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When I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning the air was clear and cold and moving fast (by which I mean it was windy).  It had been weeks since I made a proper tour of Forest Park so I was out and about and looking for birds as quickly as I could get [...]

On this blustery day I spent my morning walking across Queens.  Well, not all the way across Queens, but across a goodly portion of it, and it was definitely worth the slightly sore back, cold body, and soaking feet.  I was out of the house at about twenty after seven and caught the Q46 bus [...]

This past Monday, Will and his wife Danika were going to drive down from Albany and pick me up at 7 AM for a birding expedition to Long Island’s barrier beaches, hoping to find a variety of migrants.  Their car’s tire had other ideas, however, so I was awake at 6:15 in the morning, jonesin’ [...]

I thought waking up in the dark on a Sunday morning and getting on the subway at 6 AM to join Charlie for some birding was a heck of a task, that is, until I found out that Charlie had just flown in from London yesterday, which he had arrived at from Chicago the day [...]

It was while watching flocks of shorebirds on Friday on Cape Cod (an adventure I will soon describe) that I first heard of a Red-necked Stint being found at Jamaica Bay.  I got back-to-back calls that I let go to voicemail from Jory and Will, my upstate birding buddies, and when I checked my voicemail [...]

Way back when I started my Anti-Global Warming Big Year I decided that if I flew somewhere and stayed there for more than a couple of days I could count the birds I saw there provided I offsetted the carbon that the flight produced.  So I counted a bunch of birds in California that I [...]

I hoped to see a Black-necked Stilt at the familiar but wonderful Jamaica Bay yesterday, and, well, I did.  It was foraging amid the geese, swans, gulls, terns, ibis, herons, ducks, blackbirds, and swallows at the west end of the West Pond.  Two other birders were already on the bird, or, had been on the [...]

I have not been birding enough lately.  Seriously.  Sure, last weekend we had a nice trip to Suffolk County and the week before that I went up to Doodletown but that’s it.  Once a week is not enough birding!  June in New York City is hot, and when it isn’t hot lately it’s raining or [...]

The alarm went off at 5 AM on June 1st. I had to turn it off and get out of bed quickly to avoid a slow and painful death at Daisy’s hands (5 in the morning on a Sunday! What is wrong with you!?!). I managed to get out of the room [...]

A couple of weeks ago I decided to do a Big Day limited to the borough of Queens and traveling only on foot and by mass transit. Yesterday, Saturday the tenth of May, was the day that I chose to do it, in the hopes that migration would be in full swing without the [...]

On Sunday, after returning from upstate, I hustled out the door as soon as I got home and made tracks for Forest Park. The local listservs had been loaded with reports of great birds in Manhattan and Brooklyn but hardly anything had been reported out of Queens. Somehow I doubted that the flood [...]

When the alarm went off at six Sunday morning I briefly contemplated turning it off and staying in bed. But the siren song of birding, represented by an American Robin greeting the gray dawn, dragged me out of bed and into Forest Park. The drizzlymist really limited the usefulness of my binoculars so [...]

Seeing as Mike has already stolen the thunder of our best birds of the day (well, he did get better pictures) I figured I would mention a couple of the other species that were around after Mike departed Central Park to be a good father. There were a couple in particular that I wanted [...]

So after last year’s big year I didn’t really plan on doing another big year again, ever. But then, in a stroke of late night genius (or something) I decided to try to see 250 birds this year without the use of a car. And on Sunday, at the Forest Park waterhole, an [...]

When one is trying to see as many birds as one can in a year without resorting to an automobile one must not only see as many as the expected birds as possible but must also chase the rarities that can be chased. Chasing rarities, of course, is normal for any big year, but [...]

This post is rather belated and the birding that will be described actually occurred last weekend.  I’m not sure how I managed to not write about this particular birding outing yet as it had all the hallmarks of a successful trip.  Anyway, last Sunday morning was sunny and not cold or windy so it was [...]

I really should have titled this post “I Love New York!” Why? Because where else can one be at their desk in their office near the end of the work day, get an email about a vagrant western bird in a city park, and be looking at it fifteen minutes after leaving said [...]

After birding Jamaica Bay with Mike on Saturday I had no choice but to walk through Forest Park on my way home after getting off the bus.  Such a tough task but I guess there are worse experiences possible.  The birds were active and I added several new birds to my Forest Park list, now [...]

No, by the title I don’t mean to imply that 6,667 birds were out birding at Jamaica Bay (Why would birds be out birding?  They would be out peopling if they were doing anything). The 2/3 of 10,000 Birds that headed out to the marvelous refuge were Mike and myself, Mike so he could [...]

I got an early start yesterday morning in the hopes of finding migrant warblers in Forest Park. The rain and strong south winds we had the night previous had given way to strong northwest winds yesterday morning and sunrise was obscured by lots of clouds. In other words, it was a pretty gray start to [...]