Using a camera to add rare birds to your list

Last week’s Vermilion Flycatcher, the briefly famous female photographed at South Cape Beach in Mashpee, turned out to be a one-day wonder, as we birders say – she hasn’t been seen since. Beyond a wayward Western Kingbird that’s still hanging around Peterson Farm in Falmouth, it was a quiet week on the Cape for fall rarities.

As we turn another calendar page, we’re also turning a corner in the fall migration. I’ve always preferred October to September, mainly because we tend to get more birds later in the fall.

You may have noticed that it rained recently, for the first time in what seemed like years. In addition to a satisfying, multi-day soaking of our parched soils, this weather also brought the kind of winds that get the attention of storm bird chasers, that hardy and quirky subset of the already quirky subset of society that is birders.

When it comes to bird photography, experienced practitioners know that sometimes it’s best to shoot first and ask questions later. What I mean is, even expert birders don’t always know exactly what they’re looking at until they get home and look at the photos.

More than 300 species of birds have been recorded from Race Point, the second-highest list of anywhere on the Cape and Islands.

It’s not just back to school time for kids, all those billions of young birds that hatched over the spring and summer need to learn how to be birds, and it’s a real school of hard knocks.

In all my years of camping and doing field work around the US I never knew that flying squirrels could be camp scavengers.

The birds, being well-versed in Shakespeare, know that all the world’s a stage. Maybe not, but what they do know is that some of the world’s a staging area, and one of the most important staging areas is right here on the Cape and Islands.