Hot fun in the summertime is a good way to describe what the birding has been like. Despite the scorching heat wave that has engulfed the entire country and is just beginning in this region, the birding is good and will only continue to improve.
For those of us lucky enough to be on the Cape and Islands at this season there is relief from the intense heat and humidity with the relatively cool southwest breezes that make us “chill”. While some of us, sadly this writer included, still complain about the heat - it is cool compared to what is going on in most inland and metropolitan areas.
The heat has been making all living creatures, birds being no exception, rather sluggish and hard to observe in the middle of the day. There is much more activity in the natural world at dawn and dusk, especially at this time of year during a heat wave. This activity is called crepuscular activity and many birds, fish, mammals and insects are active and feed primarily at these periods of changing light levels.
The effects of the change in ambient light negate many of the natural advantages of counter shading developed by so many creatures. Fish, pretty much all of them, are dark on the dorsal side and light on the ventral, in other words dark above, light below and this works very well most of the time. In low light levels, or at times when the light is changing rapidly, this natural camouflaging is not so effective and the fish are easier to see from both above and below.
Which is why fish-eating birds and larger fish that eat smaller fish are all best seen, found or caught at these times of day. Birding and fishing at the coast are both much more productive at dawn and dusk when normal crepuscular feeding patterns are taking place. Another benefit of getting up and out, particularly at or before dawn, is that the vast majority of the human population is not a factor, greatly reducing the noise and disturbance levels, making it far easier to observe wildlife.
The shore, the tidal flats, exposed sandbars and undisturbed spots are far and away the most productive spots for birds right now. Sandpipers, plovers, terns and gulls are staging on favored spots. A good variety of shorebirds are currently visiting Cape and Island shores.
Adult shorebirds, sandpipers and plovers of over a dozen kinds are passing through on an annual pilgrimage. Nesting in the furthest northern reaches of the planet all over the Northern Hemisphere in the northern summer, they then fly to the farthest reaches of the Southern Hemisphere to enjoy the bounty of the southern summer, avoiding the inhospitable and frozen nastiness of their breeding grounds during the northern winter. Their migrations are amongst the most spectacular and cover the greatest distances of any creatures on the planet.
These birds move in two distinct peaks during migration. The first peak is about to occur when the southbound adults arrive. Then as their numbers begin to decrease in mid-August, the first juvenile shorebirds, birds that hatched on Arctic tundra this year, begin to filter in until the big peak right around the end of this month or the first week of September. The actual peak days are entirely weather dependent and concur with strong cold fronts.
Lastly, mixed flocks of blackbirds, common grackles, red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds, have begun forming flocks and are now roosting together in reed beds near water. They fly out in long loose lines in the morning, often feeding together staying together in a big loose flock all day long. Enormous flocks of grackles, some numbering in the thousands of birds, forage through oak woodlands during the day. Then just before dusk they fly off to roost. This is a sign that Fall is surely coming.
