Corey is a lifelong upstate New Yorker who recently took the plunge and moved to the city. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list and broke the magical 300 barrier in New York State in 2007 by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative. He lives near Forest Park in Queens with Daisy and their two indoor cats, Hunter and B.B.

and bluebirds.  The birds I can see around New York City are great but it’s a real bummer that those birds are virtually not findable in New York City.  And Pileated Woodpeckers?  The closest I’ll ever come to a Lord God Bird aren’t available to the avid birder in New York City either.  Where am [...]

Finding a rare bird is fun.  Chasing a rare bird is fun.  Twitching a rare bird is fun.  Reporting a rare bird?  Not so fun, which is why I have been so very negligent in filling out the form to report the Yellow-headed Blackbird that I saw last summer at Jones Beach to the to [...]

Just in case you’ve forgotten, we at 10,000 Birds are entering the Montezuma Muckrace this coming weekend.  Our team, the Butcher Birders, hope to raise scads of money for conservation.  Want to help?  Contact us with your pledge (flat amounts or on a per bird basis).

When I posted a short blurb a couple of days ago about my plans to scour the south shore of Long Island in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna I had anticipated maybe finding a good tern or perhaps a shearwater near the shore.  But after an hour or so of searching Jones Beach frustration [...]

We here at 10,000 Birds tend not to wear our politics on our sleeves, preferring to focus on birds, bugs, nature and conservation.  But the current election for President of the United States is critical: after eight years of the Bush Administration gutting environmental regulations and being almost completely inactive on global warming (when not [...]

Do you want to win some Swarovski optics?  Of course you do!  Just enter Swarovski Optik’s Digiscoper of the Year competition by September 30 for your chance to win.

Though I feel for those who might be effected by the wind or rain of Tropical Storm Hanna, I can’t help but notice that the storm has a track that brings her up the east coast (past New York on Saturday night), possibly pushing southern seabirds north.  I know where I’ll be Sunday morning!

That’s right, for the first time ever 10,000 Birds will field a team in a birding competition!  The annual Montezuma Muckrace, scheduled for the end of next week, will be our inaugural event.  We can’t wait!  Our squad, composed of four guys hoping not to make fools of ourselves of the finest birders in New York [...]

No, it’s not an adult movie for birds, it’s a wonderful montage of birds (including hummingbirds) bathing, set to music, at El Polin Spring, near San Francisco.  Prasad, of Birds of Bayarea, made the gorgeous video (it’s at the end of this post). Enjoy!

This quiz might have been too hard.  My father even mentioned that he agreed with Jack, the first guesser in this near-impossible-to-answer quiz when Jack typed “The challenge here is not to ID the first bird, but to find it!”  So those who guessed incorrectly should feel good despite their wrongness that they managed to [...]

August in the Northern Hemisphere, as the days shorten and the first chilly nights occur, is a transitional month.  The beginning of August is still summer with shorebirds being the only birds on the move and any birding expedition is slowed by heat and biting bugs.  At the end of the month kids enjoy the last [...]

I’m going to pretend for a bit that the identification of drably-plumaged, migrating fall warblers moving through treetops, hiding behind leaves, and using the sun against the birder isn’t hard enough.  You know, because finding and identifying warblers with sometimes-cryptic field marks while trying to avoid the pain of warbler neck is simply too easy.  [...]

I just watched Opposable Chums: Guts and Glory at the World Series of Birding and it was a heck of a documentary.  Some of birding’s brightest stars provide commentary and the filmmaker, Jason Kessler, manages to capture the essence, not just of the World Series of Birding, but of birding more generally, in his 65-minute [...]

I haven’t had any major birding expeditions over the last week and a half but I have had several small ones.  Now that fall migration has picked up a bit I am hitting Forest Park often again, savoring every last warbler, vireo, and flycatcher that I can spot, knowing that each time I see a [...]

Daisy recently decided to get a tattoo.  And not just any tattoo, but a tattoo of a magpie, drawn by her, and turned into a tattoo by Daisy’s sister’s boyfriend, Sean, who has done a tattoo featured here before.  So, once again I photographed the tattoo process so all you loyal 10,000 Birds readers can [...]

After my visit to Jones Beach this past Saturday I decided to work my way away back to Queens by hopping from park to park.  Cow Meadow Park, a Nassau County park, is just north and west of Jones Beach, and is well-known as a good spot to see some shorebirds.  This time of year, [...]

Sunday was a day with Daisy’s family, and what better way to spend it than with bawdy lasses, courageous jousters, hilarious jesters, and strong mead?  No better way, of course, which is why we headed to Sterling Forest in Tuxedo, New York, to the New York State Renaissance Fair.  For those who don’t know, Renaissance [...]

When I found out Daisy’s younger sister Steph was staying overnight at our house on Saturday after taking their father to the airport I was happy.  Not just to see Steph, though she is fun to hang out with, but because I figured that she tends to sleep late, which meant that I might have [...]

On the 21st of January of this year I began keeping track of all of my bird sightings on eBird, the online checklist program that was launched in 2002 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society.  Why did I decide to use eBird?  Well, since you’ve asked, there are several reasons.  [...]

Nils Olav, a King Penguin in the Edinburgh Zoo, has been knighted by a British Major General on behalf of Norway’s King Harald V.  Sir Nils, actually the third of a series of penguins of the same name, had previously achieved the rank of colonel-in-chief in the King’s Guard, for whom he serves as a [...]