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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 [...]

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 at Jones Beach pretty recently, but [...]

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 Mike, Corey, and I were wandering around in the midst of the heaviest snow-storm to hit New York since - er, the last Ice Age probably, we went to Jones Beach on Long Island hoping to find Horned Larks and Snow Buntings. By the time we got there the sleet was coming down like [...]

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 [...]

Saturday I was down in New York City once again and because Daisy has law school finals to study for I had plenty of free time so I went shopping at the mall. Ha! Of course I didn’t go shopping: I went birding. Because I had promised Daisy a ride to her [...]

After adding an Ash-throated Flycatcher to my year list I stuck around Jamaica Bay for awhile hoping to see it again and to get a picture. As you know from yesterday’s post I didn’t. And there were other birds I wanted to see so I headed across the Cross Bay Bridge and drove [...]

On Sunday, October 28, I birded Jones Beach and Point Lookout in Nassau County, hoping to find migrating passerines blown to the barrier beaches by the strong northwest winds. I found some but not many. Instead of the expected passerines the bird that stole the show was a cooperative juvenile Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris [...]

Saturday morning I tried to start the day off right by birding Jones Beach, the marvelous New York State park in Nassau County. Unfortunately for me, a thick fog had settled over the area and visibility was low, making birding a bit more difficult than usual. And it was a weird fog too; [...]

…Warblers.
At least this year. What other reaction can I have to the evil little bird snubbing me at Central Park, avoiding me at Floyd Bennett Field, and leaving me standing in the rain for two hours at Muttontown Preserve? That’s right, Muttontown Preserve. But before I get to the whole sordid story let me [...]

Autumn’s equinox heralds far more than just rueful thoughts of what summer might have been. This splendid moment of equipoise between the diurnal and nocturnal sees a myriad of creatures great and small caught up in the relentless throes of zugunruhe. It’s a natural fact, this seasonally recurring restlessness, this implacable urge to migrate. Millions [...]

Sunday morning saw me up and out of the house before 4 AM for a big trip with two of the other Big Year birders from the Albany area, Rich and Jory. Our destination? Jones Beach and Jamaica Bay, two exquisite birding destinations with which regular readers of this blog are probably altogether too familiar. [...]

In the midst of a full day’s search for rare birds on Long Island and in Queens a common bird stole the show, at least for a little while. A juvenile Red-tailed Hawk was perched on a pine tree in the median at Jones Beach, being assaulted by Northern Mockingbirds. It flew to [...]

You know the birds I’m talking about. The little ones that run to and fro on tiny black legs, alternately chasing and being chased by waves on sandy beaches. They have a black bill in addition to their black legs and are white below and dark above. They’re the ones that probe in the wet [...]