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.
-
Northern Shrikes are rare, robin-sized, gray-and-white, black-masked songbirds of the open boreal forests and up as far as the Arctic from northern Quebec to Northern Alaska -
From their feathers to fat to feet to food, our birds are designed for surviving cold winters. -
Some of our robins may never leave, and others come down from Canada to spend the winter here. -
This may be a week to hunker down and watch the feeders. -
Not many snowy owls have appeared this year, but the consolation prize is the appearance of short-eared owls. -
I recommend you find a good duck pond near you, preferably one with some ice, and see what the eagle situation is. -
What we lacked in numbers of the common owls, we made up for with encounters with some of the more sought after species. -
Looking at waxwings and eiders to find their unusual relatives among the flocks. -
-
Big flocks of birds tend to draw in other birds, including any lost waifs from elsewhere. Sometimes just looking out the window can reveal a rare bird in your yard.
