A couple of Saturdays ago, the family and I headed on our annual visit to my in-laws in Florida for a short, delayed winter vacation on the Gulf of Mexico. While the wall-to-wall overdeveloped beach area we stay in has little left in the way of natural habitat or native plants, I still relish the chance to see Florida birds, like the iconic pelicans, Royal and other terns, Roseate Spoonbills, and maybe a Swallow-tailed Kite. But this year it turned out that, as I was heading to Florida, Florida was heading to Cape Cod. As soon as I got down there I saw the rare bird alert from back home blowing up with Florida birds, most of which I didn’t even see while I was in Florida.
First, there were the Swallow-tailed Kites. Back on March 22, famed local biologist, teacher, and naturalist Peter Trull was parked by a wild former cranberry bog in Brewster and saw one of these big, black-and white hawks knifing through the air just above the water, “mind-blowingly close,” in his words. Another was photographed in Yarmouth Port the same day, and the following day, Osprey savior Kevin Friel of the Falmouth Osprey Project saw one by the Bourne bridge. The number of March records for the Cape and Islands of this mostly South American hawk went up 50% in 24 hours.
Also on March 22nd, a lucky homeowner near Kelly’s Bay in Dennis looked out the window to see a flash of unseasonably bright yellow at the suet feeder — a Yellow-throated Warbler. Don’t confuse this southern vagrant with a Common Yellowthroat, one of our common breeding birds. I can only find one other Cape and Islands record of this species for March, an old Sandwich record for the end of the month, so this was a remarkable sighting. These flashy songbirds breed in the southeastern states and winter from Florida to Panama. I expect one to be reported here later in spring, but this early record is unprecedented, and a good reminder to keep watching those feeders.
But the south wasn’t done sending us its birds. When Mass Audubon educator David Shapiro stopped by a little pond across from the west end marshes of Provincetown last week, he noticed a lanky, well-dressed bird wading in the shallow water – a Black-necked Stilt. Elegant and dapper, these tuxedoed, crazy-legged shorebirds occur mainly in strange, faraway places like Uruguay and Orange County, California, breeding no closer to here than the Carolinas. There are only about 20 records of these unique sandpiper relatives in our listening area.
Clearly some southerly winds were at work, because it wasn’t just these showstoppers that dropped in, but more pedestrian early records like the ridiculously early Chimney Swift on the Vineyard and equally early Eastern Kingbird on Nantucket, both back from the Amazon more than a month ahead of schedule. Purple Martins, Barn Swallows, and Rough-winged Swallows all blew in early as well last week.
The next southerly flow we get, be on the lookout for early Indigo Buntings and overly exuberant White-eyed Vireo, along with more kites, and other southern birds like jarringly yellow Prothonotary Warblers and Summer Tanagers. In the meantime, during this part of spring that can really drag, I’ll leave you with this hopeful news – I expect the first couple of Ruby-throated Hummingbird reports in a little over two weeks.
