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Back when I was trying to figure out what I should do during my time at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival I was advised by Doug Gochfeld to check out “the Gull spectacle on the beach at Daytona Beach Shores.” Intrigued, I looked into it, and learned that enormous amounts of gulls feed [...]

As a form of entertainment, it may lack the sophistication of America’s Got Talent, but watching a gull trying to swallow a starfish is certainly compelling. Glaucous-winged Gulls in Vancouver’s Stanley Park can often be seen with a perplexed yet determined look on their faces and a starfish half in, half out (or two-fifths in and [...]

On the day after the most epic day of hurricane birding I’ve ever experienced I, like quite a few other New York State birders, was out again searching for one more storm-tossed rarity.  I decided to focus my attention on the coast of Queens both because I wanted to add some birds to my Queens [...]

Though they have a world-wide distribution and can be found on every continent except Antarctica, Caspian Tern Hydroprogne caspia is a bird that is not often spotted in Queens.  Before this past Saturday I had only ever seen one in Queens, back in 2007, and eBird only has records of nineteen different Caspian Terns ever reported in Queens, [...]

One of the benefits of working for a union that represents workers all over the state of New Jersey is that on occasion I find myself near a great birding location after having finished work for the day.  For example, a couple of weeks ago I found myself with several hours of daylight left and [...]

Common Terns nest in colonies.  The sheer number of birds packed together offer some protection to both the adult birds at the most vulnerable point in their lives and to the young.  Any predator that shows up will be dive-bombed by a host of terns all defending their own nest and offspring but collectively protecting [...]

There are foods that are not easy for the uninitiated to eat.  Pomegranate is one, especially if you don’t realize that the seeds are the food.  Lobster comes in its own armor and can be quite messy.  Lychee doesn’t even seem edible until you remove the tough outer layer.  It is always best to have [...]

A couple of weeks ago I posted a series of pictures of what I called “Ratty Summer Gulls” – gulls that are just plain ugly, especially when compared to, say, breeding plumage birds.  All of the pictures were taken on a single trip to Jones Beach in June.  The coolest bird of the bunch, a [...]

Until recently I had only ever seen a single Sandwich Tern.  It was back in July of 2009, the day that I saw more species of tern than any other day of my life, and I have no pictures of my first Thalasseus sandvicensis because I had managed to forget my digiscoping adapter that day.  You [...]

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 [...]

A big bruiser of a bird, the Glaucous Gull is nothing if not bulky.  It sometimes looks like a gull built from a child’s blocks, with its square-headed appearance and barrel-chested brawn.  But when Larus hyperboreus is viewed from the back of a boat as it fights for position in a chum line it transcends [...]

I could watch terns all day long.  Flying, hunting, calling, preening, or just sitting around, I find terns fascinating.  It just seems so improbable that creatures that live in the air and on land could evolve to catch creatures that live in the water, but, of course, terns can and do.  On my last visit [...]

Birds make other birds.  This is a simple fact of life.  Birders watch birds.  This too is a simple fact.  Sometimes birders watch birds making other birds.  This is kind of cool, kind of creepy.  Sometimes birders take pictures of birds making other birds.  This is kind of weird.  Sometimes birders share the pictures of [...]

On the pelagic trip off the coast of New York this past Sunday one of the highlights of the trip was seeing the small and graceful Black-legged Kittiwakes swoop into the chum, grab food, dodge the larger gulls, and maneuver back out of the crowd, all without seeming to expend any real effort.  Rissa tridactyla [...]

This past Sunday I mounted a full expedition out to Suffolk County on Long Island with Andrew Baksh, otherwise known as Birding Dude.  We saw a bunch of great birds (a full post on the day is in the hopper) but an Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) was easily the best bird of the day, at [...]