Recent sightings (through Aug. 20) as reported to Mass Audubon.
A swallow-tailed kite was reported at Santuit Pond in Mashpee and a Mississippi kite was reported from Harwich.
Sightings at Race Point in Provincetown included a Pacific loon, a long-tailed jaeger, 4 parasitic jaegers, an Arctic tern, and a lesser black-backed gull.
A hundred miles east of Chatham at George’s Bank a seabird survey identified 4 south polar skuas, 2 Leach’s storm petrels, and 227 great shearwaters.
Some trips to South Monomoy turned up 2 Northern pintail, 13 blue-winged teal, 2 Northern shovelers, a green-winged teal, 9 ruddy ducks, 2 pied-billed grebes, a common gallinule, 4 American coot, 11 American oystercatchers, 420 black-bellied plovers, a Hudsonian godwit, 2 whimbrels, 541 short-billed dowitchers, 19 lesser yellowlegs, 1 stilt sandpiper, 20 white-rumped sandpipers, 1,950 semipalmated sandpipers, 3 lesser black-backed gulls, 100 roseate terns, 24 snowy egrets, and 2 Northern harriers.
A survey of the Herring River in Wellfleet tallied 3 clapper rails, 6 Virginia rails, a sora, 2 common ravens, and 6 marsh wrens.
Birds at Pogorelc Sanctuary in Barnstable included 4 wood ducks, 2 blue-winged teal, 2 little blue herons, 4 yellow-crowned night herons, 6 black-crowned night herons, 8 green herons, a willow flycatcher, and a Northern waterthrush.
Other sightings around the Cape included a blue grosbeak at Crane WMA in Falmouth; a blue-winged warbler in Mashpee; a seaside sparrow in West Barnstable; a dickcissel in Chatham; a bald eagle, 20 whimbrels and a Wilson’s snipe at Indian Neck in Wellfleet; and an American bittern at High Head in Truro.
If you have questions about these sightings, or want to report a sighting, call the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at 508-349-2615 or send e-mail to cape.sightings@massaudubon.org.