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The waterfront of Brooklyn on either side of the Verrazano Bridge is the best place in New York City to see Purple Sandpipers. Every year they winter there on the rocky breakwater mere feet from the path between lower New York Harbor and the Belt Parkway that innumerable joggers, walkers, and bikers use. Of course, [...]

Any species of shrike is an outstanding bird in New York City. A Northern Shrike in Brooklyn is no exception.  You can imagine my enjoyment then, when as we driving out of Floyd Bennett Field, Shawn Billerman, who was sitting in the passenger seat, suddenly exclaimed, “Shrike!” As my Ford Focus came to a screeching [...]

After dipping on an extremely rare bird twice in two days I decided to further punish myself yesterday morning by once again braving New York City traffic on the trip from Forest Hills in Queens to Brooklyn’s famed Coney Island.  To add an extra level of difficulty I brought Desi along with me for the [...]

When Doug Gochfeld posted a belated report he had received of a Gray-hooded Gull* in Coney Island on the New York State birding listserv I was fascinated.  Here was a bird that had only been confirmed in the ABA area once before** and it seemed as if this bird was destined to be a single-observer [...]

Way back on the first day of March, Doug, who is a good birder and a decent guy despite his Brooklyn roots, and I were exploring Plum Beach, a location you will recall from the absurdly cooperative Clapper Rails and Nelson’s Sparrows that I digiscoped last year.  We were walking on the south side of [...]

It seems bizarre to even think it but there was a time when the Skylark Alauda arvensis, the famous bird with the beautiful voice that populates the English countryside, was well-established in Brooklyn and one could hear its “profuse strains of unpremeditated art” from above whilst wandering around Flatbush.  Skylarks in Flatbush?  From the vantage [...]

Despite being sidetracked and distracted by the best Clapper Rails ever Shane and I did manage to focus our binoculars, scopes, and camera lenses on several Nelson’s Sparrows.  Nelson’s Sparrow is the sparrow formerly known as Nelson’s Sharp-tailed Sparrow, which is one-half of the sparrow formerly known as Sharp-tailed Sparrow.*  Whatever one chooses to use [...]

When Shane Blodgett and I made plans to bird for most of a recent day our main objectives were to find migrating Nelson’s Sparrows, good lingering shorebirds, and any scarce-for-New York birds that might have been fattening up at coastal sites in Brooklyn or Queens before continuing on their migration.  Shane was kind enough to [...]

Long have I heard the members of the New York City Butterfly Club extol the virtues of Floyd Bennett Field in terms of the amazing array of Lepidoptera one can track down there if one is so inclined.  On a recent visit with some birders I took time out from prowling the rows of the [...]

You poor suffering souls who come back repeatedly to read the dreck that I write about my assorted birding adventures will recall that last summer, when we were both still expectant fathers rather than actual fathers, I suspected Patrick Belardo from The Hawk Owl’s Nest and all other birders from New Jersey were cursed when [...]

Despite being the borough that is home to Williamsburg, where irony goes to die, Park Slope, which obnoxious doesn’t even begin to describe, and, worst of all, the Christmas Bird Count that stole half of Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge from the Queens County Christmas Bird Count, Brooklyn isn’t all that bad.  There are some top-notch [...]

Over two years ago, when I was doing a New York State Big Year, one of the birds that I tried to see but managed to dip was a Common Gull Larus canus that was hanging out in Brooklyn.  Since then I have seen a Common Gull in California where they are referred to as [...]

I spent Saturday morning and into the early afternoon with my becoming-a-birder friend, Kerry, with whom I’ve birded before, birding in Queens and a bit into Brooklyn.  We didn’t see anything too spectacular until we were about to leave Fort Tilden, though Kerry was very interested in the variety of ducks we found at Jamaica [...]

The Queens County Bird Club field trip this past Sunday to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn was relatively well-attended, with eleven people present, and loaded with some of the more common species that one would expect in November.  Great Blue Heron, Green-winged Teal, Cedar Waxwing, Dark-eyed Junco, Common Loon, American Kestrel, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Belted Kingfisher, [...]

When Daisy asked me if it was alright for her to pass my email on to a law school classmate so the classmate could pass my email on to a birder she had met through a friend, well, I was hesitant, because who knows what kind of person this was, but, in the end, I [...]

For the last two days our ‘Parrot Month’ theme has been looking at the Monk Parakeet Myiopsitta monachus (and here), a South American species that has been exported for the pet-trade in vast numbers and – through a combination of accidental escapes and deliberate releases – now has feral populations across North America. One of [...]

Saturday was a day for birding.  I’ve already shared my experience with the cooperative Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, but that was far from the only bird that crossed my path in Prospect Park that day.  When I first got off the F train just outside of the southwestern corner of the park I headed straight across the [...]

While watching the birds at the feeders in Prospect Park on Sunday I heard a couple of blackbirds call to each other as they flew overhead.  I was pretty sure they were Red-winged Blackbirds but I wanted a look to make sure so I grabbed my stuff and followed to where I was pretty sure [...]

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 [...]

Corey started our tale of birding adventure and now it falls to me to complete it. We met at Union Square Park to scan the absurdly accommodating, utterly improbable Scott’s Oriole wintering therein. The deflating sensation of such an effortless twitch (perhaps you know the feeling) was offset by the pleasure of meeting Carrie of [...]