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Birds of May not to be missed

Mark Faherty

It’s now finally May, which means spring, and spring migration, get serious. Gardens look like gardens again, bees are about, and just like that, familiar birds are back. My hummingbirds came back on the 27th, just like last year, and at least three have been around since then, including two males that were oddly tolerant of each other on the feeder. Catbirds have slipped back in as quietly as their namesake felines, and both Baltimore and Orchard Orioles are back in small numbers. The list goes on — in May, the all-time number of bird species recorded in Barnstable County is over 330, which is about 100 more species than expected just a little over a month ago. Don’t worry, I won’t cover all of them. But the few birds I will cover range from huge to tiny, and from expected to not-so expected.

The big bird stories this week involved big birds. A group of five Sandhill Cranes, each potentially over 4 feet tall, dropped into the marshes of Bell’s Neck Conservation Area in Harwich the other day, long enough for a few birders to enjoy and photograph them before they lumbered off skywards with their odd, stuttering wingbeats. Another birder saw the group by Forest Beach in Chatham the next day, and others reported hearing their wild, far-carrying calls. Sandhill Cranes were unreported in modern times here in Massachusetts until 1955, but now breed regularly as close as Hanson, so your chances of seeing them out here has been skyrocketing in recent years.

Another big bird touched down in the area this week, a tern in this case. Most rightfully think of terns as delicate and graceful, buoyant wind-masters plying the oceanic skies. But the Caspian Terns seen a few places this week between Harwich and Provincetown are bigger beasts, terns that look like they could hold their own against a Great-blacked Backed Gull in a bar fight. Their huge red bills can apparently handle fish almost a foot long, far bigger than our local terns, who mainly munch minnows.

In fact out west, in the Columbia River estuary, the Army Corps of Engineers tried to relocate the world’s largest Caspian Tern colony because they were overindulging on the smolts and fry of federally protected salmon. These terns have one of the weirder breeding distributions for a bird — they nest in a small number of widely scattered coastal and interior marshes mainly in North America and Central Asia. The birds we see in spring are likely headed for Newfoundland or Labrador — none breed between there and North Carolina for some reason.

While many familiar and locally breeding birds of May have returned, many of us will spend an unhealthy amount of time wondering about warblers in the next three weeks, those tiny, brightly colored tree sprites who mainly pass through on their way further north. Will there be a warbler wave with this passing weather front? Is it too early? Or did we miss it? If you visit the Beech Forest in Provincetown you’ll notice zombie-like figures shuffling along the trails over the next month, many rubbing their necks, which are sore from looking up too much. These are the warbler watchers of May.

And while you may choose to sit on the sidelines and mock them, I assure you, you’d be better off getting yourself a dopey looking vest, sticking a field guide in a pocket, and joining them. One good look at a Blackburnian Warbler and you’ll soon realize that these eccentrics were onto something, because the warblers and other avian delights of May migration are not to be missed.

Mark Faherty writes the Weekly Bird Report.