You are browsing the archives of New York City.

Those who read this blog regularly might recall how this past December I was fortunate enough to have a close encounter with an overly confiding Ovenbird and at the end of April I was lucky enough to see an American Woodcock.  Both of these encounters took place in Manhattan’s Bryant Park, a couple of blocks [...]

The American White Pelican Pelecanus erythrorhynchos that was first reported from Jamaica Bay on Wednesday, 14 July, (and that I twitched on 15 July) was still present in the same spot as of yesterday.  Those who have gone looking for it in the afternoon during or after the high tide have not seen it while [...]

It’s not every day that one has a discussion about a spate of recent Common Raven Corvus corax sightings in one’s home borough.  It is even less common for such a conversation to lead to one of the participants claiming that not only are ravens common in his neighborhood but that they even nested there [...]

I have moved!  And by I, I mean me, Daisy, Desi, the cats, and, soon, Daisy’s mom will be joining us as well.  Our weekend-long moving odyssey went smoothly and the unpacking is mostly done, though I doubt it will ever be completely done.  Our wonderful new apartment in Forest Hills, Queens,  is light-filled and [...]

As everyone knows by now the eastern United States was hammered yesterday by a classic nor’easter which created blizzard conditions for much of the eastern seaboard.  New York City, where I live and work, was no exception.  My office near Port Authority was technically closed but I (was) volunteered to man the phones for the [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

When I got home from birding Jamaica Bay this morning I was greeted by an odd email off the ebirdsNYC listserv.  A rail, unidentified to species, but with a link to pictures taken by the finder, had been found in a vacant lot on the east side of Manhattan.  It was a Virginia Rail!  In [...]

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 [...]