Cape Cod Bird Sightings — Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Cape Cod Weekly Wildlife Sightings is sponsored by the Bird Watchers General Store in Orleans and Mass Audubon's Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. The following sightings were reported between August 2 and August 8, 2023.
A Western Tanager is visiting a private feeder in East Orleans, representing the first ever summer record of this species in Massachusetts, and indeed in most of the northeast.
An out-of-season Yellow-throated Warbler and an American Bittern were at High Head in North Truro.
A Brown Booby was seen from Race Point in Provincetown, where other sightings included a Royal Tern, 9 Parasitic Jaegers, a Black-legged Kittiwake, a Black Tern, 115 Wilson’s Storm-Petrels, 60 Cory’s Shearwaters, 850 Great Shearwaters, 25 Sooty Shearwaters, 115 Manx Shearwaters, a Bald Eagle, a Merlin, and a Common Raven.
Reports from surveys of remote parts of Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge this week included 9 Northern Pintail, 8 Ruddy Ducks, 4 Green-winged Teal, 2 Pied-billed Grebes, 2 Sora, 6 American Coots, 23 American Oystercatchers, an American Golden-Plover 300 Black-bellied Plovers, 3150 Semipalmated Plovers, 9 Hudsonian Godwits, 4 Stilt Sandpipers, 290 Ruddy Turnstones, 75 Red Knots, 2450 Sanderlings, 2 White-rumped Sandpipers, 3 Pectoral Sandpipers, 6850 Semipalmated Sandpipers, a Western Sandpiper, 3510 Short-billed Dowitchers, a Wilson’s Phalarope, 140 Lesser Yellowlegs, 3 Parasitic Jaegers, 5 Black Terns, 25 Roseate Terns, 3000 Common Terns, 1000 Laughing Gulls, 15 Cory’s Shearwaters, 15 Great Shearwaters, 2 Northern Harriers, a Peregrine Falcon, 400 Tree Swallows, and 10 Saltmarsh Sparrows.
Other sightings around the Cape included at least 2 Blue Grosbeaks at Crane WMA in Falmouth, a Black Skimmer in Mashpee, a Hooded Merganser and a Little Blue Heron in Barnstable, a Pomarine Jaeger East of Chatham, an Arctic Tern in Orleans, 2 American Bitterns in Eastham, and 2 Red Phalaropes on Stellwagen Bank.
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 [email protected].