Suddenly a big bird rocketed into view – a Peregrine Falcon, death missile of the tidal flats, no doubt hunting the shorebirds.

With just a few days left in 2024, the undisputed bird of the year for Cape Cod was found in Chatham.

Amidst the silent majesty of this cold Christmas morn, I can only assume you are all gathered around the radio, in the warm embrace of kith and kin, waiting to hear the latest results of the local bird counts.

This is one of those cases where a bird in the hand was going to be worth at least two in the bush. We needed a licensed hummingbird bander to catch and examine it.

On Nantucket this week, the birders are all having flashbacks to October of 2012, when Hurricane Sandy famously devastated parts of the East Coast.

It’s Thanksgiving Eve, so I suppose you expect me to dish out the usual stale, leftover poultry puns sandwiched between the same old turkey fun facts. Well, you’re right. So let’s not mince words and get right into to the meat of the topic.

Cory’s are the biggest of our four shearwaters, a group of wind-surfing seabirds who navigate the trackless oceans by smell, riding the wind deflected upwards off waves to effortlessly cover hundreds of miles in search of fish and squid.

Let’s face it, we all woke up this morning with the same question: what’s going on with seabirds right now? I’m glad you asked, because the answer is “a whole helluva lot.”