visitors to Fort Hill in late spring, but they don’t seem to stay into the summer. One wonders if these birds are judging whether this patch of habitat is large enough to support a family before concluding that it’s not and moving on in search of greener pastures.

    Perhaps that is another part of why bobolinks are always flying overhead. They’re looking to see if the grasslands where they once lived have come back yet.

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, Sept. 24 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    An unconfirmed Eurasian Kestrel was described from the dunes of Provincetown on Monday.

    Storm-driven and other nice birds reported from Race Point in Provincetown this week included an Atlantic Puffin, a Little Gull, a Sabine’s Gull, a Pacific Loon, a Baird’s Sandpiper, a Red Phalarope, 135 Red-Necked Phalaropes, a Long-Tailed Jaeger, 102 Parasitic Jaegers, 6 Pomarine Jaegers, a South Polar Skua, 36 Black-Legged Kittiwakes, 790 Laughing Gulls, 13 Lesser Black-Backed Gulls, 2,200 Common Terns, 100 Roseate Terns, a Leach’s Storm-Petrel, 270 Cory’s Shearwaters, 137 Great Shearwaters, 3 Sooty Shearwaters, 119 Manx Shearwaters, 52 Horned Larks, and 3,000 Tree Swallows.

    Tree Swallows nest in natural cavities of standing dead trees and old woodpecker holes, but they also take to nest boxes offered by humans. The female does most of the nest building, pressing her body into materials she gathers to make a cup about two to three inches across to hold her eggs. She’ll often make the nest entirely of grass, but she may include pine needles, mosses, rootlets, aquatic plants, animal hair, and artificial materials like cellophane or cigarette filters, according to the people at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. (Photo by Amy Hopperstad/USFWS)

    4 Clapper Rails and a Little Blue Heron were seen at Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary.

    A Brown Pelican continued in various places this week including Great Island and Indian Neck in Wellfleet and First Encounter and the Salt Pond 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].

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, Sept. 17 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    Birds at Race Point in Provincetown this week included a Buff-Breasted Sandpiper, a Sabine’s Gull, a Pacific Loon, 15 Parasitic Jaegers, 3,100 Common Terns, 16 Cory’s Shearwaters, 7 Great Shearwaters, 4 Sooty Shearwaters, and 50 Manx Shearwaters. There was also a single Barn Owl in Provincetown.

    A Barn Owl flies at the edge of a controlled burn at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, hunting for prey that is trying to escape the fire. Barn Owls are also called church owls, ghost owls, death owls, hissing owls, hobgoblin owls, night owls, rat owls, monkey-faced owls, and screech owls, among other names, according to the USFWS. (Photo by Jeffrey Adams/USFWS)

    A Brown Pelican has been spotted in various places at East Harbor in Truro and on the bay side of Wellfleet.

    A Little Blue Heron was seen at Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary, and there were 5 Seaside Sparrows and a Nelson’s Sparrow elsewhere 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].

    MORNING FLIGHT

    Birding on the Underwater Edge of the Continent

    An overnight trip to witness sea life that thrives way, way offshore

    By

    HYANNIS PORT — We boarded the ship in the dark, 50 of us, schlepping backpacks and duffle bags and coolers of food. It was 5:30 in the morning, but most of us had been up for a few hours already just to get here in time. We wore seasickness bands on our wrists and scopolamine patches behind our ears. Collectively, our bodies were probably loaded with enough Dramamine to knock out a horse.

    Birding is almost exclusively a land-based activity, but many seabirds are easier to see offshore. I’ve written before about the joy of seeing tubenoses — the oceangoing birds that visit Cape Cod every summer — from a whale-watch boat. But going 5 or 10 miles offshore is not enough to see most seabirds. That requires a proper “pelagic” trip — one dedicated to searching for rare seabirds and other marine life.

