If there’s one thing you can count on each December, it’s counting. It’s when we hold the counts during which we count all the birds we can count. I’m talking about last weekend’s annual Cape Cod Waterfowl count as well as the various Christmas Bird Counts that begin this weekend. At last count, there were at least nine such counts in the CAI listening area, ten if you count the boat-based Stellwagen Bank count. So you know there’s a count near you.

On Monday, some lucky homeowners in Wellfleet got to see a chickadee. They saw it well, photographed it, and got the word out to some other birders. Soon, a handful of the Cape’s most active birders had seen the chickadee. Phones were ringing. “Have you heard about the chickadee?”, the person on the other end would say. “There’s a chickadee in Wellfleet.” I am, of course, trolling you a little bit here. For this was not your usual chickadee. This was the rare and mysterious Boreal Chickadee, a species not seen on Cape since 1994, and one never seen on either of the islands.

On Thanksgiving morning, there was just one large, meaty bird on the minds of Cape Cod birders. I am of course referring to the rare Pink-footed Goose discovered that morning in Wellfleet. With just two prior records for the Cape and Islands, this was a bird to see. So it was that I loaded my son and all his toddlery accoutrements into the family car and headed to Wellfleet on Thanksgiving morning, leaving my poor wife behind with the baby, the parade on TV, and several side-dishes still to make.

You might have missed it, but the floodgates recently opened. The conditions must have set up just right, with east winds over the weekend, followed by very strong northwest winds through Tuesday morning. This brought big numbers of everyone’s favorite little winter seabird ever so briefly within reach of our binoculars. Thousands of Dovekies passed classic seabirding spots over the last few days, including over 1000 at Race Point and more than 4000 at First Encounter Beach in Eastham. Most birders are excited to see just one Dovekie, so this was hitting the jackpot.

2020 has been a year to forget in so many ways. But many of us have been given a glimmer of hope in recent weeks, a beacon of light in a dark year. Many voices were heard, and their message was resounding and clear. “We are the winter finches”, they said “and we are here in big numbers."

The Ancient one has returned; the prophecy has been fulfilled. Ok, maybe there wasn’t a prophecy, but the Ancient one has indeed returned. For the first time in over 20 years, a mysterious bird known as the Ancient Murrelet has appeared in Massachusetts. And this odd, singing sea bird from the North Pacific may have an interesting story to tell—one that involves climate change and international shipping route wars.

I almost always keep these reports to birds on the Cape and Islands. But in this otherwise slow news week, a certain bird from a neighboring state is just way too good to ignore. One of the world’s most interesting birds has landed at a place called Snake Den Farm in Johnston Rhode Island – it’s the not-so-common-around-here Common Cuckoo, just the third ever seen in the lower 48 states. This may seem far afield for the Cape and Islands Bird report, but note that from Falmouth, this farm is closer than Provincetown. And most Cape birders I know have already been to see this cuckoo, while the rest are on their way.

Though the weather is finally cooling down, the birding continues to heat up. The past few days have brought some nice additions to the winter finch irruption, new rarities, and new expected winter arrivals. At feeders and in the field, birds that weren’t here yesterday are still turning up all the time.

At this birdiest time of year, the savvy birdwatcher knows the most efficient places to maximize their birding time. Places where you are just as likely to find an interesting warbler or sparrow, a rare shorebird, or an offshore seabird. A darting falcon or a furtive rail. These are places of sand, surf, and salt marsh, but also potentially productive patches of trees, fruit-laden thickets, and pocket marshes with fresh water. In fall, the savvy birders head to the big barrier beaches.

It was a birdy week at the Faherty household. Which is good, because I rarely leave the household. But the birding is so good this time of year, sometimes you don’t have to. A slightly tardy Scarlet Tanager visited my birdbath several times over two days, as did several Blackpoll Warblers and a Yellow-rumped Warbler. A Peregrine Falcon streaking by with prey last week became yard species number 140, while a sneaky Cooper’s Hawk stalked my birds more than once. But one flock of small, streaky