Occasionally I’m allowed away from my desk to go outside and teach people about birds. A few bad jokes in, everyone is reminded why I’m generally not allowed out and they put me back on the shelf for another year. But for that one glorious weekend I get paid to take people birding, and this past weekend was one of those times. It’s called a Field School, and we lead them on various topics here at Mass Audubon. This one was about birding the fall migration here on the Cape, and went from Friday afternoon through Sunday afternoon, subjecting the participants, many who were very new to birding, to upwards of 20 hours of birding with me. It remains to be seen how many will ever touch binoculars again.
We kicked things off on Friday with an afternoon hike at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary, including a productive circumnavigation of Silver Spring pond, where close looks at dozens of roosting Snowy and Great Egrets, a surprise Glossy Ibis, Belted Kingfishers, and some reliable Yellow-crowned Night-Herons captivated the crowd. At the beach we watched as several Whimbrels, one of our target birds, flew in one by one to the beach in front of us, posing for pictures in the afternoon light.
On Saturday, we headed to Provincetown for the death march – 5 round-trip miles out to Race Point and back, with lots of soft sand along the way. The group had been warned, and they were game. Though it was just 9AM, we met the early birders already heading back to their cars and telling tales of early morning rare birds we never saw. No matter, ours was not a group of rare bird chasers. We were content with the hoped for show of jaegers bullying terns, essentially mugging them for their fish, showing off aerial maneuvers that would make the Blue Angels blush.
Almost 150 resting Roseate Terns, a federally Endangered species, greeted us when we finally made it out to the beach. We studied Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones, and other common shorebirds at close range, and were treated to more close encounters with Whimbrels. The highlight for all was watching several minke and fin whales pass by right off the beach while we sat eating lunch. A few Cory’s Shearwaters passed, our first, but barely drew a glance from the group transfixed by the leviathan show.
On Sunday we visited the banding station at Wellfleet Bay and had up close looks at a Northern Waterthrush, a skulking, odd warbler of swamps that we had only briefly heard on Friday’s walk. We studied a fussy catbird in the hand and learned about feather molt before the bird flew off indignantly to look for more fruiting shrubs. Later we headed to the tattered remains of where Monomoy refuge headquarters once stood on Morris Island in Chatham, the last of the buildings having been removed this spring ahead of the dramatic, ongoing erosion. Down on the beach we watched several American Oystercatchers, and on the walk back we finally caught up to a few warblers and vireos – it was a very slow migration weekend. We ended the weekend at a spot overlooking a marsh in South Chatham, with a performative kingfisher, another ibis, and some surprise Blue-winged Teal.
As far as I could tell, all enjoyed the weather, the company, and the birds, if not the leader. As for me, I’ll be on mothballs until sometime next year when they eventually let me lead a birding group again, once the memory of this year’s performance has sufficiently faded…
