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One of the most exciting aspects of bird migration in a coastal location is the potential for large numbers of birds to find themselves over the ocean when dawn breaks. They get to land as quickly as they can and sometimes can be found concentrated in large numbers. This isn’t fallout in the strictest sense, [...]

Saturday was set aside for birding. Redgannet was in town and had all day to get out looking for birds so I had booked us for the pelagic trip out of Freeport and our plan was to find his life Snowy Owl and then get on the boat and enjoy a host of alcids, gulls, [...]

Is there anything cuter than precocious fuzzy baby birds?  I don’t think so.  A recent visit to a nesting colony on Long Island’s south shore led to levels of adorable so high that diabetics are hereby warned to stay away from this post for fear that your blood-sugar levels might skyrocket through osmosis.  These baby [...]

Birding at the eastern end of Long Island in the depths of winter, especially a winter like we have had in New York this winter, is not for the faint of heart.  When you get out to Montauk Point at the eastern tip of the south fork of the island water surrounds you on three [...]

As if Cory’s Shearwaters, a Brown Pelican, and Royal Terns weren’t enough, Seth, Dave, Bobby and I made our way out onto the mudflats at Cupsogue Beach County Park as soon as the tide had receded enough to let us cross the deepest water without soaking our optics.  This is a different strategy then I [...]

On Saturday, for the second weekend in a row, my plan to get on a boat and search for seabirds off the tip of Montauk fell through.  Last week’s villain was a flat tire and this week the problem was a predicted lack of visibility at sea, a product of too much heat and humidity.  [...]

Five days ago Daisy and I, staying busy doing our post-bar exam babymoon staycation, went on a whale watching trip on the Viking Star, a vessel based in Montauk Harbor at the eastern extremity of Long Island.  The trip, one of three weekly trips organized by CRESLI (Coastal Research and Education Society of Long Island), [...]

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 [...]

Corey and I, accompanied by my good buddy Frank, had a blast on Long Island this weekend moving from one enticing ecosystem to another in search of rare birds. Corey already described the details of our avian-inspired adventures in delightful detail. Since I have a few images of our excursion I’d like to share, let [...]

Suffolk County, Long Island, the easternmost county in New York State, still has some pretty darn good habitat for the birds. Whether one is looking on a mudflat, listening in the pine barrens, or searching in a salt marsh there are birds to be seen. Which, of course, means that 10,000 Birds couldn’t let our [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

On Saturday I managed to drag Daisy from bed at 6 am and out the door by 6:30 on our way to some extreme Suffolk County birding. The plan was simple: drive out the Long Island Expressway to exit 70, head to a DEC bike trail where Yellow-breasted Chat and Northern Bobwhite were recently reported, [...]

After being chased out of Jones Beach by swarms of pernicious mosquitoes, Corey and I headed inland to observe arboreal avifauna. Sure, rain threatened and earlier attempts to spot songbirds were average at best, but if you’re not going to chase warblers on a Saturday afternoon in New York in the middle of May, when [...]

One of the most interesting aspects of knowing one’s avifauna is being able to recognize birds that don’t belong. Case in point, I received an e-mail the other day from Levittown, NY of all places with the following photo and a couple more like it: Photo by Joe Weinman Joe, the photographer, and his daughter [...]

For some people, the idea of waking up before dawn to board a boat plying icy winter waters for distant views of ambiguous seabirds DOESN’T sound like fun. What are these people thinking? Clearly, we’re not talking about birders; members of that group usually thrill to the thought of a February pelagic cruise. The Core [...]

The Core Team paid yet another visit to Long Island today. Those of you who know us are well aware that we are more closely aligned with New York City’s mainland axis than its island axis. However, we had to pick up a special cake from Babylon this afternoon, so we planned an all-day excursion [...]