Mark Faherty
Host, The Weekly Bird ReportMark Faherty writes the Weekly Bird Report.
Mark has been the Science Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary since August 2007 and has led birding trips for Mass Audubon since 2002. While his current projects involve everything from oysters and horseshoe crabs to bats and butterflies, he has studied primarily bird ecology for the last 20 years, working on research projects in Kenya, Florida, Texas, California, Arizona, Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest. He was a counter for the famous River of Raptors hawk watch in Veracruz, Mexico, and has birded Africa, Panama, Belize, and both Eastern and Western Europe. Mark is an emcee and trip leader for multiple birding festivals and leads workshops on birding by ear, eBird, birding apps, and general bird identification. He is past president of the Cape Cod Bird Club and current member of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee.
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It’s not even May, and the “Swallow-tailed Kite triangle” of Cape Cod is already popping off with early sightings. There were no fewer than five reports of this improbably graceful hawk over the last week. -
Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite garden accessory, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Quite a few have been reported already, with the first sighted back on the 17th in Brewster. -
It’s a classic birding bummer — sometimes a rare bird comes to light too late for birders to see it, to the chagrin of those who missed out. -
On Sunday, a rare bird was discovered on Great Pond in Eastham, driving local birders loony. This unassuming gray and white waterbird was in the wrong kind of water in the wrong town on the wrong coast. -
This year it turned out that, as I was heading to Florida, Florida was heading to Cape Cod. As soon as I got down there I saw the rare bird alert from back home blowing up with Florida birds, most of which I didn’t even see while I was in Florida. -
March may come in like a lion, but around here it goes out on the crooked wings of an Osprey. -
They’re baaaaack! Here on the cusp of astronomical spring, those adorable little beach goers that certain people love to hate have arrived, or at least the first few scouts have. Piping Plovers have been seen in Orleans, Hyannis, and Sandwich, and more are likely out there on the bleak beaches of March -
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When Bald Eagles took over an Osprey nest on the Outer Cape two years ago it meant that, for the first time since the 1800s out here, the eagle had landed. -
A lanky and mysterious stranger arrived in Provincetown last week, where he is often seen loitering near the famous Boy Beach at the west end. Flamboyantly arrayed in feathers, this visitor has developed quite a following, but it’s not for a drag show at the Post Office Cabaret.
