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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 group study session [...]

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 east to [...]

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 melanotos). The [...]

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; sometimes it [...]

…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 a second [...]

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 [...]

One of my favorite things about birding Jones Beach is how even if there aren’t rare birds around there is still plenty to see. Even when the beach is crowded with swimmers there are still gulls and terns and plovers living their lives, and because they are relatively used to people one can often observe [...]

The Yellow-headed Blackbird I spotted back in the beginning of July is still hanging around the West End of Jones Beach. It is regularly sighted and reported on the listservs and I was pleased to see it in the median near West End 2 today in the middle of a day of birding. I was [...]

When I arrived at Jones Beach on Thursday morning I planned to check out the area around the Coast Guard station for early migrating shorebirds and to photograph some terns. Was I ever surprised to see what I presumed to be a female Yellow-headed Blackbird! I first saw the bird foraging in the grass just [...]

There is a perversity in going after shorebirds at the peak of spring migration, that point in time when virtually any American songbird imaginable might turn up in a treetop near you, in full breeding regalia no less. But when an elusive species like Gull-billed Tern elects to abide in one spot long enough for [...]

A beautiful spring day began in Woodside, Queens, with coffee, a shower, a drive to Flushing to drop off Daisy at the library (haha, law-student), and then Hempstead Lake State Park. Warblers! Black-and-white, Northern Parula, Palm, Pine, and tons of Yellow-rumps! The Northern Parula, a brilliant male singing on occasion, foraged high up in the [...]

When Daisy let me know that she was ahead of schedule on her midterm preparations I decided a visit to the Big Apple was a necessity. The fact that she still had some studying to do left me with the opportunity for some birding during the daylight hours. So of course I woke up at [...]

After the Adirondacks on Saturday and an out-of-place oriole on Sunday why not my first two longspurs on President’s Day? Will, who you met Saturday, and I raced down the New York State Thruway President’s Day morning to meet Mike. Our mission was to find the Lapland Longspurs and Smith’s Longspur that have been frequenting [...]