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As the Sun creeps closer to the horizon bringing with it more and more twilight my mind turns more to spring and the return of our migrants, still some four months away. It seems strange that I’ll miss the return of the Sun this year, as I leave this week for a trade show and [...]

Back in August we linked to an article about cuckoos that had GPS transmitters attached to them in England and how they had taken widely divergent paths to get to Africa.  Funny story about that – though they did take widely divergent paths they have come back together: Three of the birds, Chris, Martin and [...]

More than 4,000 migrating Eared Grebes came to ground in Utah with calamitous consequences, apparently mistaking large parking lots for bodies of water. Thousands of these unwise waterfowl perished, but thousands more have survived and are being tended to by government workers and volunteers.  Oh, the humanity! (hat tip to Patrick O’Driscoll)

Last week I was doing a birding tour of the east and west slopes of Ecuador and encountered some warblers that have already made it to Ecuador.  It is really amazing how far and how fast they can fly to improve the living conditions that assure their millenarian survival.  Here are a couple of pictures [...]

Every spring the wood-warblers come north bedecked in breeding finery and every autumn they head back south again in more muted colors. The trickle of migrants becomes a flood and then slows to a trickle again, leaving us New Yorkers with a host of Butterbutts and few other wood-warblers to tide us over until spring. [...]

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking successive autumns. – George Eliot Indeed….very much so. I think most birders can understand this sentiment, whether you care for the weather or not. As birders know, weather, going back to school, football, [...]

Mention that you’re interested in watching birds in Western New York, and someone will invariably ask you if you’ve been to Braddock Bay. The question makes sense, as Braddock Bay is synonymous with high quality ornithological research in New York west of Sapsucker Woods. Most locals have visited the Braddock Bay Raptor Research hawkwatch platform, [...]

Irene sends her love. As might be expected she was feeling a little weaker after crossing the Atlantic and wasn’t quite the ‘big lady’ that she was on your side of the pond. Let’s just say she’d mellowed a little on the journey over. She brought gifts of course and for those we’re mostly grateful. [...]

The verdant Appalachian Mountains, North America’s concerned forehead, stretch from the northern parts of Georgia all the way to the fir covered forests of New England.  Unbeknownst to most of the millions of Americans that live within a few hours drive of their misty peaks and secluded hollows, the ancient, topographically diverse Appalachians are one [...]

Labor Day weekend has passed, the kids are back in school, and it is now (un)officially autumn in the United States no matter how high the mercury rises.  Of course actual autumn does not begin until after the autumnal equinox which is on 23 September this year.  But try telling that to the birds, some [...]

Intentionally or not, the innovate scientists at William & Mary’s Center for Conservation Biology have been mapping out the impressive limits of Whimbrel ability. Long-time readers no doubt remember the adventures of Winnie the Whimbrel, who set a new distance record in the flight range of Whimbrels before she, in the tradition of other great aviatrixes, disappeared into [...]

The sky has been haunting me for days now. It is the featureless nature of the sea of blue, spanning from horizon to horizon, its neglect of offering a foothold to the wandering eye that binds my thoughts. They have gone. The dots in the sky, forming whirling, twirling and spiralling clouds, breaking into a dashing descent, tossing [...]

We are on the cusp of a massive influx of migrants. Well, massive being relative to where I am.  The trickle of new arrivals for here will soon be a flood. Most of the breeding birds returning here will arrive within the next 10 days to two weeks. Snow Buntings are usually our first to [...]

You’ve no doubt heard the famous expression, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain.” The pithy lesson contained herein reminds us that we control our own destinies, that if someone will not come to us, we must perforce go to them. But what if the mountain had come to [...]

To a birder, migration means that you can live in Minnesota, New York, Paris or Moscow and see exotic tropical birds such as Piranga olivacea and Icterus galbula on a regular basis without buying a plane ticket. The birds do the flying for you. Even if you don’t live in the summer range of a [...]

Migrating warblers typically pass through Cyprus from March until May every Spring – a fact that is sadly taken advantage of by illegal poachers. Their migration typically peaks about a week before the end of April however. Well, last weekend certainly held up to the rule, with April 22nd being a particularly good day. Sadly [...]

This spring has been rather lousy so far.  Like, really lousy.  Like, really cold, really wet, really windy, and almost completely lacking in days off work.  Of course, that is just my perspective and I have been known to think that birds that don’t show up until May are late if they aren’t here by [...]

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Jon Hagstrum believes birds may navigate home in migration by using Earth’s “low-frequency sound waves to identify the ‘address’ of home.” How would that work? “They are imprinting on the characteristic sound” of where they live, he told a crowd this week at a lecture at USGS headquarters in Menlo Park. [...]

My first sighting of an Eastern Phoebe each year is, for me, when spring officially begins.  I finally got my first phoebe of the year yesterday, Saturday, 19 March, a mere eighteen days after the first phoebe of the season was reported in New York City.  I actually ended up seeing two examples of Sayornis [...]

March and it’s like a switch flicks in birders brains in Europe, suddenly everyone’s ‘doing’ sub-Saharan migrants (or should that be trans-Saharan migrants and why don’t I know?). Birders the length and breadth of the continent salivating over the prospect of spring migration, hirundines, warblers, waders, scarce, rare; the excitement of that first Wheatear or [...]