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When I think of the birds of the Alps, the first names that come to mind are Alpine Chough, Bearded Vulture, Snowfinch, Alpine Accentor and – of course – the Wallcreeper. When I first moved to Tirol, the Wallcreeper Tichodroma muraria was probably the number one bird I wanted to find – everything I had [...]

As folks who read this blog already know, I am a fan of birds, Queens, and digiscoping.  Yesterday morning I combined the three on my favorite birding walk from my house through Flushing Meadows Park, Kissena Corridor Park, and Kissena Park.  A horde of birds had descended on New York City and environs overnight Thursday [...]

While out and about of late watching wood-warblers, vireos, and other neotropical migrants pausing on their long journey south I have been enjoying watching the different foraging strategies and foods that different species and even individuals of the same species use.  Their migration is long and full of perils and at each stopover point the [...]

This past Saturday morning was spent birding at Jamaica Bay with Carrie Laben, and a fine time we had, though, perhaps, my expectations for good birds are a bit high of late.  May 22 is a late day to expect passerines to still be migrating and the gardens were relatively dead, despite our efforts and [...]

Forest Park’s waterhole is known as a great place to see lots of wood-warblers without having to walk for miles or suffer from “warbler neck” because you are looking up into the canopy too much.  At the waterhole the birds come to you; you just have to patiently wait for them and eventually they come [...]

My job, union job that it is, is lousy with holidays.  Our contract is solid enough that we get Good Friday off – even those of us who are atheists!  And seeing as forecasters were unanimous in calling for sunny skies and warm weather I planned, once again, to take what has become my favorite [...]

As I did about a week and a half ago (and described here) I recently took another stroll across a large chunk of Queens, during which I digiscoped the Double-crested Cormorant pictures I already shared.  Rather than bore you, dear 10,000 Birds reader, with a detailed account of the walk I figured I would just [...]

As I described in my recent blog post about my walk across Queens, I was fortunate enough to have a male Ring-necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus cross my path as I made my way through the Kissena Corridor Park.  It was perhaps the most cooperative pheasant ever; though Europeans mostly refer to P. colchicus as Common [...]

With sun all weekend in New York City and temperatures north of fifty degrees Fahrenheit we can all be forgiven for thinking that spring is here early, and here to stay.  Not only was it warm and sunny but the enormous snowbanks from the recent blizzards have dwindled to virtually nothing, saturating the ground and [...]

Dale Forbes, with whom I was lucky enough to travel to Kazakhstan this past May (that’s him in the sunset picture in the linked post), now works directly for Swarovski Optik.  As part of his job duties he has a series of videos up on YouTube in which he gives digiscoping tips (I know, I [...]

The nor’easter that blanketed the east coast of the United States did not leave New York City unscathed, and the birds are flocking to the Forest Park feeding stations after the first serious snowfall of the season.  With about a foot of snow down in Queens, many of the natural food supplies that birds were [...]

Once again this winter the Forest Park irregulars, a devoted group of birders who spend far too much time in Forest Park, are maintaining two feeding stations.  Seeing as it is a sunny day and Daisy agreed to let me go outside for a bit, I headed over to the waterhole, which serves as one [...]

On the recent Queens County Bird Club field trip to Kissena Park in search of migrating sparrows, field birds, and whatever else might cross our path, I was distracted by some male House Finches Carpodacus mexicanus feeding on, or, to be more accurate, pigging out on, crabapples.  They were so intent on eating the apples [...]

As was already stated in the post about tracking down and watching the Roseate Spoonbill, I spent Sunday birding at Brigantine, or, more properly, the Brigantine Division of the Edward B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge.  There were many more birds seen than the spoonbill and some of them showed amazingly well despite the thick fog [...]

While wood-warblers are a wonderful type of bird to watch they are not the only species making their way south each fall.  Everything sparrows to shorebirds are moving through and it would be a poor birder indeed who failed to notice the flycatchers.  Though silent Empidonax flycatchers will certainly drive at least some birders nuts [...]

It is near the end of wood-warbler migration in New York City; the hordes of Yellow-rumped Warblers have descended upon us and it has been quite some time since earlier migrants like Worm-eating Warbler have been reported.  Now is the time of Blackpoll Warblers, Palm Warblers, and small amounts of late lingering migrants sprinkled in, [...]

Saturday was one of those all-day birding days that I think are going to pretty rare occurrences before too long.  Will of The Nightjar, with whom I haven’t birded in, well, way too long, finally made the much anticipated trip down to Queens for some Jamaica Bay shorebirding, and we had a grand old time [...]

On Saturday I met up with Patrick, that nice guy from The Hawk Owl’s Nest, at Jamaica Bay for some birding.  Unfortunately, the birds seemed to have missed the memo or something, because they were not there to meet up with us.  That actually is not quite true: I am just a spoiled birder who [...]

Say the title of this blog post five times fast and I guarantee a life bird within two weeks!  Rather than do a full trip report from a twenty-shorebird-day with Birding Dude I’m just going to put up a few of my favorite pictures from the day and wait to do the full post until [...]

This weekend while I was exploring the Shawangunk Grasslands in Ulster County, New York, with my parents (more on that later) we came across a juvenile Brown-headed Cowbird that was positively begging to be photographed.  Actually, it wasn’t begging at all, which is a good thing, as I hate seeing these greedy little monsters begging [...]