Spring migration on the Cape is about as predictable as the weather, which is to say, not at all. Other than the sudden appearance of your first Eastern Phoebe, it mostly ranges from nonexistent to barely perceptible away from Provincetown. The species involved are short-distance migrants who winter here anyway, and they tend to be quiet about passing through. But April marks the beginning of the visible spring migration at the famous Beech Forest in Provincetown. It’s better known for hosting hosts of colorful warblers under the right conditions in mid-May, but those in the know start checking now, as the lesser-known April migrants can be worth the effort.
Golden-crowned Kinglets are the tiniest songbirds in North America and their song is basically a hearing test. Here it is. Did you hear that? Just kidding, we didn’t play it. Here it really is. I haven’t noticed any in my neighborhood in a couple of months, but numbers of them are building at the Beech Forest – one observer had 30 of them flitting about the still leafless woods. Visits in the coming weeks could also bring fallouts of Brown Creepers, White-throated Sparrows, Hermit Thrushes, and Palm and Yellow-rumped Warblers.
Often the best place to see actual evidence of April migration is on a boat. To say a songbird out over the ocean is flirting with death is putting it mildly – they are shamelessly throwing themselves at death. A few years ago there was a fallout of flickers and kinglets and other April migrants on boats in Cape Cod Bay during a fog event, and many of the flickers didn’t make it to solid ground, ultimately perishing by the hundreds and washing up on Outer Cape beaches. This week, a seabird observer way out at George’s Bank, 60 miles east of the Cape, had two flickers and a junco come aboard. The observers also saw hundreds of phalaropes, colorful seagoing sandpipers on their way back to the Arctic to breed, a migration we would never see from land.
April does usually bring some oddities, and the first salvo of southern overshoot migration whoopsies materialized on Monday in the form of a Swallow-tailed Kite seen and photographed over a residential neighborhood in Eastham. April records of this achingly graceful, mostly South American hawk are weirdly regular and increasing, to the point where they have been sticking around into summer and attempting to breed on the Upper Cape, six states north of their normal range. This species finds Florida too chilly in winter, fleeing for South America by late summer each year, so I can’t imagine the Eastham bird enjoyed the rain and temps in the 30s. Talk about questioning your life choices.
None of us are exactly ecstatic about the April weather either. But here’s a hopeful notion to hang your winter hat on - the first Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are as close as southern New Jersey, and some southerly winds predicted for the weekend could bring us the first few scouts, along with some other early migrants like a few Indigo Buntings or an odd Blue Grosbeak or maybe a flashy southern warbler of some sort.
Next week I’ll talk about a hawk that makes the Swallow-tailed Kite seem downright commonplace – it was discovered yesterday afternoon as I was going to press, as it were. In the meantime, I recommend dusting off your hummingbird feeder and hanging it outside a little early just to give you a visual sign of hope of better birds to come. You might want to wait until the temperature eases above the freezing mark though.
