Recent sightings (through July 28) as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
A Franklin’s gull was found among 375 laughing gulls at Coast Guard Beach in Eastham and a black-headed gull was found in the nearby marsh. A harlequin duck continued near the inlet.
Someone’s escaped pet budgerigar was the strangest sighting at Race Point in Provincetown, but other sightings included a Sabine’s gull, a little gull, a black-headed gull, 2 lesser black-backed gulls, a glaucous gull, 7 parasitic jaegers, 1,000 common terns, 220 roseate terns, 400 Cory’s shearwaters, 350 great shearwaters, 700 sooty shearwaters, and 90 Manx shearwaters.
Shorebirds recorded from remote parts of Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge included 13 Hudsonian godwits, a marbled godwit, 11 American oystercatchers, 2 Western sandpipers, 45 red knots, 1,900 semipalmated sandpipers, 2,400 short-billed dowitchers, 45 willets, 3 Western willets, and 2,000 common terns.
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A survey of the wilderness at the southern end of South Monomoy produced a blue-winged teal, 24 Northern shovelers, 64 gadwall, 116 mallards, 6 Northern pintail, 6 green-winged teal, 5 ruddy ducks, 5 pied-billed grebes, 11 common gallinules, 13 American oystercatchers, 14 stilt sandpipers, 2 pectoral sandpipers, 121 lesser yellowlegs, 5 black terns, 3,150 common terns, an American bittern, and 22 saltmarsh sparrows.
Other reports around the Cape included an out-of-season common merganser photographed on the Mill Ponds of Brewster; a cliff swallow and a seaside sparrow in Eastham; and 3 yellow-crowned night-herons at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.
For more information about bird sightings or to report sightings, call the Massachusetts Audubon Society at 781-259-8805 or go to www.massaudubon.org.