    A great shearwater slices through the water early in the morning, seen from a boat above one of the canyons of the Continental Shelf. (Photo by Sam Zhang)

    This one was organized by the Brookline Bird Club, which has been arranging what they call “extreme pelagics” since 2005; these trips go way out beyond the Continental Shelf, and since 2012 the club has run them as overnights. The ship we had boarded in Hyannis Port, the Helen H, would be our home for the next 36 hours.

    I had done one-day pelagic trips with the Brookline Bird Club twice as a kid, but this would be my first time spending the night. I rushed below deck and tossed my stuff onto a bunk — barely noticing that it was nothing more than a green slab suspended from the ceiling by chains — and went to the top deck. The energy on board was one of nervous excitement. “What are you most hoping to see?” was the kind of question that turned strangers into friends.

    The sun rose as we departed Hyannis Harbor. The seas were glassy, and the weather forecasted offshore looked placid. The voice of Steve Mirick, a New Hampshire birder who has been leading these trips since the club started doing them and is admired in this niche world of pelagic birding, came over the ship’s intercom system: “Good morning, everyone!” His voice lacked any jadedness; he sounded as excited as we all were.

    A common dolphin rides the wake of the Helen H as she makes her way through the Nantucket Shoals. (Photo by Cameron Johnson)

    Soon, we were swinging around Nantucket and heading southeast. Our destination was a series of underwater canyons where the water is warm because of the Gulf Stream, and the currents hitting the canyon walls send nutrient-rich deep water up to the surface. Usually, warm water is nutrient-poor, so these canyons create a rare buffet for warm-water marine life.

    But first, we had to get there, which meant we had five hours of travel ahead of us, assuming we weren’t stopping for birds. Nantucket Shoals, however, can be a good place for sea life, and around 9 a.m., Mirick’s voice came over the intercom: “We’ve got a jaeger sitting on the water up ahead, about 11 o’clock.” Everyone bolted to the left side of the boat, cameras and binoculars taking aim at the dark shape on the water.

    The sighting of a south polar skua sends people to one side of the boat. (Photo by Sam Zhang)

    There are three types of jaegers in these waters: the hulking pomarine, the sleek long-tailed, and the in-between parasitic. This one was a long-tailed, the toughest of the three to see from shore. Soon another appeared, and the two chased each other around, eventually flying directly over the boat to a chorus of oohs, aahs, and the whir of camera shutters.

    Still in the colder waters, we saw a leatherback sea turtle, the largest turtle species on Earth, sticking its barnacle-covered head out of the water, and common dolphins riding the boat’s wake. For long stretches of the trip out, however, there wasn’t too much to look at. People told stories about trips past, talked of dream birds, and made predictions about what we might find on the shelf.

    Around noon, the water started changing color. We watched as the greenish waters of the Nantucket Shoals faded to crystal-clear blue, indicating we’d reached the waters off the shelf. One of the deckhands measured the visibility at 72 feet. The water temperature had risen to 80° F.

    The water in the Continental Shelf’s canyons is blue, clear, and warm — 80° F as the writer’s pelagic tour arrives. (Photo by William von Herff)

    As the water changed, the marine life changed with it. Flying fish scattered in our boat’s wake. Fins belonging to blue, mako, and hammerhead sharks sliced through the water’s surface. A pod of Risso’s dolphins, cute-faced silvery cetaceans whose bodies are covered in scratch marks from fights with the squid that are their prey, cavorted around our vessel. We even saw a pair of endangered North Atlantic right whales, who sometimes spend the summer in these deep, food-rich waters.

    And of course, there were different birds here. Almost as soon as we entered the canyon, Mirick said the four words every birder on board was waiting for: “white-faced storm petrel!”

    We all launched ourselves to the side of the boat. White-faced storm petrels are one of the hardest seabirds to see in North America, since they are found only beyond the shelf. And they’re adorable, too: they are tiny and have long yellow legs that they use to hop along the surface of the water like kangaroos. For many people on board, me included, it was the first time we’d ever seen one.

