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This fall was surprisingly great in Queens in terms of the fall foliage.  Brilliant yellows competed with rich reds for the eye’s attention and when a migrating bird paused in front of such colors, well, one could barely help but to gasp with wonder on occasion.  And though the species that are featured below are [...]

While wood-warblers are a wonderful type of bird to watch they are not the only species making their way south each fall.  Everything sparrows to shorebirds are moving through and it would be a poor birder indeed who failed to notice the flycatchers.  Though silent Empidonax flycatchers will certainly drive at least some birders nuts [...]

It is near the end of wood-warbler migration in New York City; the hordes of Yellow-rumped Warblers have descended upon us and it has been quite some time since earlier migrants like Worm-eating Warbler have been reported.  Now is the time of Blackpoll Warblers, Palm Warblers, and small amounts of late lingering migrants sprinkled in, [...]

This week I managed to squeeze one full morning of birding in at my favorite birding site, Forest Park.  Tuesday morning was sunny but a bit cool, the lower temperatures a reminder that while it is technically still summer we certainly won’t be getting any more beach days this year.  Working the late shift at [...]

Ah, the first day of September.  The air was crisp, clean and cool after overnight northerly winds, and the trees in Forest Park were alive with migrant wood-warblers that had been a couple of hundred miles north a mere twelve hours earlier.  As I strolled through the park the high-pitched twitterings of a big flock [...]

So this past Sunday was really a banner day for me birding and photographing birds in Queens.  In addition to the Scarlet Tanager and Wilson’s Snipe I also managed to get to the waterhole to see a Philadelphia Vireo found by Seth Ausubel, a stellar Queens birder, before I arrived.  The bird had made two [...]

May is the month of migration in North America.  Sure, some species move earlier and, of course, in the fall everything turns around and goes the other way, but May stands out as the month when birds that haven’t been seen since the previous fall come back in natty new breeding plumage and blow birders’ [...]

You don’t need to be a birder to know that most birds above the equator fly from temperate northern climes to more tropical southern locales for the winter. Changes in light, temperature, and food availability trigger the instinct to migrate, an urge so powerful that only a really well-stocked backyard bird feeder can override it.
Migratory [...]

Monarch Butterflies, as they do every fall, are heading south for the winter.  Along the coast one can see pretty big numbers of them, especially on days when wind out of the north carries them to the shore.  I am always amazed by long migrations, but it is usually birds I think of when considering [...]

As connected as it seems our North American bird blogging network is, it sometimes feel very removed from the greater international birding culture. For example, did you know that this month, people all around the world are participating in the 2008 World Bird Festival?
The 2008 World Bird Festival is a month-long celebration of the cultural [...]

Alas, poor Winnie! I knew her, Horatio, a Whimbrel of infinite jest…
Winnie the Whimbrel, celebrated shorebird migrant, is lost and presumed to be no more.

When we last left Winnie, she had just set a new distance record in the flight range of Whimbrels, traversing more than 3,200 miles from the Delmarva Peninsula to the McKenzie [...]

I haven’t had any major birding expeditions over the last week and a half but I have had several small ones.  Now that fall migration has picked up a bit I am hitting Forest Park often again, savoring every last warbler, vireo, and flycatcher that I can spot, knowing that each time I see a [...]

You’ve undoubtedly heard of Minnie the Moocher and maybe even Willie the Wimp. Well, now we can turn eyes brimming with admiration towards a new hero, a supreme shorebird who just flew 3,200 miles (5,000 kilometers) over a span of no more than 146 hours. Presenting Winnie the Whimbrel!

The reason we know about this epic [...]

Spring migration is just heating up around here so I’ve been stealing odd hours in the nearest stretch of decent habitat. Riverdale Park is a thin ribbon of greenspace along the steep northwestern border of New York City. I’ve never found this park to host a truly impressive array of birds; the sightlines are poor [...]

By now, Christine Guarino, a regular Welcome Wednesday contributor, needs no introduction. If you don’t know who she is, you can get an idea by reading her previous contribution about banding owls and her tale of chasing an elusive gull. And we 10,000 Birds bloggers think her phrase “unambiguous amphibious” is pretty [...]

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 [...]

The promise of spring migration lies in both potential and certitude. As we welcome back favorite fair-weather friends arriving with clockwork precision, we also hold out hope for the surprises that invariably come to the vigilant. Here are a few of my observations from a week of very limited bird watching:

Cuckoos have always seemed exotic [...]

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 Core Team stayed close to home base these past few days, but there’s no way I could let the weekend wave of migrants wash over without dipping my toe in a little. Central Park has been flooded by both songbirds and bird watchers, with new species of the former being tallied by the latter [...]