Outer Cape winter birding

Looking at waxwings and eiders to find their unusual relatives among the flocks.

The first results are in.

Big flocks of birds tend to draw in other birds, including any lost waifs from elsewhere. Sometimes just looking out the window can reveal a rare bird in your yard.

The Atlantic puffin is a real crowd-pleaser. While people know them as a nesting bird of rocky Maine Islands in summer, small numbers winter in deep Massachusetts waters.

A limpkin visited Scituate and a common cuckoo visited New Hampshire in recent days.

A limpkin visited Scituate and a common cuckoo visited New Hampshire in recent days.

Turkeys have a role to play in the emergence of that pest du jour, the Lone Star Tick, and the weird red-meat allergy they transmit, alpha-gal syndrome. You could say that when it comes to alpha-gal, turkeys giveth, and turkeys taketh away.

Townsend’s Solitaire is the only US representative of a group of mostly mountain dwelling thrushes of Central and South America, plus Hawaii somehow, and are some of my favorite birds. They are related to our bluebirds and robins but are better singers than both.

A common theme on the bird report is the omnidirectional origins of the interesting birds we see, especially in fall – in any given week we may see lost birds from Europe, Western Canada, the Caribbean, and the desert southwest. This week is a good example, with species hailing from all of these destinations making landfall on the Cape.

Brown Boobies look a lot like young gannets, which are various shades of brown, but unlike gannets, they will sit on rocks close to shore for long periods – gannets essentially never come ashore around here unless they’re sick.