The crowds of summer are here, which can be painful for us locals, many of whom are already sheltering in place. But don’t go dormant just yet, because with the tourist hordes come the birds of summer, and they are worth leaving your home for, and maybe even - and I know this sounds crazy - crossing a town line or two.
The birds of summer include all manner of wading birds, meaning herons and egrets, shorebirds, which is sandpipers and plovers, and seabirds, like shearwaters, petrels, gulls, and terns. All of these will continue to increase throughout the summer as birds disperse from breeding areas as far as Antarctica and as close as Monomoy. This week I want to focus on seabirds, many of whom are actually here for the winter, meaning the southern hemisphere winter. I always like to point out that southern hemisphere birds fly north for the winter because I would guess you never really thought about that. Or maybe you did – I don’t really know you very well.
I love the summer seabirds because of the incredible journeys they make to be here. Common and Roseate Terns have spent the last two months on local breeding islands like Monomoy, but to get there back in May they came from wintering areas off Brazil or West Africa. In July these sleek and graceful gull cousins start to finish nesting and disperse farther from the colonies, turning up on more local beaches. Listen for Common Terns off whatever beach you are camped out at this week – it may not be melodic, but it’s music to the ears of anyone fishing, since terns are great indicators of big fish pushing bait to the surface. Keep an ear out for the Federally Endangered Roseate Tern among them, with their distinctively sharp, two-part call.
If you want to get serious about seabirds, you should gird your loins for the drive, then long hike to get out to Race Point in Provincetown, which is a world-class seabirding destination year-round. In the last week birders tallied a surprise Atlantic Puffin flyby, which is rare any time of year on Cape Cod. But you never know – local seabird guru Peter Flood got an epic photo of a flock of four puffins flying by a whale watch boat on Stellwagen Bank in early July of 2021. This week Peter photographed a Brown Booby, a rare but increasingly expected visitor from the Caribbean and Gulf Stream. So in birding terms, a relatively short trip to Race Point would have saved you trips to Maine and Florida, respectively, in the cases of this puffin and booby.
The classic, workaday seabirds of summer around here are the shearwaters and storm-petrels best seen from whale watch boats or from Race Point, and sometimes from the south shore of Nantucket. Four types of shearwaters are here in summer, Great, Cory’s, Sooty, and Manx, and those four come from the South Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the South Atlantic, and the North Atlantic, in that order. Got it? And you thought it was a long drive from Connecticut. Wilson’s Storm-Petrels also come from nesting cliffs and islands in Antarctica to patter way the summer here – literally. These delightful little sea sprites flutter their wings to keep them just aloft enough to hop along the water surface on their little webbed feet as they look for plankton, small fish, and even whale poop to eat.
So whether you’re here for the week or you’re a Cape and Islands lifer, don’t forget to add “appreciate the amazing life histories of seabirds” to your summer to-do list. Put it right after “pay what used to be enough to buy a small car for fried seafood”.
