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Nassau County, New York, March 2009 After having fully explored the trail around the West Pond at Jamaica Bay, we four bird bloggers agreed to load up Patrick’s car and head over to Jones Beach to see what kind of birds we could find there and some other locations in Nassau County.  Carrie had been [...]

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 [...]

Like most birders in the path of Hurricane Irene I couldn’t wait for the storm to arrive and pass because I couldn’t wait to get out searching for birds driven north and to land by the powerful wind. Neither having to spend a day reading about the terns that showed in North Carolina on Saturday [...]

Yes this is a bird blog and this query is somewhat parochial but sometime this summer a bunch of big palm trees showed up at one of Long Island, New York’s premiere birding destinations, the west end of Jones Beach, and an explanation is seriously lacking.  Jones Beach is way too far north and they [...]

Or Why Eating Raw Seafood Is Dangerous Or Ouch!  That Looks Like It Smarts! Or The Hunter Becomes The Hunted What am I talking about?  A very unfortunate Semipalmated Sandpiper that chose the wrong mussel to make into a meal.  It was at Jones Beach State Park a couple of weeks ago and all of [...]

Gulls can be gorgeous.  Gulls can also be not very gorgeous at all.  In summer, when feathers are worn and younger birds are molting into their next plumage, gulls can be downright ugly.  They can also, because of their odd appearance, be difficult to identify.  On a recent family trip to Jones Beach, on New [...]

Crows, no matter the exact species being talked about, are typically recognized as being among the most intelligent of birds.  Crows are crafty, keen, clever.  They are trickster gods and crop-plundering pests, harbingers of war and users of tools.  Crows fascinate people because of their plumage, their behavior, their play.  Almost everywhere in the world [...]

Though Jones Beach State Park on the south shore of Long Island is rightfully famous for its beaches there is far more than the junction of sand and salt water to entice visitors from Long Island, New York City, and further afield.  Fishermen ply their craft on both the bay side of the state park [...]

On one of those gloomy, gray, and gross days last week I met up with Doug and Shane, those two irrepressible Brooklyn birders, and we made our way to Nassau County, just east of New York City on Long Island, for some birding along the coast.  The cloud-filled sky occasionally drizzled on us, sometimes rained [...]

When last I birded with Patrick Belardo he was still cursed so I was really looking forward to birding with him again to determine if whatever evil had a hold on him had let go or if he was doomed to never again see a rarity.  Our plan this past Monday was to take a [...]

On Tuesday, my last day of my leave of absence before my return to work (sigh) Daisy was kind enough to to let me out of the house and Danny, one of my Queens birding pals, was kind enough to agree on an expedition to two of the best birding spots on the south shore [...]

New York City-area birders are well aware of the jewel we have for barrier beach birding in Jones Beach, Nassau County’s gift to my life list.  But the exotic pines that have hosted so many great birds over the years are dying out, and the 1,500 native pitch pine seedlings assembled for planting aren’t going [...]

When the birding day starts with a frantic search through a backpack for a digiscoping adapter at the first birding stop one would think that the day was doomed.  That is kind of how I felt when Andrew Baksh and I arrived at Jones Beach early on Saturday morning and I realized that I had [...]

One of the things I miss most since I’ve been away from New York City is birding Long Island with Corey. The landmass containing Kings, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties, deemed the longest and largest island in the contiguous United States, serves up splendid birding every month of the year. June is particularly good for [...]

Late yesterday morning I was in the home stretch of my favorite birding routine in Queens, which is taking two buses to Kissena Park and then walking through various and sundry parks back to Queens Boulevard where the subway takes me home.  It had been a good morning’s birding, with an out-of-season Chipping Sparrow as [...]

When I found out Daisy’s younger sister Steph was staying overnight at our house on Saturday after taking their father to the airport I was happy.  Not just to see Steph, though she is fun to hang out with, but because I figured that she tends to sleep late, which meant that I might have [...]

Yesterday in New York was hot.  Way too hot.  Fortunately for Daisy and me our friends Kerry and Becky were heading to the beach and offered a ride.  And it wasn’t just any beach either, but the birding Mecca of Nassau County, Jones Beach.  The south wind was strong, the waves were huge, and we [...]

We’ve been rocking warblers so hard this May (I sound like a teen there, don’t I?) that all of a sudden, I found myself in the mood for shorebirds. Weird, right? I know that I’m supposed to be eyeing sandpipers and the like around August, but there are some shorebirds that are just better before [...]

When we last left our heroes, they were suffering from the throes of awful owl luck. In fact, apart from an unexpected bounty of Rusty Blackbirds and my first Brown Creeper of the year, the morning’s birding had been a bust. That this unprecedented assemblage of the three principals of 10,000 Birds should go unattended [...]

Saturday the 29th was the last day of my New York State Big Year seeing as Sunday saw me on a plane bound for sunny southern California. Because we were flying out of LaGuardia Airport Daisy and I were in Queens, the perfect base of operations for finding the vagrant and reliable Townsend’s Solitaire that [...]