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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Like so many things these days, it began on Facebook. In a group devoted to birds on the Cape, buried in a comment thread, someone from the Upper Cape – I’ll call her “Jo Anne” because, well, that’s her name - casually mentioned she had been seeing a certain big, improbably rare bird hanging out in her yard. -
Like it or not, we’re on the downhill to Labor Day. For birding, this means you need to get your fill of shorebirds and summer seabirds soon, because after early September they thin out faster than the tourists with school-aged kids.
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We need to talk about Monarchs. Yes, it’s that time of year when I hijack the bird report to talk butterflies, and it’s come none too soon.
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Last week I had the chance to do something I haven’t done in years — camping on the Cape.
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Now that summer is fully here in tourism terms, it’s peak time for whale watches — a must on anyone’s list of summer activities, whether you’re a salty local or a wide-eyed weekly renter.
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Recently, my agent, Scott Boras, renegotiated my Bird Report contract with CAI. In addition to guaranteed 7 figure salary and performance bonuses, I am now able to talk about insects whenever I want.
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A striking and unusual species has come a knocking on Cape Cod this month, a bird we rarely see. Adults of this mystery species have been seen in Provincetown last month and Falmouth last week.
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For years now, I have been trolling my poor wife by refusing to cover the one bird report topic she always requested. I once went so far as to pretend I was doing the requested piece in the opening lines before veering off to a different topic.
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For most of the smartphone era people have asked me “when will I be able to just hold my phone up and have it tell me what birds I’m hearing, you know, like Shazam does with music?”. “Ha!” I would chuckle derisively, “maybe never.
