I’ve been guilty many times of painting June as some birdless doldroms between spring and fall migration, and just as often have eaten my words. While its true most longer distance bird movements halt between early June and mid-July, June is still, as the kids say, a low-key good rare bird month, especially here at the coast. In turn, there have been a few surprises this week in, uh, terns. That’s right, the headline birds have been a slew of unusual terns.
I was lucky enough to bump into a rare Gull-billed Tern the other day at a marshy Nantucket Sound beach in Chatham. Many appreciative birders quickly gave chase, even though it was the third Gull-billed Tern on the Cape in as many days. The reason mine was so popular was that it was near a parking lot, and a free one at that, rather than way out in the soft-sand death march hinterlands of Race Point in Provincetown like the others. Only a brave few birders regularly venture out there, especially as July approaches.
Gull-billed Terns are comsomolitan but mainly southern here in North America. They breed as close as Long Island, but unlike most New Yorkers they rarely come to the Cape. There are no definite breeding records in Mass, though June sightings have become more common in the last 50 years or so, indicating that, like so many southern birds, they may at least be checking out some listings, if not quite ready to make an offer.
If you’re not a serious birder then Gull-billed Terns pretty much look like other terns – graceful white pointy-winged seabirds dipping down over water – more delicate and genteel cousins of gulls. Compared to our familiar Common Terns they are bigger and more ghostly white, with a stouter all-black bill, black legs, and a very different diet than most terns. While most terns dive for baitfish, Gull-billeds eat mainly invertebrates like crabs, insects, and about anything else that moves, including small chicks of other coastal birds. Two different Mashpee records in the last 15 years involved birds that walked around on a golf course looking for bugs – very un-tern-like indeed. I suspect the Chatham bird was munching small fiddler crabs on creek banks.
Since one good tern deserves another, or in this case several others, there were quite a few unexpected terns seen this week, mostly out at Race Point, where the first two Gull-billed Terns were seen, along with Royal, Black, and Arctic Terns, plus the usual Common, Roseate, and Least Terns. Two more Royal Terns were near Edgartown. Even an absurdly rare either Bridled or Sooty Tern was reported yesterday, though as yet without a photo or corroborating sightings. These similar, Caribbean sister species are only expected following a hurricane, and even then you are very lucky to find one.
I managed another unexpected species yesterday just by wandering out to my driveway, this time a winter bird rare even in winter, in the form of some Red Crossbills. I never laid eyes on them, but heard them multiple times, first from my driveway then later from my bathroom window, as they bounced around the neighborhood, always managing to elude me. I did get one distant recording. These most mysterious of songbirds wander the cool, coniferous north in search of abundant cone crops, breeding most any time of year, and famously have at least 10 subspecies or types, all with distinct calls and tree preferences. Breeding records are scarce in Massachusetts, though they seem to be nesting in the state forest in Plymouth in recent years.
Some other lucky birders scored a nice June bird while sitting in brutal Sagamore bridge traffic on Sunday – a Mississippi Kite they were able to study from the car thanks to the stopped traffic. June just keeps overachieving. So for you locals, as the world closes in around you in the coming weeks, and formerly quick and smooth drives turn into hair-pulingly slow slogs, take a tip from us birders - don’t think of it as wasted time, just think of it as more time to look for rare birds out your car window.
