Recent bird sightings on Cape Cod (as of Oct. 14) as reported to the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
The best sighting was a bit off Cape this week - a brown-chested martin, representing only the sixth US record for this South American vagrant, was seen at the Cumberland Farms fields in Halifax. Incidentally, the first US recording of this extreme rarity was found on Cape Cod at the south end of Monomoy Island in 1983. Also just off Cape, 5 sandhill cranes have been at some cranberry bogs off Tihonet Road in Wareham.
Another Pacific loon was seen in Provincetown this week, and other seabirds noted from the outer beaches between Chatham and Provincetown were 1 northern fulmar, 99 Cory’s shearwaters, 3,100 greater shearwaters, 50 sooty shearwaters, 98 Manx shearwaters, 3 black-legged kittiwakes, 330 laughing gulls, 2 Forster’s terns, 75 common terns, 7 parasitic jaegers, and 1 long-tailed jaeger.
Birds seen at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary this week include 8 northern bobwhites, a merlin, 2 yellow-bellied sapsuckers, 5 eastern bluebirds, 25 cedar waxwings, a blue-headed vireo, a red-eyed vireo, a Nashville warbler, 5 palm warblers, 2 white-crowned sparrows, 2 indigo buntings, a rusty blackbird, and a Baltimore oriole.
Birds netted over two days at the Wing Island banding station in Brewster this week included 2 brown creeper, a Swainson’s thrush, a gray-cheeked thrush, a veery, 4 orange-crowned warblers, a Nashville warbler, 162 yellow-rumped warblers, a mourning warbler, a Lincoln’s sparrow, 9 swamp sparrows, and a dark-eyed junco.
Among the birds seen from a hawk watch at the south end of Morris Island in Chatham this week were 5 osprey, a northern harrier, 38 sharp-shinned hawks, 6 Cooper’s hawks, 9 merlins, 29 peregrine falcons, 2 cliff swallows, 307 blue jays, 4 wood ducks, 20 long-tailed ducks, and 2 eastern meadowlarks, plus 459 monarch butterflies.
In other sightings around the Cape, an American bittern was seen in the North Pamet area of Truro, an early northern shrike was seen near Great Hollow in Truro, 2 Virginia rails, 2 soras, and a blue grosbeak were seen elsewhere in Truro, 9 wood ducks and a northern pintail were in the Collector’s World ponds in Eastham, and a northern parula, 3 Nashville warblers, 6 field sparrows, and 2 indigo buntings were at the Eastham stump dump off Nauset Road.
For more information about bird sightings or to report bird sightings, call the Massachusetts Audubon Society at 781-259-8805 or go to www.massaudubon.org. 
