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This winter I have taken on the responsibility of keeping the two feeding stations at Forest Park supplied two days a week, on Thursdays and Fridays.  I’ve made sure to get there both days during periods of inclement or extremely cold weather but if the weather is warm and nothing is falling from the sky [...]

I finally got back out with my Swarovski digiscoping rig again yesterday now that I have a replacement lens for my camera.  My destination in the morning hours before work?  Forest Park, of course, where I have taken the responsibility of restocking the feeding stations on Thursdays and Fridays.  So when I left my house [...]

Though 2008 was a great year for 10,000 Birds things in 2009 are looking even better.  Because, in addition to all of our normal birding and blogging something happened at the end of 2008 that was simply so cool, so amazing, and so exciting that it has taken until now for 10,000 Birds to pick [...]

When I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning the air was clear and cold and moving fast (by which I mean it was windy).  It had been weeks since I made a proper tour of Forest Park so I was out and about and looking for birds as quickly as I could get [...]

It rained on Thursday and Friday and again on Saturday.  By Saturday afternoon, not having birded since Charlie’s visit, I didn’t care if I was going to get soaked: I wanted to get out and see some birds no matter how wet I ended up getting.  So, at two in the afternoon I grabbed my [...]

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. The Kentucky Warbler [...]

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 again [...]

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, to say the [...]

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 [...]

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 earlier [...]

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 of migrants [...]

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 near to [...]

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 to [...]

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. This [...]

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 ebb though, [...]

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 [...]