By Jason Kolnos / Cape Cod Times
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
PROVINCETOWN — There’s a red-headed vagrant with a big mouth and colorful outfit turning heads in town these days. And it’s not an outlandish Commercial Street performer.
A stately sandhill crane has been spotted foraging for a good meal around a soccer field near Route 6 and the airport a few times over the past week or so.
The long-legged crane with a distinctive crimson forehead and white cheeks has area bird enthusiasts flocking to the Cape’s tip for a gander at the species not seen too often around these parts.
"It is a strikingly good-looking bird," said Joseph F. Cavanaugh III, a Mashpee attorney and bird enthusiast who photographed the crane Sunday morning.
Online bird-sighting message boards have been buzzing with posts about the crane, with some folks even organizing carpool excursions to go see it.
"They are real crowd-pleasers," said local bird expert E. Vernon Laux, a naturalist for the Linda Loring Nature Foundation on Nantucket and a Times columnist.
Adult sandhill cranes are big birds — standing about three feet tall and having a wing span of around six feet. Large, grey and rusty-orange colored feathers are hallmarks of their plumage.
The sandhill crane’s prolonged appearance in Provincetown is rare for the Outer Cape, but sightings of the species in the region have increased over the past five years, Laux said.
There have been reports of a few sandhill cranes spending the winter in places such as Cummaquid and Wareham.
To read the rest of this story, go to www.capecodonline.com
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view/20100929cape_air_founder_reduces_role/
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