    As the storm petrel hopped away, the Helen H’s captain, Joe Huckemeyer, punched the throttle. After nearly 15 years piloting these trips, Huckemeyer — Capt. Joe, he was called on board — has some experience with following birds, and he nimbly followed the flighty storm petrel before it vanished into the distance.

    Birders enjoy dead calm waters overnight while anchored over the Continental Shelf. (Photo by William von Herff)

    We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for band-rumped storm petrels, a darker relative of the white-faced one, among the swarms of common Wilson’s storm petrels. We found 24 that day, which one trip leader said was surely the most ever seen in one day in Massachusetts waters.

    As the sun set, people began settling down for the night. I went below deck to set up my bunk only to realize I wouldn’t be using it. With no windows and stale air down there, I felt the rocking of the boat and the rumbling of my stomach and decided on plan B. I tossed my sleeping bag down on the upper deck, crawled into it, and went to sleep.

    Meanwhile, the crew was casting lines for warm-water fish. Just below the surface, schools of big mahi-mahi gave chase to their bait. It was around 1 a.m. when they caught a giant tuna. I know because its big muscular body hit the deck as they wrangled it, sending banging noises through the ship. Then Mirick’s voice bid us good morning at 6 a.m., and we started another day’s search for rare sea life.

    A south polar skua, a bird that nests on sub-Antarctic islands, appears on day two of the pelagic trip. (Photo by William von Herff.)

    Within an hour someone shouted “skua!” These rare, enormous relatives of gulls are another major target of these pelagic trips. The trip leaders got on the bird, identified it as a south polar skua, and directed Capt. Joe to the spot where it had landed. We slowly pulled up next to the bird as it rested, and the boat listed as all 50 people on board moved to the port side. The bird, calm as could be, allowed us to watch and photograph it before taking off and circling the boat. It came back to the boat two more times that day before continuing on its way.

    A juvenile long-tailed jaeger, the rarest jaeger in North America, soars over the boat during its passage of Nantucket Shoals. (Photo by Sam Zhang)

    Another white-faced storm petrel hopped in our wake that day. There were also more long-tailed jaegers feeding around the boat, countless flying fish, and another pair of right whales. Although we all wondered whether a major rarity might appear in front of us, that was not to be. Still, pelagic trips are the closest thing we have in Massachusetts to safaris. Replace a jeep with a boat and swap big cats for whales and sharks and you have a similar experience: you are thrust into an unfamiliar environment to see some of the most spectacular animals on the planet.

    Nobody was complaining as we pulled into the harbor at 6 p.m. and got off the boat wobbly-legged, happy, and each carrying a little of that fresh-caught tuna.

    Editor’s note: Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article, published in print on Sept. 12, incorrectly reported trip leader Steve Mirick’s last name as “Marwick.”

    MORNING FLIGHT

    The Sora on the Roof

    And other rare birds that turn up when you least expect them

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — It’s hard to predict when you might find a rare bird. You might try after a hurricane, a good night of migration, or some other event that seems sure to deliver something rare, but good conditions are no guarantee of good birds.

    Fortunately, it’s also true that bad conditions don’t mean that no good birds are around.

    Last Thursday’s editorial meeting at the Independent was held during a nor’easter. I had gone with a friend to White Crest Beach in Wellfleet early that morning, hoping the strong easterlies would blow in some unusual oceangoing birds. But, after 40 minutes watching the sea from the shelter of my car, we had nothing to show for our efforts except a handful of black scoters — sea ducks that are abundant on the Cape in the winter. The storm was a bust, it seemed.

    The meeting at the newspaper’s Commercial Street office was chugging along. I had taken a seat facing a window that looks onto the alley behind Marine Specialties. The wind howled outside. Then I noticed a bird, perched on the roof of a shed just outside the window, cowering from the violent gusts.

