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I’ve been birding for nearly 2/3 of my life and, until this past weekend, I’d never even sniffed a Yellow-bellied Flycatcher.  For a long time my inability to find one of the most common members of the devious genus Empidonax was a sore spot with me.  After all, I was a reasonably experienced birder.  I [...]

When the word “phoebe” comes up, most people automatically think of things like the outermost of Saturn’s known satellites, the Greek Titan-goddess of the moon, or the most fascinating and complex character from that happily departed sitcom, Friends. Anyone who has gone bird watching in North America, however, knows another kind of phoebe, a bold [...]

Steve Walter is a New York nature photographer, birder, and long-time member of the New York City Butterfly Club.  Readers of 10,000 Birds who pay attention will remember him from when he showed Patrick and me some really cool damselflies out in Suffolk County.  This blog post is written by Steve and by writing it [...]

The Black Phoebe is a familiar and confiding black-and-white flycatcher that can be found as far north as northern California and as far south as northern Argentina.  One of three birds in the genus Sayornis (the others are Eastern Phoebe Sayornis phoebe and Say’s Phoebe Sayornis saya), Sayornis nigricans is common across most of its range, [...]

With 2010 receding in the rear view mirror I had a great morning out birding on the first day of 2011.  The undisputed highlight of the morning’s outing, which netted eighty-something species of bird, was the one lifer I tracked down almost as an afterthought.  A Vermilion Flycatcher had been reported from El Modena Park [...]

Until today I had never seen a Fork-tailed Flycatcher.  It seems somehow fitting that a mere week after returning from my first visit to South America that a South American species of flycatcher should cross my field of view in the northeastern United States, because, well, that seems to be how things work.  Tyrannus savana [...]

It is the twenty-sixth of March.  By the calendar, spring has been here for nearly a week.  Red-winged Blackbird hordes have gone through, and the female red-wings are even thick on the ground.  Forsythia is flowering and daffodils are blooming all over the place.  I’ve watched my first Mourning Cloak butterfly for the year flutter [...]

A third visit to the vacant lot in Queens with the lingering vagrant Ash-throated Flycatcher was the charm on Sunday.  Thanks to Danny and Alan for calling and offering me a ride over and to Daisy for letting me out of the house again (though I was home within an hour).  This time it wasn’t [...]

On 22 November, an Ash-throated Flycatcher Myiarchus cinerascens was seen in an unassuming and overgrown vacant lot in Queens next to the Aqueduct/North Conduit Ave subway stop.  Many birders subsequently tracked down the bird and enjoyed great looks.  Of course I have been a bit too busy to go chasing after vagrant flycatchers (Ash-throated Flycatchers [...]

Since I’m headed to Hotel Mocking Bird Hill in Jamaica in November (and you’re still invited to join me), I’ve been brushing up on my Caribbean avifauna. The hours invested learning expected birds prior to a birding trip not only pay massive dividends in the field, but also enhance the anticipation of actually arriving. In [...]

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 [...]

Empidonax flycatchers… you can’t live with them, you can’t build a complete life list without them. As countless as the stars above have been the brillant birders brought low by these humble homunculi, these tiny little iterations on an undistinguished theme. Such has become the fate of our friend Alberto Lopez, late of Puerto Rico [...]

Some types of birds, such as raptors, waterfowl, and warblers, appeal to both birdwatchers and sane people alike. Members of these avian families are fun to observe at least in part because they appear in a broad array of easily-discernible forms. Given a minute with a field guide, most individuals can separate different types of [...]

Stacy Mote of Phenix City, Alabama is an environmental consultant that gets to bird for a living (lucky!) but she spends time off-duty as a weekend warrior scouting out local birding hotspots. As a birder, she tells us, you can never stop learning! Here, she shares photos of her first dramatic sighting of a gorgeous [...]

After a late night playing poker with my father and his friends (and getting my butt kicked, I might add) I headed down to Daisy’s house and we got to sleep at some time after two AM. So when my cell phone rang at ten to seven on Saturday morning, you can understand why I [...]