Bird-a-thon, Mass Audubon’s annual fundraiser & birding competition, will take place May 10-11
This year, we’re making it easier than ever to participate in Bird-a-thon!
You can join one of 12 teams to take part in a series of birding competitions, you can fundraise for your team, you can donate to your favorite team, you can join a Bird-a-thon program, or all of the above!
Everyone can participate—whether you’re into birding, love exploring nature, or just want a good reason to get outside on a spring day.
Learn more here about what’s new this year and see the ways you can get involved.
Cornell has a real-time map that shows migration, and is used to predict where the concentrations will be. Click the map to be taken to https://birdcast.info/.
Starting March 1st, the BirdCast Migration Maps forecasting resumes.
The deadline to apply has been extended to April 1, 2024!
We are pleased to announce the Cape Cod Bird Club (CCBC) is offering scholarships for two Cape Cod school students to attend a bird-watching and natural history camp in Bremen, Maine. We are asking for your assistance in helping us find worthy candidate(s).
The successful student(s) will receive a full-tuition ($1,690) scholarship to attend the Mountains to Sea Birding for Teens camp June 23 – June 28, 2024 at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Bremen, Maine, For information about the camp, go to Mountains to Sea Teen Birding Camp.
To see more information, and download an application, go here.
The Cornell Lab’s Project FeederWatch is a November-April survey of birds that visit backyards, nature centers, community areas, and other locales in North America. You don’t even need a feeder! All you need is an area with plantings, habitat, water, or food that attracts birds. The schedule is completely flexible. Count your birds for as long as you like on days of your choosing, then enter your counts online. Your counts allow you to track what is happening to birds around your home and to contribute to a continental data-set of bird distribution and abundance.
Congratulations to Megan Morey, a student at Cape Cod Academy, for being awarded the CCBC scholarship to attend the 2023 Hog Island Mountains to Sea Birding for Teens Camp. Megan attended the Camp in August and will be writing an article for an upcoming newsletter, as well as making a presentation to the Club at the December meeting. We are looking forward to hearing about her Hog Island experience.
Do birds have a sense of smell?
Raptor specialist Norman Smith of Mass Audubon Blue Hills gives us some interesting new insight in this short 4-minute video:
The Cape Cod Bird Club has received a mention in theBirding Community E-Bulletin of the National Wildlife Refuge Association under PROMOTE A POSITIVE PROJECT for our Conservation & Education projects. Visit the publication archives and read the May 2021 Birding Community E-bulletin.
Free online course and resources for beginning birdwatchers Spark Birding is offering a free program to encourage more people to explore birdwatching as a hobby and to learn the basics. The program is tailored to the New England region and includes a free online course, Birding Essentials for New England, that covers bird behavior, essential gear, the most common birds here, and how to identify birds. For more information or to signup, visit sparkbirding.com/getstarted.
Dr. J. Drew Lanham is a writer, birder, hunter, and naturalist wandering on the edge of the Blue Ridge in the Upper Piedmont of South Carolina. Lanham considers “conserving birds and their habitat a moral mission that needs the broadest and most diverse audience possible to be successful.” He is a Clemson University Master Teacher and Alumni Distinguished Professor in wildlife ecology, with research interests in songbird ecology and conservation; integration of game and nongame wildlife management; the African American land ethic and its role in natural resources conservation.
Dr. J. Drew Lanham an Alumni Distinguished Professor and Master Teacher of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University. He is a cultural and conservation ornithologist whose work addresses the confluence of race, place and nature. Drew is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield County, SC and the author of Sparrow Envy: Poems, Sparrow Envy: A Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts, and The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature.The Home Place was winner of the Reed Environmental Writing Award, the Southern Book Prize, and was a 2017 finalist for the Burroughs Medal. The Home Place was most recently named the scholarly book of the decade by Lithub and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Drew’s creative work and opinion appears in Orion, Vanity Fair, Oxford American, High Country News, Bitter Southerner, Terrain, Places Journal, Literary Hub, Newsweek, Slate, NPR, Story Corps, Threshold Podcast, Audubon, Sierra Magazine, This is Love Podcast, and The New York Times. He is a Contributing Editor for Orion Magazine, and a lifelong bird watcher and hunter/conservationist living in Seneca, SC.
