Enjoying Our Seasonal Friends

Cape Cod children are lucky. There’s growing up on the beach, of course, learning to swim and sail, having cookouts, bonfires, and clambakes, and maybe sleeping under the stars. There’s also another element of summer here for children, summer friends.

Whether children go to swim lessons, day camp, theater classes or gather for impromptu bike riding and ball games, it is almost guaranteed that they will meet new friends who are visiting here, many who return every year. Summer friends are different from year-round friends, somewhat exotic because of their temporary nature.

For me, waiting for my summer friends to arrive was one of the best times of the year. These days it’s not just my human friends I wait to greet or say goodbye to, but my seasonal nature friends as well.

Every spring we wait for the first red-winged blackbirds, the first ospreys, orioles, and hummingbirds. We celebrate each arrival, but as summer settles in the newness wears off and we become observers of family life in the communities of our feathered, furry, and other animal friends. New arrivals show up each month, giving us a chance to welcome them with enthusiasm and gratitude. There are butterflies, dragonflies, new fawns and fox kits as well as dozens of baby birds and rabbits all around.

Our flower friends are busy as well, and they tell us the seasons better than any paper calendar. We can tell the month by the blooms, berries, seeds, and nuts that appear, well, like clockwork each year. If we pay attention we know when to expect each of them.

Right now, there is seasonal change going on all around us. A recent walk on the beach on a cloudy day was quiet with only a few people looking for seashells. The piping plovers and terns had gone, but there were new visitors running along the shore. First, I saw a group of semi-palmated sandpipers, then a larger group of semi-palmated plovers. Semi-palmated refers to the way their feet are partially webbed, by the way. Semi-palmated plovers are so common here in late summer that they can confuse people. They look a lot like their far less common cousins, the piping plovers, but they are much darker.

I saw several ruddy turnstones, always some of my favorite late summer friends. These attractive sandpipers are stocky and beautifully plumaged, at least for another week or so. These northern shorebirds arrive in breeding plumage but quickly molt into their less conspicuous non-breeding plumage for their migration. They will remain in this much duller plumage all winter down south, only returning to breeding plumage as they prepare to pass through here again in the spring. If you’re lucky you may see a turnstone earning its name, turning over stones and shells as it looks for food.

Least sandpipers are also passing through and can be difficult to distinguish from the similarly sized semi-palmated sandpipers. As a rule of thumb, the easiest way to tell them apart may be to notice their leg colors. Least have yellowish or greenish legs while the others have black legs. There are other subtle differences as well, but the legs may be your best clues.

Shorebird migration begins in July, but August is a great time to get out to see these seasonal visitors. In some areas you may see thousands of them, especially if you go looking during an incoming tide. You will see hundreds of terns as well as many kinds of sandpipers.

The larger black-bellied plovers are always fun to see. Most won’t be in breeding plumage, but their larger size and chunky build give them away.

Whimbrels can be seen now in some area marshes. They are especially fond of fiddler crabs, and Bell’s Neck is always a good place to look for them. Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary is another area, but I’ve seen them in West Dennis, Hyannis, Osterville and Falmouth as well as other spots. These shorebirds are a bit larger than willets but have a tell-tale upswing on their beak.

If you’re not familiar with shorebirds, it’s a great time to join a bird walk or at least study some bird guides before going out. This is not a time to depend on apps like Merlin, though in some cases they may be helpful. With all the plumage variations, a book may serve you better.

Watching for late summer migrants may turn up some surprises as well. Over the years many birds uncommon to our area have shown up, and some species seem to show up every year but in very small numbers, such as the black tern.

As I walked along the beach a family of horned larks was feeding and chatting in the beach grass nearby. A few gulls watched me as they ate their snacks of shellfish and crabs. A small flock of tree swallows flew into the dunes and a threesome of fish crows made their nasal calls as they walked around in the wrack line.

There are seasonal friends aplenty, and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the ones that show up in nature each year almost as much as the human ones.

There’s a regularity, a predictability of seasonal changes that is both reassuring and comforting. When I see the turnstones and plovers, I know that summer is fading but not yet gone. When I hear the adolescent fish crows, I know that they survived their nesting and fledging. When I watch the young ospreys take off and fly awkwardly around the nest and then land even more awkwardly, I am reminded that all is as it should be.

Some days it feels as if we can’t really rely on anything, but our seasonal friends are here to say that some things are still as they should be.