A Dovekie flight for the file books

In the event you have a look at a map of the world in your pc display, because of the way in which we mission the curved earth onto a flat airplane, at a sure level the map simply ends. You simply see a straight line north of Greenland, round the place the North Pole needs to be, and above that’s simply nothing – the top of the earth. It’s on this neighborhood, only a bit south of the North Pole, that just a little hen known as the Dovekie nests by the hundreds of thousands in huge cliffside colonies. Comparatively small numbers of those feathered little elves of the North Pole sometimes go to us at unpredictable intervals right here on the Cape and Islands. Once they do, birders all the time rejoice. Final week was a type of instances, and when all of the numbers from all of the birders in any respect the standard vantage factors had been in, they confirmed that this was a Dovekie flight for the file books.

Final Thursday I used to be working at Mass Audubon’s Lengthy Pasture sanctuary as a stiff northwesterly gale blew outdoors. A window to my proper appeared north throughout the massive mouth of Barnstable Harbor to Sandy Neck seaside. Although working at my laptop computer, I had my binoculars subsequent to me, as you may count on, and even a recognizing scope arrange close by simply in case. On one in every of my scans I observed three tiny, black and white birds heading into the harbor on whirring wings – Dovekies! These are the smallest members of the alcids, the group of seabirds that features puffins, and this was an odd place to see them – usually they’re solely out on the bay or open Atlantic. I noticed them just a few extra instances over the course of the morning, which instructed me that different individuals had been in all probability seeing far more elsewhere.

Positive sufficient, Cape seabird guru Blair Nikula was in the best place on the proper time – that morning, he had tallied 19,000 Dovekies passing First Encounter Seaside in simply 90 minutes. Had he been in a position to keep, the entire would have been even increased. Whereas huge, occasional Dovekie flights have been documented in Massachusetts not less than way back to 1871, this ranks as one of many greatest. Others counted a number of thousand every at locations like Company Seaside in Dennis and naturally Race Level in Provincetown over the subsequent couple of mornings.

As a result of these little birds get blown inland and find yourself stranded, these huge flights of Dovekies have one other, extra poetic identify: “Dovekie wrecks”. Whereas they match within the palm of your hand, feeling like a very dense rubber ducky, Dovekies are tough-as nails-birds completely at house on the fringe of Arctic pack ice in winter. There they feed on krill and different zooplankton in addition to small fish. Just a few all the time come additional south, so far as Maryland, however some years, for mysterious causes, we get these huge wrecks the place Dovekies rain from the skies, generally ending up manner out in Berkshire County. One wreck again in 1932 had them bouncing down onto the streets of New York Metropolis like some weird new type of hail.

This wreck final week certainly stranded dozens of those little seabirds in woods, streets, and yards across the Cape. One birder noticed his “life” Dovekie sitting on Essential St in South Dennis. The fortunate ones had been delivered to Wild Care or Cape Wildlife, and several other have already been launched. The Dovekies have moved on for now, however the subsequent storm could convey one other wreck. In the event you ever discover a stranded Dovekie, please simply name the rehabbers and preserve them someplace darkish and quiet till they will get them. With just a little care, that misplaced little elf will probably be again close to the North Pole earlier than you already know it.