Weekly Bird Report
The Weekly Bird Report with Mark Faherty can be heard every Wednesday on WCAI, the local NPR station for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and the South Coast. 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. He is past president of the Cape Cod Bird Club and current member of the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee.
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Juncos are in, the layers are out, and a flock of northern wanderers is easing the Cape into winter. A White-winged Crossbill turned up at Sandy Neck, Pine Siskins are arriving in good numbers, and the annual winter finch forecast offers some early clues about what’s next. -
It’s a juvenile Purple Gallinule with ginormous feet, an appetite for spiders and no fear of people, and it’s the rarest thing in a Cape Cod cranberry bog this fall. Find out what brought it to West Yarmouth and why the harvest may be keeping it fed. -
A Crested Caracara spent a month at Wellfleet’s Duck Harbor, drawing birders from all over, then vanished. Then one flapped across the windshield on the way to Red River Beach in Harwich. -
When the nor'easter finally let up, a backed-up wave of fall migrants arrived on the Cape, from Black-throated Blue Warblers to a Bell's Vireo. More may be here right now. -
Leach's Storm-Petrels, Long-tailed Jaegers, Northern Fulmars, a South Polar Skua and two Sabine's Gulls all rode in on a stubborn nor'easter. Here's a look at who showed up, where to find them, and why the storm just wouldn't leave. -
A whale watch out of Barnstable Harbor turns into an unforgettable show of humpbacks, dolphins, and pelagic birds feeding together off Stellwagen Bank. Plus, a Red-necked Phalarope, four species of shearwater, and one very out-of-place Black Vulture in Orleans. -
Fall migration turns the yard into a crossroads, from a pale young Blackburnian Warbler foraging on the ground to a bedraggled Broad-winged Hawk pausing mid-journey. Both are headed thousands of miles south, possibly converging in the cloud forests of the Andes. -
The Crested Caracara pulled its usual disappearing act in Wellfleet, and a Swallow tailed Kite in Mashpee just set a state record for the latest sighting ever. It's peak shorebird migration season, and it's time these underrated travelers got some airtime, with a beginner's guide to the sandpipers and plovers gathering on Cape Cod's flats before their long flights south. -
A Crested Caracara turns up at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, marking the second Cape sighting of this warm-climate raptor this summer. This report covers the species' puzzling northward push since 2020, plus other notable birds including a Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Tricolored Heron, and a performative Clapper Rail in West Harwich. -
After literally years of trolling us, the weirdest presumed breeding bird on Cape Cod has finally given up the goods. The huge, unmistakable birds in question, known to nest prominently in the tallest tree around, have somehow hidden definitive evidence of actual nests with chicks in them since at least 2022.
