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I haven’t had any major birding expeditions over the last week and a half but I have had several small ones.  Now that fall migration has picked up a bit I am hitting Forest Park often again, savoring every last warbler, vireo, and flycatcher that I can spot, knowing that each time I see a […]

As I mentioned in my previous post the last visit I made to Forest Park was relatively birdless but the bugs did their best to make up for the lack of birds.  In particular, the area around the reclamation pond was quite buggy, with the water and numerous wildflowers creating quite the habitat for everything […]

On a recent birding outing around Forest Park the birds had made themselves scarce but the bugs were out in force.  So I made lemonade from lemons (maybe not the best metaphor when dealing with bugs) and focused my camera on the six-legged set, in particular on a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis).  This particular dragonfly […]

I bird in Forest Park a lot. You know, in case you haven’t noticed,I figured I would point that out. I’ve seen two life birds there this spring, a Kentucky Warbler, which was a very quick twitch, and a Gray-cheeked Thrush, a bird I have probably seen before but failed to identify. […]

On a recent visit to the waterhole at Forest Park on a day when sunlight alternated with light rain the birding was relatively slow (meaning I only saw about ten species of wood-warbler in an hour). I was about to pack it up and head home as the sunlight-rain cycle was moving towards rain […]

After walking what felt like halfway across Queens I arrived at Flushing Meadows Park and found it totally packed with people. There were soccer players, remote-control car racers, barbecuers, and a whole host of other folks enjoying the great outdoors. What there was not a lot of was birds. It was frustrating, […]

When last we left our heroes, Corey, Carrie, and I had received notice of rare warbler activity at Forest Park in Queens. Since we were already relatively close, we raced over before those coveted migrants migrated right out of our airspace. Plus, I was curious about Corey’s new home away from home.

Ovenbird
Let me tell you, […]

A couple of weeks ago I decided to do a Big Day limited to the borough of Queens and traveling only on foot and by mass transit. Yesterday, Saturday the tenth of May, was the day that I chose to do it, in the hopes that migration would be in full swing without the […]

On Sunday, after returning from upstate, I hustled out the door as soon as I got home and made tracks for Forest Park. The local listservs had been loaded with reports of great birds in Manhattan and Brooklyn but hardly anything had been reported out of Queens. Somehow I doubted that the flood […]

If you are a person who reads this blog regularly you know that I recently moved to Queens and spend quite a bit of my spare time in Forest Park. It is near my apartment, it is beautiful, and it is a great place to see birds. Beyond that though, it is as […]

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 […]

Yes, it is time once again for the bad rhymes and horrific meter of a birding adventure described in verse. To set the stage I will say that Charlie flew in last Friday night and had to be back to his hotel to get ready to fly back to England by mid-afternoon on Saturday. […]

After my exhausting birding adventures with Mike, Charlie, Jean, and Patrick, which will soon be described in great detail, I’m sure, I had Mike drop me off at, no, not my apartment, but Forest Park! The sun was out and the afternoon was still young. My energy level was at a pretty low […]

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 […]

After birding Jamaica Bay with Mike on Saturday I had no choice but to walk through Forest Park on my way home after getting off the bus.  Such a tough task but I guess there are worse experiences possible.  The birds were active and I added several new birds to my Forest Park list, now […]

I got an early start yesterday morning in the hopes of finding migrant warblers in Forest Park. The rain and strong south winds we had the night previous had given way to strong northwest winds yesterday morning and sunrise was obscured by lots of clouds. In other words, it was a pretty gray start to […]

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 […]

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and was in Forest Park, binoculars and camera at the ready, when the first fingers of light hit the forest floor.  The birds weren’t quite awake yet.  I waited patiently and ended up seeing the same darn birds that I saw this past Sunday.  Not […]

After a grueling ordeal yesterday, which involved loading the contents of my third floor, two-bedroom apartment in Albany into a ginormous U-haul truck, driving said truck to Daisy’s studio apartment in Woodside, Queens, and once again loading up the truck and then driving to Kew Gardens, Queens, and unloading the truck and getting everything up […]