    A shy freshwater marsh bird, the sora is not likely to be found on a downtown rooftop. (Photo by Liam Ragan)

    The bird was completely backlit, so it was hard to make out any features. Based on little more than its size, I dismissed it as a mourning dove. But my eyes kept wandering to it and I noticed something strange: it didn’t seem to have a tail, and its beak was weirdly triangular. Then it turned its head, and I caught a hint of a black mask. Something clicked in my mind, and I realized this was something unusual.

    I got up as casually as I could and headed over to the window. Closer now, I could see the lack of tail was no illusion. Its stout body was gray, its back was brown, and its bill was bright yellow. My suspicions were confirmed: it was a sora, a mostly nocturnal chicken-like bird that skulks through freshwater marshes. It’s a tough bird to find on the Outer Cape even in its preferred habitat. And yet here was one in town, in the middle of a storm, right behind a business on Commercial Street.

    “I hate to interrupt, but there’s a really rare bird right there,” I said. I couldn’t contain the excitement in my voice. The meeting stopped, and the whole staff ran over to get a look at the sora before it flew off, I hope to a more suitable patch of habitat.

    I’m not proud to say I derailed a meeting for a bird, and I know I seemed like a lunatic when I did it. But the sudden appearance of a rarity hijacked my brain.

    It seems that every rare bird I’ve found on the Cape has come into view when I’m not birding. Forget the dozens of mornings spent actively birding along the Herring River, or in the Beech Forest, or scanning Provincetown Harbor. Clearly the best way to find a rarity is to go somewhere with no plans of seeing any birds at all.

    Take the northern parula that I found last Thanksgiving, feeding in a hedge along Commercial Street, two blocks down from PAAM. I was in the middle of the Turkey Trot 5K when I found it. While parulas breed out here, they usually leave by the beginning of October. This was the second latest one ever seen on the Outer Cape, according to eBird, the bird data website.

    I had a similar shock last summer, biking along the Cape Cod Rail Trail in Wellfleet. Tearing along, my girlfriend and I flushed a flock of sparrows. As they flew away chittering, I heard the distinctive twitter of a dark-eyed junco.

    I slammed on the brakes. Juncos are abundant here in the winter, but summer sightings are unheard of. But the junco soon flew back onto the trail, giving me enough time to snap a picture of it in all its gray-bodied, pink-billed glory. According to eBird, that sighting was the only one from the Outer Cape that summer.

    Each time, finding one of these birds has turned an otherwise unremarkable day into a story and left me with a high that I felt for hours afterwards. Talk to other birders, and they are sure to have similar experiences. These sightings serve as a reminder of a strange paradox: rare birds are everywhere. It pays to trust the little voice in your head that says “give that bird a second glance.”

    There’s a flip side, of course. For every successful rare find, I can tell you about a dozen “ones that got away.” The massive all-dark falcon in a snowstorm in Ottawa, Ontario that was probably the rare arctic-dwelling gyrfalcon. The dull flycatcher in Key West that might have been the Caribbean species La Sagra’s flycatcher, a species I had forgotten existed until I saw it late that night. The countless unusual gulls that have surely flown by the beach when I wasn’t paying close attention.

    Field guide author David Sibley argued that the odds of a given rarity being found in the U.S. is probably lower than 10 percent and may be as low as 2 percent. In other words, for every rarity that is found, there are anywhere from 9 to 49 other rarities that go completely unobserved.

    Sibley said it best: “There’s a good chance that right now, somewhere near you, there is a rare bird just waiting to be discovered.” You just have to be on the lookout — and be willing to embarrass yourself a little if you spot one of these birds when you’re around friends.

    MORNING FLIGHT

    When Birding Opens Up ‘a Whole Huge World’

    After getting a birding camp scholarship, Megan Morey explores next steps in environmental science

    By

    Some people think birding is something only older people do — people who have time on their hands and an ability to focus that supposedly comes only with age. But I’ve been birding since I was seven years old.

