On a recent walk around Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge I took the following picture. Why is it interesting? Give up? What if I give you a clue? Do you see it now? And do you know what it is? Here, let me zoom in for you… It’s a Gray Tree Frog, Hyla versicolor, a common [...]

Seth Ausubel is one of the best birders in Queens and when he is not out birding he is often in pursuit of herpetological delights or cool insects. He has contributed a great guest post to 10,000 Birds before and regularly tolerates Corey on birding outings. Here he describes an outing in search of a [...]

I had an idea to write a post about the American Robin this week and checked the archives at 10,000 Birds to see how repetitious that might prove to be. There are plenty of articles, here for example, or here, but the one that caught my attention was from Sharon who passed on an observation from [...]

Peasant: She turned me into a newt! Sir Bedevere: A newt? … … … … Peasant: I got better. The entire scene from which that bit of dialogue comes, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is one of my favorite scenes ever from a movie.  The absurdity of mob rule is summed up well, [...]

Now this is a news broadcast worth tuning into, as CBS covers the “Second Fastest Growing Hobby.”  Hat tip to WildBird on the Fly.

I spent a great day yesterday (Saturday, 29 May) visiting a variety of parks in Orange County and Rockland County in downstate New York with a fellow Queens birder, Seth, and a Rockland County birder, Gene.  Though, really, to call either of them “birder” doesn’t give a complete picture of what they are about considering [...]

Puerto Rico is home to a huge range of important and threatened animals and plants, and we’re very grateful to Alberto López-Torres  for this excellent post on the (mostly) endemic Eleutherodactylus genus of frogs – known to every Puerto Rican as ‘coqui’.   ‘Falling Silent? The Eleutherodactylus frogs of Puerto Rico’ Alberto López-Torres Although this [...]

Recent visits to Jamaica Bay, in addition to providing a wealth of bird sightings, have allowed me to see some Gray Tree Frogs (Hyla versicolor) up close and personal.  They are particularly likely to be found hiding in cracks and crevices in the bird blind at Big John’s Pond, a fact I read quite some [...]

Upon our arrival at Kieshofer Moor, where we hoped to find Middle Spotted and Black Woodpeckers, Jochen had to head home, leaving Hendrik and I on our own, but not before Jochen went over the map with us to show us the best spots to look. It was a great pleasure to meet Jochen in [...]

It’s not easy being green…or so sang Kermit the Frog. It is easy though, to identify the frogs that you encounter while you’re out looking for birds that you can’t find. And while this blog is a birding blog, blogging about just birds in July is impossible because the birds are busy avoiding the blazing [...]

For Part 1 of this two-part poem, click here.  Enjoy! At one-forty AM the alarm clock buzzed me awake. That’s horribly early for one to forsake Their comfortable bed. But arise I did, Rubbing the sleep from each tired eyelid. Out to the hall to awaken those sleeping, A tough night for Mike cuz Hunter [...]

Chipping Sparrow, macro-style On Friday, at my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul’s house in Saugerties, NY, I enjoyed myself watching their feeders and photographing the freeloaders. Their two clear-plastic feeders suction-cupped to their living room window had a steady stream of visitors but only titmice, chickadees and Chipping Sparrows would let me get close enough [...]