Day 1: Arrival in Boston; transfer to Gloucester

This is allocated as a travel day, the goal to rendezvous at Boston’s Logan International Airport at around 3pm (exact time to be confirmed with the Tropical Birding Tour office). Once everyone is present, we’ll head an hour north to Gloucester (“Glosstah”, to locals) on Cape Ann. If there’s sufficient daylight, we’ll check the harbor for waterfowl, gulls, and alcids. We’ll have an introductory dinner and hit the hay early to be ready for our first full day tomorrow. 

 

*NOTE: If you have a window seat on your flight into Boston, look for Snowy Owls as you land. Logan Airport is a traditional winter haunt!

 

Day 2: Gloucester, Rockport, Plum Island, Newburyport, and Salisbury

We’ll begin our birding in downtown Gloucester, a historic fishing town featured in the blockbuster movie The Perfect Storm (based on Sebastian Junger’s Book). The busy commercial harbor hosts loads of gulls and waterfowl, and we should find Common Eider, Red-breasted Merganser, and both Glaucous and Iceland Gulls. Razorbill is usually around, and we’ll keep our fingers crossed for Dovekie and Thick-billed Murre too. Peregrine Falcons are resident on the town hall, so we might find them as well. 

 

After departing the harbor, we’ll hit a number of other Gloucester spots (Niles Pond, Eastern Point, the Elks Club) en route to Andrew’s Point in Rockport, Purple Sandpipers and Harlequin Ducks the main targets from that rocky promontory. Scans of the ocean might produce Great Cormorant, scoters, and additional alcids.

 

From Rockport, it’ll be north to Newburyport, Plum Island, and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge. Exploring the 6-mile wildlife drive, we’ll hope for Snowy Owl, Northern Harrier, Red-tailed Hawk, and Northern Shrike. The winter dunes are also really beautiful! Next we’ll cross the Merrimack River and bird Salisbury State Park for more gulls and waterfowl. Common Goldeneye is usually around, and we’ll hope for the much rarer Barrow’s among them. If it’s a good finch year, the park’s central pine grove can host Red Crossbill, White-winged Crossbill, Pine Siskin, and Common Redpoll.

 

If Snowy Owl has been reported on the New Hampshire Coast to the north, we’ll sprint up there after Salisbury, if needed. We’ll end the day scanning the marshes for Short-eared Owl before returning to Gloucester for dinner and a second night.

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Day 3: Plymouth, Cape Cod Canal, Barnstable, and Harwich to Provincetown via Orleans
Today will be a busy day with a lot of en route birding! We’ll probably take an additional scan of the Gloucester Harbor before departing, and we might stop in Lynn or Nahant if something like Mew Gull or Little Gull is around. After that we’ll blow through Boston and head towards Duxbury and Plymouth where we’ll check the harbors and beaches for shorebirds, waterfowl, gulls, and Snowy Owl. We can even make a history stop at Plymouth Rock where the Mayflower landed in 1620! An Ivory Gull spent 10 days on the town wharf in 2009, so anything is possible!

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After Plymouth, we’ll head south towards the Cape Cod Canal where we’ll swing through Scussett Beach and check for Lapland Longspur and Snow Bunting. The adjacent canal hosts waterfowl and has been a traditional location for wintering King Eider during the last decade.

Continuing onto Cape Cod, stops at Barnstable Harbor, Long Pasture (Barnstable), Bell’s Neck (Harwich), and Town Cove (Orleans), might yield American Black Duck, both Scaup, Ring-necked Duck, Common Merganser, Blue Jay, Northern Cardinal, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, and Red-bellied Woodpecker. Birding here and there, we’ll slowly wind our way towards Provincetown for the night.

 

Day 4: Provincetown, Wellfleet, and Eastham

We will have done a lot of travelling the first three days, so Day 4 will be mellower, the featured event an extended morning seawatch from Race Point, right at the northern end of Cape Cod. The beach is one of the premier seawatching destinations in North America, and it’s easy to forget about the rest of the world in such an isolated and beautiful place!

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Waterfowl should include Common Eider, all three scoters, Long-tailed Duck, Bufflehead, Common Goldeneye, and Red-breasted Merganser. Horned and Red-necked Grebes are likely to be bobbing around, and we’ll likely tick Dunlin, Sanderling, and Black-bellied Plover running along the beach. Alcids should star, and we have decent chances at Razorbill, Common and Thick-billed Murres, Black Guillemot, and Dovekie. Among more common gulls — Herring, Iceland, Glaucous, and Great Black-backed — the highly-pelagic Black-legged Kittiwake would be the most prized. Gannets should grace the skies, and we’ll check the dunes for Horned Lark and Snow Bunting. This will be winter birding at its finest — just us, our scopes, and the open ocean!

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We’ll use the afternoon to bounce around a number of other hotspots spread between Provincetown, Wellfleet, and Eastham. If we’ve ticked most of the critical waterbirds, we’ll pad the trip list — and your Massachusetts state list! — with some terrestrial birding in local woodlands. While this isn’t a dedicated photo tour, the Provincetown wharf can offer some great opportunities. We’ll cover much less ground today than the previous two (and the last), so we’ll have plenty of time to go slow in this wonderful place.

 

Day 5: Return to Boston for DEPARTURES

This last day will be used to mop up whatever species we might have missed to this point. We’ll probably have another check of Race Point before we start towards Boston, and we’ll hit whatever Cape Cod hot spots we missed on Day 2. If Barnacle Goose, Pink-footed Goose, Black-headed Gull, or other really notable rarity surfaces in or around Boston, we’ll race back to look for them ahead of our departures. We’ll aim to be a Logan International at 1pm, so participants should book flights leaving after 3pm.