As we round the corner towards October, bird migration is getting better every day here on the Cape and Islands, especially songbirds. All those warblers, flycatchers, tanagers, and other little birds that took advantage of the buggy northern summer are heading for the exits. Many of them are quietly passing through here, including your backyard.
Your backyard probably won’t be as productive as Christne Bates’s was yesterday. From her deck she was able to photograph an uber rare Black-throated Gray Warbler that was so close she only needed her phone camera. There are less than 20 records of this western warbler in our listening area. It was closely followed by a Blue-winged Warbler, a more expected but still seldom seen migrant out here. Christine is a birder and former Mass Audubon and Park Service naturalist, so she’s better at birds than you, but you too have a fighting chance at seeing these oddities with a little bit of looking.
Other premium warblers of mid-September have been popping up in the last few days, including multiple reports of Golden-winged Warbler, a bird that’s blinked out as a breeding species here in Massachusetts, with its status now relegated to rare migrant. Loss of their preferred open and shrubby breeding habitat and interbreeding with the aforementioned, closely related Blue-winged Warbler are to blame. I’ve only ever seen one on the Cape. From here, they will head to winter in forests anywhere between southern Mexico and Ecuador.
Mid-September is prime time for another birder favorite, the ever-obscure Connecticut Warbler, one of the several warblers with seemingly random, often inappropriate states in their names – they don’t breed in Connecticut nor are they a common migrant there. They breed in spruce bogs across Central Canada and have an oddly small wintering range, mostly in Bolivia.
These husky warblers skulk in undergrowth at forest edges in migration, especially patches of jewelweed and goldenrod. A few have been seen or banded at banding stations in Wellfleet and Brewster this week. Look for a yellow and olive warbler with a staring white eye-ring, walking - most of its lookalikes, like young Common Yellowthroats, hop.
Even sparrows, more of a feature in October, have been showing off this week. Two Lark Sparrows, yet another rare western visitor, were at High Head in Truro, along with 6 or 7 other sparrow species, and another Lark Sparrow was at a community farm and conservation area in Orleans. While still technically summer, it’s already time to start birding those weedy community gardens and farms, which are great spots to scare up scads of migrating and overwintering songbirds.
It’s not just prime time for cool songbirds. Visiting seasonal ornithologist Curtis Mahon was out at Hatches Harbor in Provincetown on Sunday when a big raptor spooked all 2500 terns he was sorting through. He snapped a few photos, which later revealed a young Swainson’s Hawk – just the 6th or so record for the area. Five of those records, a significant percentage of all state records, have been in the Race Point area. These hawks almost completely vacate North America in winter, heading to Argentinian grasslands where they give up devouring small mammals for a few months to feed largely on grasshoppers.
As usual I’ve given you the impression that if you go outside and open your eyes, all sorts of weird, lost birds will fly in and perch on your outstretched arm. The reality, of course, is that you will most likely see mainly the local, workaday chickadees, titmice, Song Sparrows, and catbirds on your next walk, like I mostly do. But at least you are out there looking. It’s like they always say – a bad day of fishing is better than birding at work. Or something like that – you know what I mean.
