Recent bird sightings on Cape Cod (as of Aug. 22) as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon
Society.

The American avocet at High Head in Truro was reported again.

The bar-tailed godwit was seen again at South Beach in Chatham. The bird was halfway along the beach near the large overwash along with both Hudsonian and marbled godwits and thousands of other expected shorebird species. Other highlights included a red-necked phalarope, 15 white-winged scoters, 47 snowy egrets, 2 Northern harriers, 750 black-bellied plovers, 40 American oystercatchers, 8 Western willets, 21 whimbrels, 14 Hudsonian godwits, 3 marbled godwits, 90 red knots, 3 Western sandpipers, 20 black terns, and 225 roseate terns.

Good birds were once again reported from one of the small pelagic birding trips out of the Chatham Fish Pier, including 2 long-tailed jaegers, the expected shearwaters and storm-petrels, 6 red-necked phalaropes, 60 roseate terns, 1500 common terns, and 3 parasitic jaegers.

At Race Point in Provincetown birders noted 5 migrating green-winged teal, 9 black scoters, 22 Cory’s shearwaters, 35 great shearwaters, 6 sooty shearwaters, 28 Manx shearwaters, an Arctic tern, a Forster’s tern, 3 black terns, 40 roseate terns, and a dickcissel.

Two dickcissels were noted near the Chatham Fish Pier at different times this week, and other sightings around the Cape included another dickcissel, plus 2 yellow-breasted chats, a Northern waterthrush, and 12 wood ducks at Hawks-nest State Park in Harwich, a continuing chuck-will’s-widow at Pochet in Orleans, an American golden-plover flying over Chatham, over 200 black terns throughout Buzzard’s Bay, an American bittern, and a merlin at High Head in Truro, and lastly, a brant, 2 Forster’s terns, an orchard oriole, a yellow-crowned night-heron, and a hooded merganser at Wellfleet Bay sanctuary.