For birds and birders, this has been an extraordinary couple of months on the Cape and Islands, featuring really bad weather. Doesn’t get any colder or snowier - or at least it never had!
Despite the 2 steps forward, one step back, nature of spring weather in our region, this is an exciting time on the Cape and Islands. The plants and animals are completely changing, metamorphosing, from dormant, energy saving, winter survival mode to its time to live again! Life is literally, slowly, bursting out, all over the region. In the bird world, there is much activity, great changes all around and evidence of lots of bird migration.
It is hard not to notice the increased level of land bird activity as well as the noise from all the bird calls and song. Roving flocks of blackbirds, some numbering well over a hundred birds, can be heard and seen as they visit the Cape and Islands on their way further north. While listening to the creaky, rusty hinge sound emanating from the common grackles, red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds that comprise the mixed blackbird flocks, it is almost impossible not to hear singing northern cardinals and song sparrows.
Piping plovers and American oystercatchers are back in small numbers with more expected by the time you read this. The temperatures have been colder than what is expected in January - so many birds will, hopefully, hold up their northbound return. Ospreys have also responded to the cold and are clearly adapting to the remarkable unseasonable cold temperatures. There have been a few individuals seen but hopefully with warmer temperatures forecast and southwest winds heading our way later in the week they will start showing in some numbers.
While the ospreys are away from the their nest poles a pair of Red-tailed Hawks that have become accustomed to sitting on this excellent vantage point over the winter, flew in and were hanging out enjoying the view. This pair of red-tailed hawks (you can tell them apart when they are sitting together, the female weighs about a third more than the male and appears larger in all ways) stays together year-round. This pair is non-migratory, but they do change their behavior patterns and perches throughout the year.
Most raptors defend breeding or home territories, and if migratory they defend territories both during the breeding season and then during the winter months. (It is not unusual for birds to defend their winter food supplies. Overwintering northern mockingbirds in our area are fierce in winter in defense of whatever berry supply they have to eat from October to April.)
Lastly, a bird that spends the winter on the rocks along the northwestern U.S. coast called a Surfbird, which had never been seen on the eastern seaboard was discovered and conclusively identified on the afternoon of March 21, in Biddeford Pool, Maine. It was seen by some 50 observers in appalling cold temperatures on March 22 and then not seen on the 23rd. It was relocated on the 24th and is such an unusual bird on the east coast that if it remains will attract thousands of birders from New England and beyond. This bird is an extremely unexpected and exciting highlight and a great way to kick-off spring birding.
