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On a recent walk around Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge I took the following picture. Why is it interesting? Give up? What if I give you a clue? Do you see it now? And do you know what it is? Here, let me zoom in for you… It’s a Gray Tree Frog, Hyla versicolor, a common [...]

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, Queens, NY, April 2010 Everyone knows that New York City is an extremely expensive place to live.  If one is lucky enough to find a place that one likes one must often pay in rent per month what would easily be a mortgage payment in a more sane part of the [...]

As migration proceeds in fits and starts I find myself torn between wanting to find as many birds as I can on each birding outing and wanting to take my time with each species that I haven’t seen since they left for fairer climes back in the fall. It is a conundrum and one that [...]

Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge, March 2009 It was at about 1:30 AM on Saturday morning that I startled awake and found myself sitting in an empty subway car in an unfamiliar location.  I stepped out of the train and my foggy brain was just realizing that I was at the end of the E [...]

Sometimes a species just stops you in your tracks.  So it was with a superlative, breeding-plumaged, male Scarlet Tanager today at Jamaica Bay.  Now Scarlet Tanagers are always a gorgeous bird, and if you walk by a breeding-plumaged male without looking not only are your credentials as a birder at stake but so are your [...]

It seemed liked an innocuous idea. Seven birders, a boat for hire, and a cruise around lower New York Harbor and vicinity looking for good birds. What could possibly go wrong? After all, the forecast was for mostly sunny skies, light winds, and no big waves. Therefore the seven of us who climbed aboard a [...]

In December in the northeastern United States you expect snow.  In New York City so far this year we have only had a dusting from the Halloween storm that wreaked so much havoc elsewhere and since then the weather has been mild.  In fact, yesterday when I spent the day birding the coast of Long [...]

Do you know what is really annoying?  When someone regularly birds the same spots that you do but manages to get much, much, much, better images.  Check out these shots of fish-eating birds at Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge!

I have said it before and I will say it again – I love getting to Jamaica Bay at the end of a day and photographing waterfowl flying in and out of the West Pond.  The bird that is flies in and out in the greatest numbers of late is Greater Scaup Aythya marila, sometimes [...]

Finally!  It took long enough but I have finally seen an Eurasian Wigeon in my home borough, at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge’s East Pond to be exact.  It was nice to add bird number 284 to my Queens life list, though it seems kind of absurd that it has taken so long to see one [...]

The Management are out of the office this week and in the absence of adult supervision, the beat writers have been running amok. The minimum-wage work force broke into the executive sherry cabinet and toasted the fat cats who can afford to take a vacation during the peak season and when the big cheeses from the Big [...]

…at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge anyway.  The famed East Pond, where so many wonderful shorebirds have shown, had issues with its draining system this summer and was well above the level it needed to be at to expose mud for the birds.  Yesterday’s eight plus inches of rain (as measured at JFK Airport)* have probably [...]

Yellow-crowned Night Herons have a presence about them when they are hunting that reminds me of Buddhist monks.  If “The greatest prayer is patience,” as the Buddha is alleged to have said, then the comparison is perhaps apt, as nothing embodies patience more than Nyctanassa violacea.  I spent forty-five minutes in the company of the Yellow-crowned [...]

On a recent all-too-brief visit to that Mecca of birding in my home borough I was doing my best to get some good flight shots of the Forster’s Terns, Common Terns, and Least Terns that were frequenting both the West Pond and the bay across the trail.  I didn’t get much that was usable, but [...]

Just like last year when I spent a goodly chunk of a Saturday at the end of May at Jamaica Bay I spent this past Saturday birding one of the premiere birding destinations of the northeastern United States, Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.  Though I had hoped for nice variety of passerine migrants I was disappointed by the [...]

The Cape May Warbler is an outstanding bird and an outing that includes one is almost undoubtedly considered successful.  Good looks at one are rare both because Dendroica tigrina is not among the most common of wood-warblers and because most of their time is spent high up in the canopy during migration.  Add to that [...]

After spending the early morning on Saturday birding at Alley Pond Park I was happy with having seen my first Eastern Phoebe of the year and thought I could rest on my laurels for the rest of the weekend.  Then the accursed listserv had to ruin my peace of mind by letting me know that [...]

Lately, I have grown a bit obsessed by Ruddy Ducks, those lovable little stiff-tailed ducks that are nearly ubiquitous on any sizable freshwater body of water in New York City this time of year.  The variety of plumages that they show and the way different individuals molt at different times is interesting to me and [...]

This past Saturday I made my way to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge’s West Pond a bit before sunset in order to try to get more flight shots of ducks like these as they made their way in to the pond to roost for the night.  On my way in I convinced a fellow Queens birder, [...]

It has been virtually forever since I last visited Jamaica Bay.  And by virtually forever I mean, of course, that it has been since 20 September, over four months, since I last laid eyes on the West Pond, the North Gardens, or any other portion of the wonderful wildlife refuge that has provided so many [...]