Maybe the biggest bird story this fall was the Crested Caracara of Duck Harbor, and yet somehow I’ve barely reported on it. To recap, a Crested Caracara, was first seen in July up in Provincetown, where it stayed for two days then disappeared. Fast forward to late August, when probably the same caracara was seen by a group of astonished bird walk participants at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary. On September 6, it turned up at the Duck Harbor overwash in Wellfleet, which is the last I spoke of it. But this improbable visitor stayed put for a month, by far the longest staying caracara among the seven ever seen in state history. And boy did it have a lot of visitors.
On the scale of rare bird difficulty, which ranges from “flamingo that landed on your patio” to “agoraphobic, mute owl of the high Himalayas”, this was toward the flamingo end. This big, black, and white, blue-and-red-faced weirdo of a raptor would just walk around in the open marsh within view of the beach parking lot, or perch for long periods on an isolated tree, delighting visiting birders from all over. I wondered what it was eating - most assumed it was grasshoppers and the like - and how long it would stay. Then, after October 4, the sightings dried up. I lost track of the bird altogether and assumed it was still there.
So imagine my surprise this past Saturday, when, as my kids and I were cruising up to Red River Beach in Harwich, I looked up through my windshield to see a, maybe the, Crested Caracara flapping west. It’s an unmistakable bird in flight – mostly black with huge white patches on big, paddle shaped wings, and a long white head and tail projecting fore and aft. I shouted to the kids, and my son got to see it before it passed out of site. I like to think that was the second-best part of his morning, after his team winning their soccer game.
I parked and started getting the word out on the rare bird network. I eventually learned that the Wellfleet bird hadn’t been seen in almost a week, and that one had been seen up on the north shore in the meantime. I’m not clear on the timeline, but there have been as many as three Crested Caracaras in the state this month, or maybe just one bopping around and trolling us birders. I still can’t believe my luck on Saturday – five seconds either way, one change in some minor decision, the flap of the proverbial butterfly’s wing, and I never see that bird.
Before about six years ago, Crested Caracaras didn’t wander. These are sedentary birds of the tropical and subtropical Americas, breeding no closer than Central Florida. Then back in 2020 something changed, and sightings surged way north of their normal range – all the way up to Canada, with several birds dotted around the temperate northeast. It wasn’t just them – an even more southerly cousin, the Yellow-headed Caracara, has been doing the same thing for decades. I’ve seen them in Panama, which used to be the northern extent of their range. But they have moved north as far as Mexico in my lifetime, with records in the southern US and as far north as Delaware in the last four years.
So what’s next for the mysterious Crested Caracaras of Massachusetts? We know they can survive at least part of a northern winter – the state’s first record was in January of 1999, and even Canada has a January record. They can eat anything from trash to bugs to carrion, so finding food shouldn’t be an issue. As far as I know, no one has seen any of them since my sighting on Saturday. So it, or they, might still be out there. So be vigilant, because who knows, maybe the butterfly’s wing will flap in your favor, and you’ll be the next person to cross paths with a caracara.
