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In my last post, about the Great Egrets at the Marine Nature Study Area, I said that I would be doing a full post about the birding adventure that we had.  Well, I guess I’m a liar.  Going through the pictures I took (and I managed to fill up my camera) I realized that almost [...]

The Oceanside Marine Nature Study Area in Hempstead, NY, a marvelous saltmarsh preserve on the south side of Lond Island, is well known for its nesting Seaside and Saltmarsh Sparrows, to say nothing of the video camera-monitored Osprey nest and breeding Clapper Rails (which this year also had a camera on the nest which allowed [...]

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 [...]

Being upstate is great.  Not only do I get to see my folks, swim in their pool, and enjoy the great outdoors, but I also get tips about the locations of cool birds.  But I really shouldn’t have needed a tip to know the location of the Cliff Swallows I’ve checked out a couple 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 [...]

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. [...]

The title of this post pretty much says it all. A couple of weeks ago I watched and photographed a young House Sparrow getting fed by its mother. I also watched, but failed to get pictures of, the same young bird being fed by two different male House Sparrows. These particular birds [...]

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 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 [...]

During my second trip upstate in the last three weeks (and after my second Big Day in as many weekends) I was up for some relaxation Sunday, and got it with my family. Of course, for me, relaxation includes watching birds, so the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds coming to my parents’ feeders featured prominently in my [...]

We birders are a most fortunate bunch. Not only are we spoilt for choice when it comes to high-quality optics, birding holidays to suit every budget and every level of interest, birding blogs (like this one!) and websites serving us with all kinds of information and avian adventure, we’re also being offered books of astonishing [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

April, while not as exciting a migratory month as May is in the northeastern United States, is still a great time of year to see migrating birds. Wood-warblers, those brightly-colored attention-whores of spring, have most birders swooning, but their numbers don’t really pick up until May. Sparrows, on the other hand, seem to [...]

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 [...]

I have never in my life been more glad not to be a bug.

On Thursday, a day that I didn’t have to be at work until noon, I, of course, got up early and took a stroll through Forest Park. Well, I didn’t really so much as take a stroll through Forest Park as I took a stroll to the water hole in Forest Park and sat [...]

At the tail end of my birding expedition today I was fortunate enough to have a close encounter with an extremely confiding, cooperative, and curious Carolina Wren. I had just arrived at the water hole at Forest Park and was sitting on a log watching White-throated Sparrows forage in the leaves when the wren [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]