Cape May, Part 2

I guess I really have to write about my second day in Cape May, even if it was practically a month ago. Waiting weeks to write a post is lazy, but never writing it is worse. 

Even though the weather was not a good for migration as the previous night, I still had high expectations for Sunday, if only because I would be able to actually do some birding in the morning, instead of midday to evening. First stop was the dike at Higbee, for the morning flight. Because of the wind direction, there were not too many birds in the morning flight, but I still saw Yellow-rumped, Blackpoll,  and Black-throated Blue Warblers, and a few Parulas. Birding Higbee afterwards was fairly quiet, but there were still plenty of raptors overhead, including an eagle, a few harriers, and tons of Accipiters. Swamp Sparrows made of the majority of songbirds, with one Lincoln's Sparrow as well.

I left Higbee and biked south to the Cape May Meadows, a marsh and wetland birding hotspot on the bay. By this time, storm clouds were quickly rolling in and rain seemed imminant. However, it stayed clear long enough for me to see some more Sharpies, a group of 20 migrating Great Blue Herons overhead, and a few Northern Pintail, which were my first of the year.

A stop at the hawkwatch was cut short by the rain, but I still saw all of the expected raptors, including a peregrine, and more migrating herons.

The final stop was to the CMBO Center, where I bought a CMBO Cape May Warbler hat, walked out of the store, and immediately saw a real Cape May Warbler. Along with a few Blackpoll Warblers, it was an excellent end to a great trip. Or so I thought.

It turned out that that was not the end of the birding. We ate lunch on the water, and I decided to walk on the beach (in the rain) to try to relocate a Royal Tern I had seen driving there. That turned out to be a very good move. I was soaked, but saw Royal and Forster's Terns, Black Scoter, and, best of all, a Lesser Black-backed Gull, all of which were nice birds and good additions to the trip list.

Royal Terns:

Lesser Black-backed Gull:

The final birds of the trip, however, were a huge flock of Black Skimmers loafing on the beach in the main part of town. Skimmers are great birds, with their striking black-and-white coloration and clownish bill, so it was great to see so many of them in one flock. There were at least 300, probably more.

From the front, Skimmers look like cartoon penguins:

95 Species, 1 Lifer, lots of cool birds- a very successful trip!

Black (and White) Skimmer

Black Skimmer from Cape May- using "lithograph" special effects. More photos and a post from Cape May to come.

Surprise Skimmers at Plymouth Beach

With the number of terns I had seen from the whale watch and the posibility of arctic or roseate terns, I could not resist a visit to Plymouth Beach. There is a huge tern colony at the tip of Plymouth Beach, with hundred or thousands of common terns, plus a handful of roseates. The latter 2 were my targets.

Plymouth Beach is also known as Plymouth Long Beach, and with good reason. The walk to the tern colony was almost three miles, some of it in soft sand. On the way I found mixed shorebirds, including dowitchers and willets, and some endangered Piping Plovers.

(A juvenile Piping Plover, Plymouth Beach, MA)

I left my dad and sister after around 1.5-2 miles, when they turned back. I continued on to the tern colony. Least terns and shorebirds became more abundant, and then came the dunes. At the tip of the spit of land that the beach is on is a area of dunes, and that is where the terns nest. I scanned the flocks from a distance. There were many flying in every direction over the dunes, and a few hundred facing the same direction on the sand. I found a few individuals that could have maybe been arctic terns, but I am not good enough to know for sure. (Below- Arctic Tern? Who Knows?)

The birds on the beach were not near their nests, so I tried to get closer, but a handful of birds flew up and dive bombed me, screaming and flying at my head. Instead of trying to get any closer, I moved around the flock, trying to find unusual terns and marveling at the numbers and the noise. Tern are pretty loud birds. And 1,000 terns are really loud. They make a variety of calls, screeches, screams, and more.

Around this time I heard a different sound, and turned around to see a black skimmer flying up the beach behind me. It called a few more times, and then flew into a portion of the dunes close to and visable from the beach. I had seen them before in Florida and Cape May, but this bird was a huge surprise. I didn't even think that there range extended that far north. I study the skimmer for a few minutes, and then moved a little farther down the beach. When I returned, there were 2 skimmers sitting in the dunes.

When I got home, I did a little research on skimmers in MA, and found that they were unusual and erratic, and that nesting birds were very rare. I also learned that these particular skimmers had been seen before were known to be nesting, the only pair in MA and the northernmost nesting pair in the country. Over the next few weeks, I heard a couple of people talking about going to plymouth beach to see the skimmers.

I had gone to the beach for the terns, and stumbled upon the skimmers.

Eamon Corbett