    I’ve always loved wild animals, and so when I came across a book at my grandmother’s house with a picture of a cardinal on the spine, I had to read it. The book was Birds of the Eastern Region: National Audubon Society Field Guide Sibley, and I was fascinated by the birds on its pages. Unlike my other animal fascinations (wolverines, big cats, deep-sea fish), some of these birds could be found in my hometown of Ottawa, Canada. I decided to try to see them all. Seventeen years later, my interest has only grown.

    Megan Morey’s camera opened the way to her interest in birds. (Photo courtesy Megan Morey)

    Megan Morey, a high school junior from Mashpee, traces her love of birds back to a similar realization. Morey began birding last year as a sophomore. She had saved up to buy a camera to photograph wildlife — she had long dreamed of traveling the world to look for rare animals. Compared to the wilds of Africa or Asia, the Cape, she figured, was pretty boring. But when she started to photograph the region’s birdlife as a warmup, she was surprised by its diversity.

    “I never knew that there was this whole huge world in my back yard,” she says.

    Birding, Morey discovered, is not so much a time-consuming hobby as a way of noticing the natural world. Wherever you are on Cape Cod, she says, if you look up, there’s always going to be a bird in sight. She doesn’t necessarily seek out specific birds, she says. Morey’s approach is more “Wherever I am, I bird.” Even an osprey flying over a parking lot deserves a pause, she says.

    Morey, who goes to Cape Cod Academy in Osterville, says that birding has awakened her appreciation of biodiversity. She’s interested in how different animals grow and adapt to their environments. And birding has deepened her desire to protect both birds and the environment as a whole.

    Megan Morey is a junior at Cape Cod Academy in Osterville who started birding just last year. (Photo courtesy Megan Morey)

    Morey is part of her school’s environmental club, which successfully petitioned the school cafeteria to get rid of plastic utensils. The club is now working with the school to institute a composting and recycling system. She is also part of the Cape Cod Commission’s Climate Ambassador Program, which connects her with other young environmentalists on the Cape as well as professionals from environmental scientists to policymakers. As a part of that program, Morey is working on coding a website to inform people about local environmental issues on Cape Cod.

    Through birding, Morey has seen how people can contribute to large citizen science projects like eBird (an online database of bird observations) and iNaturalist (a social network for sharing biodiversity observations), both of which generate scientifically valuable data from “normal people’s” reports. If birders observe a bird carrying food, for instance, it can mean that bird has offspring that it’s feeding. “It’s like a different language to decode,” Morey says.

    Last summer, Morey’s interest in birds led her to a weeklong birding summer camp on Hog Island, Maine, run by the National Audubon Society. Her participation was sponsored by the Cape Cod Bird Club, which offers a teen birding camp scholarship.

    Morey learned about the Hog Island bird camp through a teacher, who also told her about the bird club scholarship. She admitted to being nervous at first, but when she arrived, she met the campers and counselors, some of whom had come from as far away as California and Florida, and they were “some of the nicest and most passionate people I’ve met,” she says.

    The group traveled from the coast to the boreal forest, birding along the way. They watched tern colonies along the rocky shores, spotted a vagrant loggerhead shrike in a patch of grasslands, and climbed Borestone Mountain to spend two days in the forest away from cell service.

    For Morey, the most memorable experience at camp was the day spent at the puffin nesting colony at Eastern Egg Rock.

    A puffin photographed by Morey last summer at the National Audubon Society’s birding camp on Hog Island in Maine. (Photo by Megan Morey)

    “Puffins were one of the birds I wanted to see the most,” Morey says. She had long assumed they were restricted to Europe and remote parts of the North Atlantic, so she was blown away when she found out she could see them in Maine, bobbing in the waves and flying around the seven-acre island with a restored colony of the clown-like seabirds.

    The counselors were inspiring too, Morey says. One of them, Amanda Leemann, a naturalist and environmental educator, offered advice on how to pursue biology as a career. Talking with Leemann, she says, “really helped me on my path for my future.”

