On 26 January 2012, my first full day in Florida for the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, I had a mission for the evening. My mission was simple in theory – to see, or at least hear, a Black Rail.  But, in practice, the mission became much more difficult. Black Rails are among the most [...]

Yee-haw! The New York Football Giants have won the Super Bowl for the second time in 4 years. Not too shabby! Not only does my football team end up on top, but now I get my Sundays back! This weekend, however, I didn’t see any special birds, unless you count the bird M.I.A. flipped during [...]

It took several days in Florida for the idea that I was pretty much surrounded by giant reptiles that could kill me to sink in to my brain. And, no, I am not referring to the Republican presidential candidates who were stumping through the state trying to gin up votes in the primary election which [...]

Okay, I meant to write an entertaining post. I honestly did. But I have been sick with different kinds and forms of cold since the beginning of December with no interruption, and so has my entire family. And I am sick of winter, too: first there was no winter at all, with scarcely a night below [...]

This week we were very lucky to have the third record of a Greater Frigatebird for Broome. We had seen one of the other two recorded birds during a cyclonic event a few years ago. This was a very odd record, as we didn’t get the strong winds associated with Cyclone Iggy, as it was [...]

Amazingly, it was a visiting birder from New York who discovered Neotropic Cormorants breeding in the Wakodahatchee Wetlands.  Congratulations to Ardith Bondi for the great find!

Richard Fried spent 2011 doing a New York State Big Year and managed to top the record of 350 species which was only set in 2008 by Scott Whittle. Richard totaled 352 species, an impressive number, by seeing almost all of the regularly occurring New York birds and the vast majority of the rarities that [...]

Out into the Atlantic Ocean, 400 miles from the coast of Senegal, lies an archipelago of islands known as Cape Verde. On the most popular tourist island of Sal, I was lucky to encounter the Hoopoe Lark, a bird of desert and dune. The Hoopoe Lark has only just recently been found to be breeding [...]

A team of researchers has found that the populations of common birds around the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan has plummeted. Most disturbingly, the populations of species that the area has in common with Chernobyl has fallen more in Fukushima than they did in the site of worst nuclear disaster in world history.

Sherrida Woodley’s Quick Fall of Light is based on an intriguing premise – what if the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon was somehow linked to the 1918 influenza epidemic? What if, in turn, the discovery that the species was not truly extinct held the key to saving humanity from another, even more devestating flu outbreak? [...]

Back when I was trying to figure out what I should do during my time at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival I was advised by Doug Gochfeld to check out “the Gull spectacle on the beach at Daytona Beach Shores.” Intrigued, I looked into it, and learned that enormous amounts of gulls feed [...]

A lawmaker in Wisconsin is proposing a Sandhill Crane hunt. When will the madness end?