Each summer the family and I do a little camping "staycation" of sorts in Nickerson State Park in Brewster. This year we extracted the last bit of summer there over the long Labor Day weekend. It was just exotic enough with the tall pines, big, clear, steep-sided lakes, cool mornings, and campfire aromas, to pretend we drove to Maine. While late summer birding in the middle of the woods is quiet, there are always some highlights - just enough to fill a weekly bird report, conveniently enough.
First, there were the eagles. The infuriating eagles. Each morning, the first bird I heard from the tent in the pre-dawn dark, starting around 5:15, was at least one close Bald Eagle. Their surprisingly wimpy calls came periodically throughout the day from a patch of trees just hidden enough that I could never see them. I know from previous visits to the nearby pond that they have been here all summer, including at least one adult. Finally, during a dusk kayak trip, I saw one adult and two immatures out flying around. I heard another from the same mysterious patch of trees, so I’m fairly certain there at least four. An apparent family group hanging around makes me wonder about a nest hidden in one of those big white pines.
One of my favorite aspects of bird migration is that no matter where you are, you never know what might fly over – a flying bird has no habitat preference. For example, whenever we camp at Nickerson I hear Roseate Terns overhead. These federally Endangered seabirds nest on two islands in Buzzards Bay, then birds from all over the northeast stage on Cape Cod beaches in late summer. In a month they will be on their way to waters off South America or even West Africa for the winter, so it was odd to hear their distinctive calls above the pine trees two miles inland in the deep woods of Nickerson.
Another day, I caught a few overhead calls from another out-of-place long-distance migrant, this time a songbird. Bobolinks travel from grasslands and hay fields in the north to South American grasslands and rice fields as far away as Argentina. Cornell Lab of Ornithology says a Bobolink can travel the equivalent of four or five times round the circumference of the earth in its short lifetime. I have no idea how this species isn’t extinct – the prairies they used to breed in were all converted to agriculture, so they moved east to breed in hay fields. The hay fields they nest in get mowed right when they have chicks. Somehow enough chicks survive the mowers and balers to migrate 6000 miles over the ocean, during hurricane season, to winter in South America, where they have historically been poisoned, shot, and sold into the pet trade because they consider them agricultural pests. Yet here they still are, paragons of nature’s resilience, giving hope to other struggling species. I heard at least two giving their distinctive flight calls as they passed over the inhospitable woodlands of Nickerson on their way south — way, way south.
Speaking of way south, on that same dusk kayak trip that produced the eagles, I also saw an uncommon migrant for Cape Cod and a species I maybe see once or twice a year out here – the Common Nighthawk, one of my many favorites. The erratic, floppy flight right at the treetops at dusk was true to form and unmistakable. These are nocturnal insectivores, relatives of Whip-poor-wills, and this lanky, floppy bird is also on its way to South America, with some going even further south than Bobolinks. I remember seeing one in Peru one winter, but they go much further south than that.
The mystery of the invisible eagles and all those long-distance migrants off to exotic corners of the globe helped spice up our little staycation, bird-wise, but I also appreciated the local birds in those piney woods, especially the charming little Red-breasted Nuthatches and Brown Creepers so common there. But I can’t stop thinking about the journeys ahead for those other birds, like the Bobolink that weighs maybe 2-ounces soaking wet and flies, 6000 miles, one way, to get to its destination. Makes me feel like I underachieved by taking the family ten minutes from the house on our vacation. Sorry, kids.