    When we spoke last week, Morey was touring universities on the West Coast. She says she’s intent on pursuing a degree in environmental science or a similar field. “I was thinking about going into ornithology, but I really want to broaden my scope,” she says. One thing she knows is that she wants to be near a coast — perhaps one where she can see more puffins.

    The Cape Cod Bird Club Teen Bird Camp Scholarship application period is open until April 1. At press time, one slot was still available for a Cape Cod resident between the ages of 14 and 17.

    MORNING FLIGHT

    The Art of Pishing

    When songbirds are nowhere to be found, a scolding call can bring out a mob

    By

    Some days, birds just aren’t cooperative. Warblers stick to the crowns of trees, sparrows hide in the bushes, and finches won’t leave the hedges. Birds can be skulky beasts sometimes.

    And on those days, nothing beats a good pish.

    Pishing, or spishing, as some people call it, is a technique used to attract birds by making noises that are not exactly calls. The basic pish is like a sputtering shush: make one long, forceful shhhhhhhhhh while quickly snapping your lips closed about twice per second to make a sound like pshhhpshhhpshhhpshh. You now know how to pish.

    The writer pishing on Bearberry Hill in Truro. (Photo by Cassie Ferri)

    Position yourself in front of some dense brush and start pishing, and if you’re lucky, birds will materialize before your eyes. When it works, pishing can turn a slow birding day into an exciting one.

    I’ve stood in front of a seemingly dead thicket and started pishing, only to have an armada of birds pour out, teeing up on nearby branches and sticking their heads out of the dense brush. Chickadees respond to this sound the best, but other birds will respond too — sparrows, vireos, warblers, kinglets, nuthatches. Pish, and they will come.

    Most sources agree that birds respond to pishing because the sound triggers their mobbing behavior. When small forest birds, chickadees in particular, spot a predator like an owl or hawk, they begin making harsh, scolding calls at it. These vocalizations, in turn, draw more birds, until the forest is filled with the din of tiny songbirds screaming at the predator.

    For chickadees, this scolding call is so important that it gives them their name. The “chick-a-dee-dee” call alerts other birds to danger. They can vary the length of their calls, too, and the more “dees” they tack on to the end, the more dangerous the threat.

    It might seem counterintuitive for birds to make their presence known to a raptor, but announcing that they have spotted their predator and are willing to provoke it makes stealth attacks impossible and encourages the raptor to move on to a place with easier, weaker prey.

    Accordingly, the more birds that are mobbing a predator, the more likely that predator is to leave the scene. So, birds are attracted to other birds’ scolding calls, coming to join in the mob.

    Pishing doesn’t exactly mimic the birds’ scolding sounds, but the pishes seem to trigger the same part of the birds’ brains as hearing those calls does. They seem to come to see what all the fuss is about.

    Sometimes all that happens is the birds pop out of hiding, realize that nothing is amiss, and flit back into their bushes. When it works best, though, pishing can get other birds scolding, too. This can go on until there is a veritable pish-fueled frenzy in front of you. Eventually, though, the birds will realize everything is fine and disperse. In these situations, it’s best to stop pishing quickly; you don’t want to agitate the birds too much.

    But being successful at pishing requires two things: technique and target.

    The simple pshhhh noises are just the basics. I like to interject little sht-sht-sht and ch-ch-ch-ch-chhhhhh sounds. More talented birders can make squeaking sounds by tightly kissing the back of their hands, and one friend of mine will even mimic the call of an eastern screech-owl, a common predator for these songbirds, causing them to fly into a rage of scolding calls.

    Not all birds respond well to pishing. Try it in front of a flock of gulls or ducks and they will most likely fly away after looking at you quizzically. Birds that live in dense habitats like forests, scrubby fields, and marshes will respond best.

    If you find a spot where there are already a few birds calling, too, that’s probably a good place to pish. If you can get a handful of birds to respond with their own scold calls, they will attract far more birds than pishing alone ever could.

    Time of year matters, too. In the spring and summer, birds are a bit more standoffish and focused on getting to their breeding grounds, attracting a mate, and raising young. In the fall and winter, though, birds spend more time in flocks as they meander around looking for food. That’s why it’s easier to draw them in with pishing now.

