The Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary

When temperatures begin to dip here in the northeast, we’re not the only creatures that journey south seeking to winter in warmer pastures such as Florida. Look below from your plane or above from the road, or if you're staying put just look up, and you’re likely to see multiple species of birds migrating along their own highway, the Atlantic Flyway, many of them along the shore.

This past week, a potentially bummer cold day on the cape was transformed into a voyeuristic wonder when I headed to Lieutenant Island to watch terns and gulls feast on fish caught in tidal pools. Thanks to the Massachusetts Audubon Society the area is part of a network of protected habitats that comprise the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. Here, salt marsh, pine woodland, freshwater pond, rare heathland, and rapidly disappearing sandy beach, attracts a wide array of wildlife, especially songbirds and shorebirds. Luckily I had a flip cam to document the experience as well as the expertise of Mark Faherty, the Science Coordinator of the sanctuary, to narrate the particulars of what I had captured.

Watch the feeding frenzy ensue as birds use the Wellfleet Bay as a place “to fatten up before they go south for the winter to South America,” as Faherty explains.