Like the postal carrier in the famous creed, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays” the Christmas Bird Counter from the completion of their appointed rounds. And so, into the gale force winds and driving rain went the birders of the Buzzard’s Bay and Cape Cod Christmas Bird Counts this past weekend.
The wet and windy weather, combined with the deep freeze of last week, kept the species totals modest for these normally bird-rich counts. The freeze likely caused many birds to either perish or head south, leaving us with less to count. But, as always, the counts weren’t without some fancy highlights.
On Saturday’s Buzzard’s Bay count, some damp birders managed to produce an ultra-rare Sedge Wren in Sandwich and a continuing Rufous Hummingbird at a private feeder in Falmouth, which together were the marquee birds for the count. There were many other nice birds found, including King Eider and Purple Sandpiper in Falmouth, as well as hundreds of Fish Crows. Fish Crows normally head south in winter, but this particular group sticks around this area to take advantage of the smorgasbord offered by Bourne landfill, one of the last in the region still uncapped.
The 85th annual Cape Cod count, which includes Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, and Eastham, was held on windy but thankfully dry Sunday. The species total of 115 was below what we usually get, thanks to that aforementioned deep freeze. This is in stark contrast with last year’s count, where after a warm fall, my fellow birders and I were fairly tripping over late lingering species that should have headed to Central America already, including six species of warbler and an absurd 11 Baltimore Orioles in Orleans alone. But again, we had our highlights this year, and they included a beast of a young Northern Goshawk that buzzed my team in Orleans. This ghostly hawk is rarely seen but frequently misidentified, so it’s lucky for us that we got photos. It’s like a Cooper’s Hawk on steroids – they are built to take down big prey like snowshoe hares and grouse in the north woods. This was only my second ever on Cape Cod.
One of the lingering mysteries of this count is why so many Yellow-breasted Chats decide to overwinter on the Outer Cape rather than Central America, like they are supposed to. Every year the Cape count is in contention for the most individuals of this brilliant yellow-orange, thicket-skulking bird of any count in the US. And where are most of them found? I kid you not, but it’s in Chatham. That’s right, the chat capital of the US in winter is Chatham. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. In fact, four chats were coaxed from the thickets in Chatham on Sunday.
The Mid-Cape, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, and Truro counts are all coming up in the next weeks, so stay tuned for those results. And finally, in the painful discoveries department, I just learned that the United States’ smallest bird paid a visit to my neighborhood back in October, and nobody told me! While I was away in Hawaii, Massachusetts’ seventh ever Calliope Hummingbird visited a private feeder somewhere in East Harwich, where it was banded and positively identified. Based on the photos I saw, my mystery neighbor had a very similar array of feeders and Pineapple Sage flowers to mine, the perfect trap for a wayward hummingbird. For all I know, this same bird may have visited my yard while I was away. Which would be tragic, because a rare hummingbird has been on my personal yard wish list for many years. Missed it by that much.