    Pishing is probably best done alone. Most birders know the embarrassment that comes with pishing when you think you’re alone and being interrupted by a confused hiker coming around the corner. Is it best to keep pishing? Stop sheepishly? There is no good answer.

    If you’re with friends, though, a little well-placed pishing can make you appear to have superpowers.

    TWITTER FEED

    Birding by Sound

    Tom Marvel uses a parabolic microphone to amplify and record bird calls

    By

    WELLFLEET — Tom Marvel begins his birding excursions around 6 a.m. most days. He’s running late on this particular Wednesday, and the sun has risen by the time he sets out along High Toss Road. A recording device with adjustable volume is harnessed to his waist, linked by one cord to a pair of headphones that rests around his neck and by another to a microphone he wields gracefully despite its being four times the size of his head.

    This latter piece of equipment is Marvel’s distinguishing feature as a birder of the Outer Cape, where he estimates that there are 20 birders who are visually oriented — equipped with a camera and/or binoculars — for every one auditory birder in pursuit of bird sounds. Marvel’s microphone is a parabola, and at the center of the bowl is the recording device itself. The parabolic shape harnesses incoming soundwaves, directing them to the focal point at the base of the arc where the microphone is mounted. It amalgamates sound the way a satellite dish does energy. Drawing the bird calls to a point, it amplifies and clarifies them.

    Tom Marvel adjusts the volume on his recorder as he listens to birds with his parabolic microphone. (Photo by Sophie Mann-Shafir)

    Birding has made Marvel more attuned to ambient noise as well as bird calls. Until you listen this way, “You don’t realize how much noise there is in the background,” he says, as a school bus, not yet in view, beeps down the road. This morning’s recordings, all taken alongside the marshy Herring River basin, are punctuated by wind, faraway cars, and barking dogs.

    Marvel has been a birder for eight years. During that time, he’s learned to recognize the calls and songs of most birds common to the Outer Cape, where he spends two summer-to-autumn months each year, and of those heard in Naples, Fla., where he lives the rest of the year. In Eastham, he’s a birder. In Naples, he works as a commercial fisherman.

    To bird is “to be aware of birds and able to identify them correctly — whether it’s as you sip your coffee in the morning or as you travel the world,” says Marvel. He says birding is akin to dating: “There is a huge range in how people go about it.” If you’re going to bird with someone else, it’s important that you “get along and have the same style.”

    Marvel stops periodically. “Did you hear that?” he asks. “That’s a hairy woodpecker.” He puts on his headphones, holds his microphone up, and rotates slowly left and right until the call is at peak volume. Often, he uses the app Merlin, developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to confirm that he’s identified the bird correctly. His abiding humility as a birder is punctuated by glimmers of satisfaction that show through when his species speculations are sanctioned by technology.

    Marvel stands enraptured and listening for minutes. It’s a rare moment when several species are both visible and audible, flitting from one branch to another, popping out from between two leaves.

    Nestled within the sound of the breeze through the trees were the calls of a downy woodpecker, a gray catbird (two different calls), an Eastern towhee, and a tufted titmouse. The distinctions were mostly imperceptible to a nonbirder’s ear. There was also a Carolina wren, a pine warbler, and a red-breasted nuthatch. And the first indigo bunting Marvel had come across on Cape Cod this year.

    When he gets home, Marvel uploads the recordings from the parabolic microphone’s SD card. Then, with an assist from the eBird website, he makes sonograms of the noises. Some species make 10 or 12 different sounds, and Marvel says it “can be hard to dial into them all.” The sonograms help not just with identifying the species at hand but also with categorizing a particular call. By the end of that day’s walk, according to eBird, Marvel has recorded the sounds of 39 different species.

    Cornell’s eBird website is not just user-friendly, it is user-dependent. Marvel received an email at the end of last year letting him know that the site had added 49 of his recordings to its species identification directory.

