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Saturday was sunny and cool, the perfect combination for autumn birding.  I spent all morning at Jamaica Bay and had a great time (more on that tomorrow).  Especially great was seeing twelve species of wood-warbler, one of my best days of wood-warbler watching all fall.  Other than the hordes of Yellow-rumped Warblers that have returned [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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.  [...]

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 [...]

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.  [...]

Though I’ve been back in the city for almost a week I haven’t come close to using up all of my upstate birding tales yet!  Like the last time I visited my folks I spent some time photographing hummingbirds, but this time I was at my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul’s house taking advantage of [...]

Disappointing. That is the only word I can come up with to describe the answers provided by the folks who guessed at the identities of the birds in Yet Another Diabolical Bird ID Quiz. Sure, Jason, overlook, and bevson each managed to get two out of four correct, but that is still a failing grade [...]

Yes, it is time once again for that most dreaded of 10,000 Birds exercises, the Diabolical Bird ID Quiz. This time four small portions of passerines have been selected for your best guesses. The only clues you get are that all the pictures were taken in New York in the month of May. As is [...]

Three pictures are below. Can you identify all six birds? The first was taken in Ringwood State Park in northern New Jersey, the second from my window , and the last in Forest Park at the waterhole. As usual, the winner, who is the first to properly name all six birds in the comments, gets [...]

The other day when I woke up it was to the jumbled song of a Canada Warbler. At first I thought that it was a weird dream, the product of too much birding and not enough sleep during the month of May’s migration but then I looked out my window and wow! In rapid succession [...]

Some seriously good identification was done by the many guessers on the one-photo quiz in this post. 10,000 Birds readers know their birds! Congratulations go to Jochen, Nick, Drew, Shawn, and Nathan, all of whom took serious stabs at figuring out the identities of the seven birds of six species in the picture. And thanks [...]

On Saturday as part of a good half-day’s birding I explored Jamaica Bay hoping to find some birds that have come in with the warm weather that I could count for my Anti-Global Warming Big Year. I didn’t find too much that I haven’t already seen this year, in fact, a Little Blue Heron was [...]

On my hours-long birding excursion in Central Park yesterday one of the highlights was seeing many Palm Warblers all over the grassy areas wherever people weren’t. The bright yellow of the eastern form, which was all I saw today, was a sight for sore eyes after far too long without the presence of the little [...]

After my trip to Van Cortlandt Park early Sunday morning I decided to hit up Central Park on my way home in the hopes of checking a couple more birds off of my Anti-Global Warming Big Year list. I was successful in doing so, spotting both a Fox Sparrow and a small flock of Cedar [...]

Curt McDermott is a birder in Orange County, New York. He has an amazing array of feeders up in his small suburban yard that attracted an amazing bird and flocks of birders this winter. As of this posting the bird is still being seen daily. Curt has been a gracious host to the birding hordes [...]

As loyal 10,000 Birds readers know I love visiting my folks’ house. Not just for their company, which is wonderful, but also to catch up on the birds visiting their marvelous array of feeders which I lack in my urban apartment complex. One of the things that keep the birds (and the squirrels) coming back [...]

One of my favorite ducks is the Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata). Something about their namesake, absurdly long, shovel-like bills, elegant plumage, and cool vocalizations make me want to see them on every birding excursion. Or maybe it is their clever methods of eating, whether straining the water with their bills or swimming in circles in [...]

Diabolical. Truly diabolical. That’s how I felt, anyway, when I made up the Diabolical Female Waterfowl Quiz. But, once again, some dedicated birders have proven themselves up to the challenge by managing to correctly identify all five partial pictures of female waterfowl, truly a magnificent accomplishment. To see for yourself the quiz pics, the images [...]

If previous incarnations of the Diabolical ID Quiz left you scratching your head this one might leave you wanting to cut it right off your shoulders.  Female waterfowl, also called hens, are usually drab colors, the better to hide themselves when they are incubating their eggs.  They are still beautiful, but in muted tones that [...]