Recent bird sightings on Cape Cod (as of
April 30) as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
A zone-tailed hawk was photographed on Martha's Vineyard. Cape birders should be on the lookout for this mind-boggling southwestern rarity either alone or among turkey vultures, which it closely resembles in flight.
In Dennis, the sandhill crane continued just east of West Dennis Beach, and a black vulture was spotted at Seagull Beach.
At Race Point, sightings included 210 red-throated loons, a sooty shearwater, 4 Manx shearwaters, 420 Northern gannets, and a black guillemot. Other Provincetown seabird sightings included the continuing king eider plus an Iceland gull and razorbill in the harbor, the Pacific loon that continues to be seen off Herring Cove, and 1,100 red-breasted mergansers at Herring Cove.
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At Beech Forest in Provincetown, sightings included a hooded merganser, a green heron, a Northern rough-winged swallow, 2 blue-gray gnatcatchers, 3 ruby-crowned kinglets, 2 palm warblers, and a black-and-white warbler.
Summer may seem ever so far away in this lingering cold, but an estimated 1,600 common terns and 400 roseate terns sighted over Vineyard Sound hint at its eventual return.
The first wood thrushes of the season were reported from Peterson Farm in Falmouth and Ryder Conservation Area in Sandwich, and other sightings around the Cape included 2 blue-gray gnatcatchers in Mashpee, a little blue heron at Navigation Road in Barnstable, a white-eyed vireo in Dennis, a hooded merganser at Frost Fish Creek in Chatham, and 550 dunlin at Tern Island Sanctuary in Chatham.
For more information about bird sightings
or to report them, call the Massachusetts Audubon Society at 781-259-8805 or go to www.massaudubon.org.