To Find Rare Birds, Visit Cape Cod in the Fall

If you have been watching your backyard feeder lately, perhaps you have noticed some changes. One caller mentioned that his birds had "disappeared." If this happens to you, remember that birds do move around, even the jays and chickadees we think are with us all the time. It may not be the same individuals you see.

Three weeks ago the white-crowned sparrows were at my feeder. This last week a Lincoln's sparrow visited, but now they are mostly gone, replaced by a crew of juncos and white-throated sparrows, and soon tree sparrows will also arrive from the north. If you want to attract and keep these birds at your feeder, do not wait until the snow flies. Start feeding right now when they are moving through. Later they will have found their wintering grounds somewhere else, and will not move again until early spring.

This movement of birds also is important to the active birder who seeks out species that do not normally come to feeders or yards. On two weekends in October members of the bird club traveled to Cape Cod, where many of these migrating birds end up. At a favored location in the town of Truro we studied hoards of sparrows, all having moved from their northern interior breeding grounds as they do every fall. But we were looking especially for the one or two birds of some species that breed farther west or south, and are off course in their migration, coming east and north instead of going farther south to the tropics with all the others of their kind. We were looking for a species "out of its range," the geographical area where it normally is present.

Our first visit was in early October, when a dozen of us waited patiently for sparrows to pause in their feeding. Eventually they would rise from the ground, where the thick weeds hide them, and perch at the tops, or on low wires or tomato cages, or in nearby bushes. This farmer/gardener was wise enough to let the weeds stand through the fall and winter so the birds could consume the seeds. Only then did he plow the stalks under for mulch and so had fewer new weeds in the spring that he had to eliminate.

After a short while a different bird popped up, a sparrow-like bird, but larger and paler, with a thicker bill and a patch of yellow on its breast. It was a dickcissel, a species closely related to the cardinal, and whose breeding range is in the mid-west. The dickcissel is fairly hardy, being a seed eater, and sometimes one may end up at a feeder all winter.

We were also looking for a blue grosbeak at that place, which we did not find. It is also a member of the cardinal family and is present in the warm months throughout the southern United States. Instead we saw several indigo buntings, which do breed in the northeast, look virtually the same, but are much smaller.

Three weeks later four of us were back for another attempt. Our chances were better, because on the 15th there was a large "fallout" of blue grosbeaks all along the shoreline of New England and Nova Scotia. Instead of one or two at a favored location, up to10 or15 were found with a few hours searching in many places. A storm had probably picked up these birds just as they were migrating along the Carolina coast, brought them north over the ocean on strong winds and landed them here.

This time we spotted our quarry quickly, but it was not a blue male in breeding plumage. Instead it was bird in fall plumage, a yellowish-tan bird with two dull wing bars and a bit of blue showing when the wings were spread. It sat quietly on the weed tops, snatching seeds right from the stems, flipping its tail sideways every once in a while. A rare sight for New England birders.

In fall when birds move around anything can happen, even a hummingbird that summers in Alaska can show up in the Connecticut Valley. An update on that adventure next week.