Recent bird sightings on Cape Cod (as of June 20) as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
The chuck-will’s widow continues at Pochet in Orleans, while another has been calling along Old County Road in Truro.
A clapper rail and a Wilson’s phalarope are the continuing highlight birds at South Beach in Chatham, where other birds seen included 6 Wilson’s storm-petrels, 3 great shearwaters, 134 sooty shearwaters, 16 snowy egrets, a black-crowned night-heron, a Northern harrier, 62 black-bellied plovers, 19 piping plovers, 9 American oystercatchers, 3 ruddy turnstones, 17 red knots, 19 semipalmated sandpipers, a least sandpiper, 3 white-rumped sandpipers, 7 dunlin, 8 short-billed dowitchers, 4 roseate terns, 1,000 common terns, an Arctic tern, a parasitic jaeger, 15 horned larks, and 38 saltmarsh sparrows.
Seen at Buck’s Creek behind Ridgevale Beach in Chatham were 2 blue-winged teal, 4 American black ducks, 21 mallards, 4 great egrets, 16 snowy egrets, 3 American oystercatchers, 8 greater yellowlegs, 17 least terns, and 4 saltmarsh sparrows.
An organized birding trip to the Mass Military Reservation turned up 4 upland sandpipers, an American kestrel, 3 prairie warblers, 5 field sparrows, 6 savannah sparrows, 6 grasshopper sparrows, 4 Eastern meadowlarks, an orchard oriole, and a purple finch.
Birds at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary included a nesting pair of green herons, a snowy egret, 2 Northern bobwhites, 15 cedar waxwings, 2 prairie warblers, 3 field sparrows, 3 saltmarsh sparrows, 4 orchard orioles, and 3 purple finches.
Other sightings around the cape included a red-shouldered hawk in Mashpee, a brant in Bourne, a willow flycatcher and a Northern bobwhite at the Morris Island causeway in Chatham, a willow flycatcher at Fort Hill in Eastham, and a Northern bobwhite in North Truro.
audubon.org.
