Fail Rail
By Corey • February 6, 2012 • 14 commentsOn 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 [...]
Gulls at Daytona Beach
By Corey • February 3, 2012 • 1 commentBack 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 [...]
Showdown In Arroyo Grande: The Search For The Ivory Gull
By Felonious Jive • January 24, 2012 • 6 commentsToday I shall weave a tale of dispair. A tale of jealousy. Of hopelessness. Of anger, fear, aggressioon….the dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your…..ahem. Let me start from the beginning. It was the year 2010. One Seagull Steve was living in San Francisco, on a [...]
House Finches at Van Saun Park
By Corey • January 22, 2012 • 6 commentsIn Bergen County, New Jersey’s northeasternmost county, there are quite a few small county parks that are popular with dog-walkers, joggers, parents looking for somewhere to take their kids, and teenagers looking for places that their parents aren’t. A category of person that I have not yet met in one of Bergen County’s parks is [...]
Centennial Park, Sydney
By Duncan • January 18, 2012 • 2 commentsIt is no secret that the large civic parks found in most large cities are great places to go birding, and it Centennial Park in Sydney is no exception. The park is located to the south east of the central business district, part of a larger complex of playing fields, stadiums and golf courses that the very [...]
No Snow on Long Island
By Corey • January 16, 2012 • 9 commentsSaturday was set aside for birding. Redgannet was in town and had all day to get out looking for birds so I had booked us for the pelagic trip out of Freeport and our plan was to find his life Snowy Owl and then get on the boat and enjoy a host of alcids, gulls, [...]
Raptors at Botrosa Road
By Renato • January 13, 2012 • 2 commentsWhile Birding the Choco Region near Esmeraldas we had an amazing day with many raptors at the Botrosa Road. We had some very nice looks at Black Hawk-Eagle, Semiplumbeous Hawk, Double toothed Kite, Laughing Falcon, and two others not yet positively identified. Black Hawk-Eagle Semiplumbeous Hawk Laughing Falcon Double-toothed Kite
Barnacle Goose, Eastport, Long Island, New York
By Corey • January 12, 2012 • 2 commentsOriginally found on Saturday, 7 January, by Peter Priolo, the Barnacle Goose in these pictures has been present on Eastport Lake in Eastport, New York, since, though it does fly out to feed in nearby fields from time to time. I *ahem* coincidentally happened to be in the area on the day after it was found and [...]
Dickcissel in Manhattan
By Corey • January 4, 2012 • 4 commentsOn my way to work this morning I thought I would take a quick stop at Inwood Hill Park way up on the far northern tip of Manhattan. The park is barely out of my way to my office in New Jersey so I figured I would be remiss in my birding if I didn’t [...]
Birding Eastern Zimbabwe
By James • January 3, 2012 • 10 commentsZimbabwe is last in the alphabetical atlas of countries of the world. And, given the unstable political situation (slightly improved since the unified government of 2009), paucity of fuel, high crime-rate and dire poverty, it is probably last on the list of many traveling birders. But eastern Zimbabwe is an almost mythical place and a [...]
Grace’s Warbler in New York
By Corey • January 1, 2012 • 19 commentsAt 10:45 AM my phone beeped with a text message. The message was only four words long. Within a minute I had let Daisy know that I would be gone for a couple of hours, grabbed my microwaving beef pattie out of the microwave, kissed Desi goodbye, grabbed my gear, and gotten out the door. [...]
The Amazing Birds of Bryant Park
By Corey • December 29, 2011 • 7 commentsThere is no need for me to go into detail about past birding experiences at Bryant Park. Regular readers of 10,000 Birds will recall a host of cooperative wood-warblers, an absurdly obliging woodcock, and many more good birds over the last several years. But even the annals of Bryant Park bird sightings, if such annals [...]
Mountain Bluebird in New York
By Corey • December 28, 2011 • 5 commentsWhat is there to say about a Mountain Bluebird, a bird of the west, of high elevation grasslands, of the Rocky Mountains, in New York State? What is there to say, that is, other than “Wow” as you head out the door to track it down? First found on Monday by Lenore Swenson and Diane [...]
Hiking Black Dome Mountain, or, Epic Dip
By Corey • December 26, 2011 • 5 commentsOn 22 December a birder named David Rankin was hiking in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York when a fellow hiker asked him what the bird that just flew off the trail was. Fortunately David had a camera because it seems unlikely that anyone would have believed his report of a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, a [...]
2011 Queens County Christmas Bird Count
By Corey • December 22, 2011 • 2 commentsOur late autumn has been absurdly warm in the northeastern United States and though winter is only days away it seems no one has notified the weather. That is, no one had notified the weather until this past Sunday, the day of the Queens County Christmas Bird Count. While it wasn’t unreasonably cold it was [...]
Snow Birds
By Corey • December 5, 2011 • 9 commentsIn December in the northeastern United States you expect snow. In New York City so far this year we have only had a dusting from the Halloween storm that wreaked so much havoc elsewhere and since then the weather has been mild. In fact, yesterday when I spent the day birding the coast of Long [...]
Birding the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, Bayonne, New Jersey
By Corey • November 29, 2011 • 2 commentsSometimes my job, which is for a New Jersey-wide labor union, requires me to meet in Bayonne, across the Hudson River, which at that point is indistinguishable from New York Harbor, from Staten Island. To get there from Queens I have to drive through heavy commuter traffic down into Brooklyn, cross the Williamsburg Bridge into [...]
Two Hummingbirds In New York – In November!
By Corey • November 28, 2011 • 7 commentsIt is one thing for a single hummingbird to show up at a single location in the northeastern United States in November. In fact, it wouldn’t even be surprising to have several hummingbirds show up at several different feeders – western hummingbirds that have lost their way are becoming a more and more common occurrence of late. [...]
Painted Bunting, Cove Island Park, Stamford, Connecticut
By Corey • November 26, 2011 • 14 commentsUntil today the only Painted Buntings I had ever seen were in Honduras. And, despite their absurdly gaudy appearance, I am sad to say that those buntings were not given their due because of the sheer volume of insanely good birds that were there for the watching. This bunting was different. This was an absolutely [...]
Noudar Nature Park, Portugal
By Alan • November 13, 2011 • 3 commentsI had the good fortune to be asked to represent one of the UK’s national birding magazines ‘Birdwatching’ on a press trip to Southern Portugal earlier this month. Co-funded by two of the regional tourist boards, Alentejo and Algarve, we were led by one of the very best birders in Portugal João Jara who as [...]








