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Yet another lunch break outing to Central Park recently led to a nursery of Common Raccoons Procyon lotor searching for food both natural and human-supplied in the vicinity of Turtle Pond.  The four youngsters, seemingly without the benefit of adult supervision, were trying their best to get into trouble but were a little too scared [...]

I’ve recently discovered that if I hustle out of my office for my lunch hour, jump on the uptown C train and get off at 72nd St I can spend some time birding the west side of Central Park while I work my way north to 81st St to get on the downtown C train [...]

On a recent walk through Central Park with Daisy we were distracted, charmed, and entertained by a Golden-crowned Kinglet Regulus satrapa that was exploring each and every part of a fence for bugs, and occasionally hitting the jackpot when it found an old spider web with long-dead insects in it.  Though both North American species [...]

Oh the birds I saw Saturday on the cold and clear December morning.  The sun was out along with the hordes of tourists that clogged the paths in the south of the park but the three American Crows and several Blue Jays standing sentinel seemed more concerned about an accipitor than the humans on paths [...]

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’ [...]

This past weekend Daisy and I were pleased to host my brother, Jonathan, his fiancee, Shannon, and their adorable three-year-old daughter, Natasha.  Though keeping up with a three-year-old is pretty darn exhausting it was great having her around, especially as everything in the city is interesting to a three-year-old from upstate New York.  Whether it [...]

When Corey blogged about our joint visit to New York’s Central Park at the weekend he titled his post A Great Bird (Well-deserved) in Central Park. What bird was he referring to? A Black-throated Grey Warbler, a very rare visitor to the State let alone to Manhattan Island and Central Park and a ‘great [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Corey and I visited Central Park this morning for some early spring birding. At this point in the season, a good day might be 8 species of warbler, rather than 20. We topped 8 just barely, but made up in quality what we lacked in quantity. The undisputed star of the show was a bird [...]

Last week I wrote a short post about a visit I made to New York’s Central Park with Corey, in which I referred to a close encounter with a small flock of one of my favourite birds: Cedar Waxwings Bombycilla cedrorum. To save myself a little time (a two-year-old is demanding my attention) I’m going [...]

About this time last year - and a few months before I joined Mike and Corey at 10,000 Birds - I co-authored a post looking at the differences between Northern and Louisiana Waterthrushes with the incomparable Jochen Roeder of the weird and wonderful Bell Tower Birding blog. For reasons I now can’t remember I forgot [...]

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.

Early April in the northern hemisphere (or more specifically, April in Central Park) is never quite as you imagine it. It’s neither as warm as you were sure it was going to be, nor as bright. Plants emerge more tentatively than you remember, the breeze is more cutting, the light is just a little flatter. [...]

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 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 [...]

When I woke up Saturday morning I didn’t see my shadow, a good sign on Groundhog’s Day. Even better was the fact that I was on my way to Union Square Park to see the Scott’s Oriole again and this time, because I had taken the train from Albany and not stepped foot in a [...]

Wood Thrush Hylocichla mustelina
Central Park, NY. 19 October 2007

The Wood Thrush Hylocichla mustelina breeds across most of eastern North America, ranging from the panhandle of Florida northward to southern Canada. The species generally reaches its western limit at the eastern edge of the Great Plains, although it can be found breeding along the Missouri River [...]

When I was in Central Park yesterday I saw a thrush that - at the time - confused me: Mike had already gone home so I couldn’t confer with him, and now that I’ve had a look at the photos I manged to grab before it disappeared and have had a chance to read through [...]