The first sign of a nesting Common Loon has been found in Fall River! They’ve been gone from this area since 1925. See this great article on recovery efforts:
In the Winter 2019 Kingfisher, Herb Raffaele described our plans to support conservation and education. In particular, we requested proposals from the four Caribbean-based NGOs described in that article. We received proposals from three of them, and we decided to fund two of these organizations.
Each grant is for $1,000. As these projects start to produce results, we will bring you reports of their progress.
Puerto Rico Ornithological Society (SOPI)
SOPI will design and print bird identification guides and informational booklets aimed at various natural resource user constituencies that are not usually known for participating in bird-watching activities in Puerto Rico (e.g., recreational anglers).
Environmental Awareness Group of Antigua & Barbuda (EAG).
EAG will conduct classroom and field training sessions aimed at producing a cadre of local citizen scientists, who are able to identify and monitor birds in three wetlands designated as Important Bird Areas (IBAs). Not only will the project produce valuable data, but also the participants will gain an appreciation for the value of wetland ecosystems.
Learn about the leader of the Antigua/Barbuda initiative:
(link to YouTube is here if your device doesn’t show the video)
6/2/2020 Update
On June 1, 2020, this project was completed with some amazing results. Even during this time of Covid-19, they were able to train 35 participants through all 6 courses using web-based training! They were able to conduct their Field training prior to the pandemic. And they have already started contributing to citizen science via eBird. See their final report for a complete description of their project.
American Kestrels, Barn Swallows, and Cliff Swallows are all declining in Massachusetts, like many other open-country birds. The Bird Conservation team is initiating two exciting studies on these species during this spring and summer, and data from the community will be integral to both studies’ success!
What we hope to accomplish with your help
The purpose of the swallow project is straightforward: we want to identify sites where Barn and Cliff Swallows are nesting that may not yet be known to biologists.
Mass Audubon’s work on the kestrel project on the other hand, will be a little more involved. After compiling a list of remaining nest sites, the Bird Conservation Department will team up with state biologists in 2021 to fit kestrels with radio tags. These tags will track their movements around the region after nesting, and eventually to their wintering grounds.
As always, all nest data is kept strictly within the community of biologists working to conserve these species.
For more information, check out our full blog post here or contact Jon Atwood, director of bird conservation (jatwood@massaudubon.org).
Shawn Carey spoke to the Cape Cod Bird Club about Tanzania in November 2018. Shawn has posted about his Tanzania photo safaris at Migration Productions.
There are three separate articles documenting his Tanzania trips in 2017 and 2019.
Active members of the Cape Cod Bird Club are now eligible for a 28% discount off of The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “Birds of North America” online birding reference. Click here for more information.
The CCBC was the recipient of a generous $5,000 grant in memory of Ned Handy, former Vice President and long-time and very loyal supporter of the CCBC. This grant will allow us to implement some new initiatives in bird conservation and education as described in the following paragraph.
Each Wednesday, at 8:45am and 5:45pm, Mark Faherty gives the “Weekly Bird Report” on WCAI-FM. If you miss it at those times, you can listen to podcasts of past airings on their site, subscribe in iTunes, or search for “Weekly Bird Report” in your favorite podcast app.
As you might recall, it was just one year ago that Lisa Sorenson spoke to the CCBC about the work BirdsCarribean does. Now, in the aftermath of Irma and Maria, she is asking for help. Please read this message from Lisa, and help if you can. Thank you.
Bald eagles have been spotted at Mashpee-Wakeby Pond on the Upper Cape for several years. Are they nesting? The MA Division of Fisheries & Wildlife would like to find out. According to the State, the last known eagle nest on Cape Cod was in 1905 on Snake Pond in Sandwich, so the location and documentation of a nest on the Cape would be quite notable! The State is interested in receiving information about adult eagle sightings and, in particular, possible nest locations in the area. If they are able to locate a nest based on an observer report, they typically try their best to get that person out with them for an eagle banding trip and allow them to hold an eagle chick while it is being banded! Have information? Please contact Jason Zimmer with MADFW: jason.zimmer@state.ma.us.