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Snowy Owls are iconic birds. You rarely find a person – birder or non – who doesn’t want to take a good long look at a bright white owl. And, of course, you rarely meet a photographer who doesn’t want to take a good close picture of a bright white owl. On Saturday, as has [...]

Richard Fried spent 2011 doing a New York State Big Year and managed to top the record of 350 species which was only set in 2008 by Scott Whittle. Richard totaled 352 species, an impressive number, by seeing almost all of the regularly occurring New York birds and the vast majority of the rarities that [...]

Originally found on Saturday, 7 January, by Peter Priolo, the Barnacle Goose in these pictures has been present on Eastport Lake in Eastport, New York, since, though it does fly out to feed in nearby fields from time to time. I *ahem* coincidentally happened to be in the area on the day after it was found and [...]

As of today, 8 January 2012, the Mountain Bluebirds in New York’s Suffolk County and Ontario’s Wellington County are both being seen. Both have stuck it out for awhile now and neither shows any signs of moving on, odd for birds that, from what I understand, tend to stick for a brief time when they [...]

At 10:45 AM my phone beeped with a text message.  The message was only four words long. Within a minute I had let Daisy know that I would be gone for a couple of hours, grabbed my microwaving beef pattie out of the microwave, kissed Desi goodbye, grabbed my gear, and gotten out the door. [...]

What is there to say about a Mountain Bluebird, a bird of the west, of high elevation grasslands, of the Rocky Mountains, in New York State? What is there to say, that is, other than “Wow” as you head out the door to track it down? First found on Monday by Lenore Swenson and Diane [...]

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, [...]

Hey, New York birders!  Yeah, you with the sheepish look on your face!  You just enjoyed one of the most epic days of birding our state has ever experienced and you haven’t filled out any reports for the New York State Avian Records Committee yet, have you?  For shame!  Angus Wilson, King of NYSARC, is [...]

There were three of us that made the trip to the famed Black Dirt region of Orange County, New York yesterday.  We had as our goals spotting the reported Cattle Egret and Blue Grosbeaks and as many shorebirds as could be found in the flooded environs.  You see, the Black Dirt region, an agricultural area [...]

When you are a New York City-based birder that is pretty pleased with the amount of boxes ticked off on your New York State checklist you would normally want a rarity that you have not seen in the state to show up within an hour drive of your home.  But you do not want this [...]

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 [...]

There might be some question as to if the birding that resulted from Hurricane Irene on Sunday, 28 August 2011, was the best birding ever in New York State but any day that can even be entered into that conversation is going to feature some amazingly good birding.  Though I have already detailed my experience [...]

Like most birders in the path of Hurricane Irene I couldn’t wait for the storm to arrive and pass because I couldn’t wait to get out searching for birds driven north and to land by the powerful wind. Neither having to spend a day reading about the terns that showed in North Carolina on Saturday [...]

Bird blogging is a privilege, in that recounting one’s birding excursions is a lot more fun when an audience actually follows the action. I’ve always loved sharing the details of my trips, but discovered early that writing the same species over and over became dreadfully tedious. Back in 2007, I tried to streamline my bird [...]

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 [...]

When I was in sixth grade I went on a field trip to Storm King Art Center, a huge (500+ acres) outdoor museum loaded with cool sculptures that were very fun to climb on and swing from until we got yelled at and threatened with all kinds of dire consequences if we didn’t behave ourselves [...]

This past Sunday was a hot sunny day in New York and the family and I took full advantage of it, exploring Rockefeller State Park Preserve, a pretty park in Westchester County, not too far north of the Bronx.  The trails that wound through woods and across meadows were wonderful and the lake, though small, [...]

Way back on 30 October of last year a Lewis’s Woodpecker was seen coming to a backyard bird feeder in Ontario County, New York, and was quickly identified.  Why is that awesome?  Well, first of all, Lewis’s Woodpecker is one of the most amazing woodpeckers in North America, with a color scheme of pink, red, [...]

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 [...]

Back in 2007 when I was doing my New York State big year I dipped on a Tufted Duck way up in the northeasternmost part of the state when Jory, Will, and I couldn’t find the bird on Lake Champlain.  Perhaps the same Tufted Duck was on Lake Champlain again last winter but with a [...]