    Because of the southward fall migration that’s underway, a number of species now on the Outer Cape are making brief local appearances. Marvel points out two: a Wilson’s warbler and a dark-eyed junco.

    Because of fallout, which according to eBird occurs “when a good migratory movement of birds encounters rain, low overcast, or foggy conditions” and the birds subsequently land together for a spell, this morning preceding Hurricane Ian’s arrival in the South offers high bird density. As Marvel puts it, “the weather bunched them up. The trees are dripping with them.”

    A recording of a hairy woodpecker made during this walk with Tom Marvel.

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    on Tuesday, May 26, included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    Bufflehead
    A Bufflehead is still about in Truro. (Photo Chrissy McClarren)

    A late Bufflehead was reported in North Truro. A King Rail was there again, too.

    A Ring-necked Duck was seen in Provincetown.

    Also in Provincetown, at Race Point, sightings included a Sandwich Tern, a Black-headed Gull, 2 Little Gulls, a Black Guillemot, and 3 Common Murres.

    A Wilson’s Phalarope was seen in Wellfleet this week.

    We don’t know what happened with the Eastham bird people this week. Audubon didn’t report any sightings there. Let’s go, 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].

     

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    Sandhill Crane
    A Sandhill Crane. Two flew over Longnook Beach this week. (Photo USFWS)

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, May 12, included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

     

    A Wilson’s Plover was found at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham.

    A Summer Tanager was seen in Wellfleet.

    Two Sandhill Cranes were reported over Longnook Beach in Truro.

    A Pileated Woodpecker was seen flying along in North Truro on Monday but not since. And a King Rail and 3 American Bitterns were sighted elsewhere in North Truro.

    And the bird watchers seem to have taken the week off in Provincetown, as there was only one reported sighting, a Glaucous Gull seen at Race Point. That can’t be the only bird in town right now.

     

    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].

     

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, April 28, included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    Hooded Warbler
    The Hooded Warbler, a southern bird, has been to visit Provincetown. (Photo Magnus Manske)

    A Hooded Warbler, a southern bird, made its way to Foss Woods in Provincetown.

    Also seen in Provincetown were Black Vultures.

    Sightings at Race Point in Provincetown this week included a Pacific Loon, a Parasitic Jaeger, 5 Common Murres, 70 Razorbills, and 6 Iceland Gulls.

    At First Encounter in Eastham, many storm birds blown into the bay by Monday’s storm were counted on April 28, including 3 Parasitic Jaegers and 1,300 Northern Gannets.

    A Yellow-throated Vireo was spotted in Eastham this week.

    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].

     

    RARA AVIS

    This Week’s Bird Sightings

    By

    A Tricolored Heron visited Coast Guard Beach this week. (Photo Keenan Adams/USFWS)

    Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, April 14, included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

    An Indigo Bunting was seen in Provincetown this week.

    Birds at Race Point in Provincetown included a Pacific Loon, 261 Common Murres, 470 Razorbills, 9 Laughing Gulls, 7 Iceland Gulls, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, 280 Red-throated Loons, 32 Common Loons, 1,775 Northern Gannets, and a Broad-winged Hawk. And we know they’re not birds, but this: a mother and calf North Atlantic Right Whale was confirmed off the Race as well.

    A Swallow-tailed Kite and a Sandhill Crane were seen in North Truro this week. In other Truro news this week: someone saw a Baltimore Oriole.

    A Brown Pelican was filmed off Lecount Hollow in Wellfleet; possibly the same bird was later seen on Nantucket.

    A Tricolored Heron continued at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham this week.

    An American Bittern, 2 Northern Bobwhites, a Wilson’s Snipe, an American Kestrel, a Winter Wren, a Seaside Sparrow, a Nelson’s Sparrow, 2 Marsh Wrens, and 4 Eastern Meadowlarks were among the sightings at Fort Hill in Eastham this week.

     

    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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