As we turn another calendar page, we’re also turning a corner in the fall migration. I’ve always preferred October to September, mainly because we tend to get more birds later in the fall. Warblers are still coming through and tend to be more visible in October, some interesting shorebirds are still around, sea duck migration is underway, and sparrows and other songbirds peak in October. Plus, thanks to our last stop, end-of-the-earth geography, the Cape and Islands tends to accumulate birds, including rarities from around the compass, as the fall progresses.
Speaking of which, two different Prothonotary Warblers turned up this past week, a rare, stunningly yellow warbler of southern swamps, one we never expect to see in fall. One showed up in Mashpee, while another ended up in the mist nets of the bird banding station at the Monomoy Lighthouse. And that lost Brown Pelican is still being seen off the bay side of Eastham and Wellfleet, though less often this week. More of these are turning up every year, it seems.
A great way to see some more expected, but still excellent birds right now is to find some pokeweed, a much-maligned native plant that is hard to beat for attracting birds in fall. If you don’t know it, pokeweed is a huge, thicket forming perennial with thick purple stems and dark berries that are poisonous to us mammals, but birds can’t get enough of them. You don’t buy it at a nursery, the birds plant it for you. One of the pokeweed patches in my neighborhood was full of catbirds and robins all last month, and another has lately been attracting a daily flock of about 15 bluebirds, plus at least two Baltimore Orioles also feasting on the fruits just yesterday.
On Monday I enjoyed another classic fall migration scene at Wellfleet Bay Sanctuary. I first noticed Blue Jays attending a hawk in one of the tall trees along Silver Spring Pond. It was a hawk I had identified as a Cooper’s Hawk earlier – substantially bigger than a jay with slightly rounded corners on the tail. It turned out I was wrong – this closer look, along with its high-pitched calls, revealed that it was a female Sharp-shinned Hawk – the females are about the size of a male Cooper’s. Forty-three years into my birding career and I still struggle to identify some individuals of those two look-alike species.
In any case, the sleek, bird-eating Sharpie was not the only hunter on the scene – a young Merlin then streaked in and dove on a terrified flicker, a favorite quarry of falcons. The flicker shrieked in a way reserved only for near-death experiences like this one, and narrowly escaped. Over the next several minutes, the same thing happened over and over – for some reason this group of flickers didn’t take refuge in the woods, but instead continued to perch high on bare treetops and fly through open areas. And every time one did, of course, the Merlin would appear and try to murder it. It made me wonder if flickers maybe get too many concussions from all that pecking.
At different times the Sharp-shinned Hawk chased the Merlin, or the Merlin chased the hawk, and both went after the jays. The Blue Jays harassed the Sharpie everywhere it went but were smart enough to avoid the faster Merlin. As all this played out, a screech-owl called sleepily from the daylit woods, like it was feeling left out of the raptorial fun.
So whether your bag is songbirds or ducks, hawks or seabirds, or even pelicans, October has you covered. Pick a beach or a weedy community garden or sunny woodland edge, especially in the morning or late afternoon, and see what you notice – there are birdy dramas unfolding all around us if we know how to look.
