Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary News

Cape Cod Natual History Conference Held March 8

The 13th annual Cape Cod Natural History Conference was held this past Saturday, March 8 at the Cape Cod Community College. Despite torrential, driving rain and crazy winds both presenters and participants showed up in full force and it seemed like a great day was had by all.

Presenters spoke on such topics as the die-off of cord grass in the salt marshes, distribution and abundance of American oystercatchers and ruddy turnstones, resource management on Camp Edwards, release rates on mass strandings of marine mammals and more.

Presentations were each 20 minutes in length and allowed time for questions from the audience. During the breaks participants were able to catch up with friends, colleagues and associates and were also able to peruse the many wonderful exhibits set up in the lobby while having a cup of coffee and refreshment.

Owen Nichols, shown here, had the presentation with the longest title, "Application of 19th and 21st Century Technologies to Measure Environmental Effects on Squid Distribution in Nantucket Sound at Multiple Spatiotemporal Scales." His talk was much livelier than the title might lead you to believe!

That's Melissa Lowe working hard at her computer. She not only organized and facilitated the conference as she has each year but she and cohort Shawn Carey (shown at left) stayed backstage the whole time making sure everyone's powerpoint presentations were doing what they were supposed to be doing. They did a great job, by the way--the power points were flawless.

It was a great day full of lots of information and networking. The worst part of the day was leaving and having to go back out in the awful weather!

Art and Nature for Families

It may be school vacation and therefore quiet in lots of Cape places this week but here at the sanctuary we've been quite busy with programs for families and kids of all ages. There have been programs on owls and tracking and one that was called Art and Nature that these photos are from. Four families joined us with kids ranging in age from 6 to 11.

We did some practice sketches in the classroom using contour drawing before heading out to the bird feeder area to sketch from life.

It didn't take long for several of the young people to figure out that greedy red squirrels will sit longer in one pose than most of the birds that were flying back and forth from bush to feeder.

Most birds repeat motions and behaviors so if you are trying to sketch them from life it is good to be patient and wait for them to naturally repeat themselves. It's also fun to start more than one sketch on a page so you can work from more than one bird at a time.

Once back in the classroom we got out the watercolors and began to paint, using our drawings to prod our memories for details.

The adults sat at their own table and the kids were happy to spread out in their own space. Most of the adults hadn't painted in years but they seemed to have a pretty good time. The kids took their work pretty seriously. You can see the concentration this young man is giving to his outline of a bird.

Even the youngest participants had fun recreating the colorful birds they saw or imagined.

Art and Nature Classes like this one are offered on Saturday mornings through the month of March. Pre-registration is required but no experience or materials are! Please call 508-349-2615 for more information.

Crossbills, Crossbills Everywhere.....

Please Don’t Step on the Crossbills

With reports from Indian Neck, Marconi, and even right here at the sanctuary feeders, it appears we’re in the middle of a minor invasion of White-winged Crossbills here in Wellfleet, and we’re the only place in Massachusetts that can say that! 

I led a birding trip on Friday that was supposed to be a search for seabirds. While good looks at seabirds were few, a tame flock of quite lovely White-winged Crossbills saved the day. On a tip from a couple of New Jersey birders, I steered the van towards Marconi Beach, where trip participant Jo-Anna Ghadban spotted the crossbills in the pines just before the entrance booth. Jo-Anna was able to get the great photos you can see here. At one point the flock of 5 males and 4 females was hopping around under our van, and the two folks still in the van were able stick their heads out the window and watch them from about three feet away! Like many species of the far north, crossbills can be quite confiding.

Interestingly, the nearest place this species is common this winter is the Canadian Maritimes. These little nomads wander widely across the boreal forests mainly north of the Canadian border. When they find a good crop of spruce cones they will settle down a while and nest, whether it’s February or June – since they feed their young seeds they can nest any month of the year. It’s thought that an individual bird may nest in Alaska one year and Newfoundland the next! While their oddly crossed bills are specially adapted for extracting spruce and tamarack seeds from the cones, in years of poor spruce cone crops, like this one, they can be found south of their normal range feeding on pine cones, buds, and berries. They are often seen on roadsides taking salt and grit (sand and small rocks), which helps them digest the tough conifer seeds.

 

The first and only known breeding record of White-winged Crossbill for Massachusetts was in the Berkshire foothills town of Windsor in February of 2001. Though they are unlikely to nest on the Cape since we have no real spruce forests, we should keep an eye out for them in pitch pines and at feeders while we have them – it may be years before we see any of these unpredictable wanderers again.

Post submitted by Mark Faherty

Mola Mola

  Adam Glahn sent over this photo of the Mola mola or ocean sunfish found last week at Linnell Landing.

Mola molas are mostly tropical but often travel north on the Gulf Stream, following their favorite food, jelly fish. They are related to pufferfish, file fish and porcupinefish and the female is believed to produce more eggs than any other vertebrate.

Their natural predators are sharks in this area, sea lions and orcas in other areas. They are also often caught accidentally in gill nets.

Mola molas are not caught for food in our area though they are considered a delicacy in areas like Japan and Taiwan.

  (Information gathered from various staff naturalists, fish books and internet sources.)