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In the words of the A-Team’s indomitable leader, Hannibal, I love it when a plan comes together. I also love it when new birders come together. It all came together for me this past weekend, at least in terms of birding. The plan was first set in motion, though I didn’t know it at the [...]

The Queens County Bird Club field trip this past Sunday to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn was relatively well-attended, with eleven people present, and loaded with some of the more common species that one would expect in November.  Great Blue Heron, Green-winged Teal, Cedar Waxwing, Dark-eyed Junco, Common Loon, American Kestrel, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Belted Kingfisher, [...]

As we wrote the last time Chrissy Guarino provided a guest post, she is our “most prolific guest blogger” and with blog posts like these, well, we’re glad about that!  This is the second time Chrissy has written about banding Northern Saw-whet Owls on 10,000 Birds but this time she is focusing more on the [...]

So far in 2009 almost all of my birding has been confined to weekends, and most of it has been in local parks that I can access easily.  Of course, I have taken some trips that took me out of the the city, and, while going through the pictures I’ve taken on those trips I [...]

When a Northern Hawk Owl, normally a denizen of the far white north, was reported in Peru, New York, as a result of local birders combing the area for the Plattsburgh Christmas Bird Count I really wanted to go see it.  When Jeff Nadler posted his amazing pictures of the bird on his website I [...]

That notoriously bad Bergin owl luck seems to be breaking. Perhaps my recent expedition to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley cleared out the curse; after all, within hours of landing, I spotted a screech owl (Eastern or Mexican, you take your pick) in a Sabal Palm and two days later eyed not one but two Ferruginous [...]

In recounting my Rochester Snowy Owl encounter last week, I mentioned my new birding buddy, Laura Kammermeier.  Bill of the Birds made our mutual acquaintance but in spite of our efforts, we hadn’t actually found the opportunity to go birding together. Fortunately, we found time to make a run at the waves of White-winged Crossbills [...]

One of the prime benefits of living just a Great Lake away from the Canadian wilderness (e.g. Toronto) should be a bevy of winter birds. Every year, exotic owls and finches irrupt out of the vast boreal, often only as far as our northernmost counties. Well, if I lived any further north, I’d be eating [...]

When I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning the air was clear and cold and moving fast (by which I mean it was windy).  It had been weeks since I made a proper tour of Forest Park so I was out and about and looking for birds as quickly as I could get [...]

My first day of birding at the 2008 Rio Grande Valley Birding Festival was pretty stupendous. Would the second day hold up? Considering that we were headed to the celebrated King Ranch, the Lone Star State’s largest ranch in Texas and a haven for birds for over a century, all signs pointed to yes. After [...]

After exploring Van Cortlandt Park we three intrepid birding bloggers headed through the snow and traffic to Pelham Bay Park, which, at 2,700 acres, is the largest of New York City’s many parks. Our goal was to see as many species of owls as we possibly could and we felt good about our prospects as [...]

Long-eared Owls have long eluded me. Two winters ago Will found some roosting at Five Rivers, one of my favorite local birding spots, while I was in California. When I came home I scoured Five Rivers in the freezing cold and snow three times and never found a single owl but later found out that [...]

Christine Guarino is a serious birder in a funny hat. When she is not writing about chickadees, identifying out-of-place sparrows, or tracking down winter finches she stays busy educating future generations of birders in her job as a high school biology teacher. If you ever have a chance to go birding with Christine, take it, [...]

It was Friday night so what did I do? I went birding. Wait, on a Friday night? Yeah, say what you will, but I was out looking for my first Timberdoodles of the year. The cute, chunky, cryptically-colored, snipe-like, short-legged, long-billed, crepuscular, dancing and displaying bird had already been reported in the area and I [...]

So Will and I had spoken on Sunday and agreed to go owling on Tuesday night. We had both failed at checking off Eastern Screech-Owl or Great Horned Owl on our New York lists this year so we figured we’d take a shot at tracking down either silent nocturnal killer. Before Will picked me up [...]

After reading Mike’s post on Long-eared Owls at Croton Point Park a couple of weeks ago I was eager to get there for a shot at seeing the owls that have repeatedly eluded me. These owls were supposed to be steady, having roosted in the same stand of pines in autumn and winter for at [...]

Daisy and I took advantage of her spring break and one of my precious vacation days to spend the day birding in the Adirondacks. Normally students on spring break wear sunglasses to protect their eyes from the bright tropical sun in some place like Cancun. Not Daisy. She wore sunglasses to protect herself from going [...]

As you read yesterday Will and I had a marvelous morning (and early afternoon) of birding in the north country on Saturday. Driving back through the Adirondacks we saw a pair of Hooded Mergansers in open water in the town of Saranac Lake. Other than that we didn’t really see anything interesting on our drive [...]

In my previous post , I described a moderately successful owl prowl, in that I did spot an owl or two, obscured though those views may have been. But I ended the account with a cliffhanger, alluding to an even better owl sighting later that day. If you read the title of this missive, you [...]

Two owls in the Genus Strix populate North America. The first of these, the Barred Owl, is highly adaptable, common throughout the eastern United States and much of Canada, and in the process of expanding its range. The second, the  Spotted Owl, is sedentary, rare, and specialized, requiring very specific habitat to survive. The two [...]