Hummingbirds are one of the joys of wintertime birding here in Louisiana. My friend Erik Johnson and I recently visited the home of Dr. Jeff Harris — a birder and research entomologist — who has up to six different species visiting his feeders each day this season. One of the highlights the morning of our [...]

Sometimes hawks, in particular, Red-shouldered Hawks will go all Turdus migratorious, hop on the ground and nosh some slimy earth worms.  There’s even video proof of a Red-shouldered Hawk eating earthworms on Flickr and there’s been discussion about this on MD bird listserv. This discussion about red-shoulders comes up from time to time and it [...]

Become a birder and you’re suddenly a litterateur, too.  It’s not much of a selling point, I suppose, but how else to explain the fact that birders, simply by association with the width and breadth of avifauna across the wide world, are also students of the english language.  We learn by osmosis such SAT study [...]

During my time in Florida I only saw two birds on nests, which is not terribly surprising considering that I was there at the end of January.  Most birds, after all, wait until spring. But when you see the two birds on nests that I spotted you will understand why I thought that two was [...]

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 Great 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 [...]

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 [...]

WONDERFUL WEAVERS There are many different Weavers in the world and as far as I can tell they share the skill of masterful nest building… unlike the shabby unstable creations of, say, Mourning Doves. By the way, I’ve tried to ID everyone appropriately but if you have any corrections please say so in the comments. [...]

We New Yorkers get excited about single American Avocets showing up in our state and when more than one avocet is around we can’t help but go take a look. Theoretically, we understand that sometimes Recurvirostra americana shows up in larger groups than that but we have a hard time visualizing such an occurrence. Having [...]

While Blue Jays, Northern Cardinals, and American Goldfinches will all show up at bird feeders here in the northeast and share their brilliant blue, red, and yellow visages, we have no bird at our feeders to compare to the Painted Bunting. While I have mentioned their technicolor dreamcoats before it never hurts to mention again that [...]

The Red-breasted Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus ruber) and the Red-naped Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus nuchalis) were considered different forms of the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) until 1983 when they were split into separate species. They are called sapsuckers because they create sap wells in the bark of woody plants and feed on that sap. The bird shown above arrived [...]

More than a few groups of birds around the world have been given names with wren in it, almost as if the sight of a very small and active bird automatically associates with the small Winter Wren of England where most of the namers originated. There are antwrens of South America, wren-babblers of South East [...]

I was just browsing through my iPhoto library and I realised that I have almost no photos of the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor). In fact, I have way more photos of Whooping Swans (Cygnus cygnus) – a species I almost never see – than of Mute Swans. Now, I suppose this is almost forgiveable, or [...]

Limpkins are Apple Snail specialists.  That is, they eat snails of the genus Pomacea to the exclusion of all else, provided the snails are available. And while finding snails is not difficult for a long legged bird that is not afraid to wade into alligator-infested marshes it is difficult to extract the yummy snail meat [...]

By the time you read this blog post I will hopefully have checked my first lifer of the day off and be on to my second. Forgive the brevity of this post but, like with the last one, I really have neither the time nor the energy to do more at the moment. Space Coast [...]

I am having a wonderful time at the 15th Annual Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival. Instead of going into the gory details at this moment, when I have been on the move constantly for three days straight and seeing lots of birds and birders and getting very little sleep, I figured I would just [...]

Some photographers seem a bit too anxious to get the perfect lighting for all their photos and go to great extents bothering the birds with extra light and flash for one perfect picture.  I have always tried to take my pictures without flash to prevent scaring the bird and also to get the most natural [...]

One of the sweetest subsections of the duck family has to be the sawbills, formally known as mergansers. Mergansers are a family of diving waterfowl in Merginae, the seaduck subfamily of Anatidae. Ironically, only one of these seaducks is truly a seafarer, the others favoring rivers and lakes. The name ‘merganser’ is said to have [...]

It has been over two months since the Greater White-fronted Goose was found at Van Cortlandt Park in New York City’s northernmost borough, the Bronx. Andrew Baksh, Birding Dude, has been keeping close tabs on it during his weekly Van Cortlandt Park bird walks since, and I figured it was time that I made a [...]

Almost every birder who has birded within in the range of Megaceryle alcyon, better known as the Belted Kingfisher, knows the drill. The first moment you are aware of a nearby kingfisher is when you hear its rattling call as it takes off away from you. If you try to get closer looks it just [...]