You are browsing the archives of 2007 March.

Happy Belated Swallows Day! On March 24, San Juan Capistrano celebrated the annual Fiesta de las Golondrinas or Festival of the Swallows. Timed to occur on or around March 19, the observance of St. Joseph’s Day, the festival honors a momentous seasonal event, a harbinger of spring in full bloom. St. Joseph’s Day is the [...]

Upon arriving home this evening, despondent about having left my camera behind when watching birds and it not being there when I returned, I posted to a birding listserv about the loss. Within an hour an email that the camera was picked up by a birder and I’m getting it back. Enormous sigh of relief… [...]

It was Friday night so what did I do? I went birding. Wait, on a Friday night? Yeah, say what you will, but I was out looking for my first Timberdoodles of the year. The cute, chunky, cryptically-colored, snipe-like, short-legged, long-billed, crepuscular, dancing and displaying bird had already been reported in the area and I [...]

Ah, grace… Amazing, isn’t it, and sweet sounding too! Grace, defined as elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action, is a quality found in no short supply among the feathered flyers of this world. By these, I mean birds, of course, not angels. But it’s natural that some might think of heaven when [...]

I’ve made it to Texas. Yee-haw! The first thing I noticed as I touched down at DFW was how pretty the grounds are, at least for an international airport. Striking emerald swathes of short grass separating runways are actually broad enough to harbor birds, which explains why, in addition to expected species like Great-tailed Grackle [...]

After reading Mike’s post on Long-eared Owls at Croton Point Park a couple of weeks ago I was eager to get there for a shot at seeing the owls that have repeatedly eluded me. These owls were supposed to be steady, having roosted in the same stand of pines in autumn and winter for at [...]

Have we got a new North American bird species here? As Greg says, “How cool is that?”

An interesting discussion regarding blogging, compensation, and success is roiling around the blogosphere, or at least those portions of this vast, virtual landscape where strivers and scriveners contemplate the metagame. Call it introspection, solipsism, or simple curiosity, but blogging always has and always will be one of the most blogged-about topics, at least in the [...]

After our trip to Queens to bring Daisy back to school was put off by a day we decided that the best move would be to drive straight to Steph and Sean’s place (Daisy’s sister and sister’s boyfriend) in northeastern New Jersey. They, despite not being bird-nerds, had suggested a birdwatching trip on a rare [...]

This weekend was a bittersweet one for me. March 17 holds a special significance for the Core Team. While the rest of the world, or at least the portions looking for a good reason to drink and ingest food best eaten drunk, celebrates St. Patrick’s Day on this auspicious date, we honor Masemas, the birthday [...]