Cape Cod Bird Sightings — Tuesday, December 9, 2025

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 December 3 and December 9, 2025.

A male Painted Bunting has been visiting a feeder in Brewster since late November.

A Common Gallinule and 2 Eurasian Wigeon were at Tom Matthews Pond in Yarmouth Port along with 6 Wood Ducks, 200 American Wigeon and 2 American Coots.

Birds at Race Point in Provincetown included a Pacific Loon, 5000 Black Scoters, a Red Phalarope, a Purple Sandpiper, a Pectoral Sandpiper, a Parasitic Jaeger, 6 Black Guillemots, 320 Razorbills, a Thick-billed Murre, 12 Common Murres, 18 Dovekie, 40 Black-legged Kittiwakes, 70 Bonaparte’s Gulls, 6 Iceland Gulls, and a Sooty Shearwater.

An offshore Brookline Bird Club trip to the waters east of Chatham and Nantucket, as far as the Great South Channel, tallied an impressive list of winter ocean specialties including a Great Skua, 3 Pomarine Jaegers, 19 Atlantic Puffins, 556 Razorbills, 50 Dovekies, 3 Common Murres, 282 Black-legged Kittiwakes, 4 Lesser Black-backed Gulls, 202 Northern Fulmars, 13 Great Shearwaters, 4 very late Sooty Shearwaters, 2 Manx Shearwaters, and 1137 Northern Gannets.

Late lingering migrants in Harwich included a Great Egret at the herring run, a Blue-headed Vireo in East Harwich, and a Northern House Wren at Cold Brook Preserve.

Other sightings around the Cape included a very late Wood Thrush in Mashpee, a continuing Eurasian Wigeon in Sandwich, a Nashville Warbler in Cummaquid, a Black-headed Gull in Yarmouth, unseasonably large numbers of Tree Swallows various places including 100 in Mashpee, 2 Western Willets in Chatham, and single Evening Grosbeaks in Eastham and 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 [email protected].