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New York City’s subway stations are a great place to observe Rattus norvegicus, otherwise known as the Norway Rat, the Brown Rat, the Wharf Rat, the City Rat, the Alley Rat, the Hanover Rat, the House Rat, and the Sewer Rat, among other names.  And while New York City, like cities on every continent except [...]

New York City is full of surprises.  For example, did you know that John James Audubon, you know, THE John James Audubon, the nineteenth-century painter of birds and mammals, the one with the birding and conservation organization named after him, has his final resting place in New York?  Well, he does, and a recent visit [...]

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’ [...]

Everyone knows that New York City is an extremely expensive place to live.  If one is lucky enough to find a place that one likes one must often pay in rent per month what would easily be a mortgage payment in a more sane part of the country.  So is it any surprise that free [...]

As of today, the first of March, 2009, I have been a denizen of the best city in the world for exactly one year.  Of course, this post was written in advance and I am actually celebrating my first anniversary of being a resident of The Big Apple from Honduras.  Though my body is in [...]

Yesterday we posted an article on the Monk Parakeet Myiopsitta monachus. Originally native to subtropical and temperate South America, Monk Parakeets now occur widely as an exotic throughout the United States - and there are even colonies in parts of Europe. How they got to these far-flung sites appear to be the result of a [...]

Oh the birds I saw Saturday on the cold and clear December morning.  The sun was out along with the hordes of tourists that clogged the paths in the south of the park but the three American Crows and several Blue Jays standing sentinel seemed more concerned about an accipitor than the humans on paths [...]

and bluebirds.  The birds I can see around New York City are great but it’s a real bummer that those birds are virtually not findable in New York City.  And Pileated Woodpeckers?  The closest I’ll ever come to a Lord God Bird aren’t available to the avid birder in New York City either.  Where am [...]