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Sitting on my folks’ deck on a summer evening, after the sun has already dropped below the Catskill Mountains the song trills from darkened hemlocks.  When sleeping with the window open the same song sneaks through the screen impossibly early, when dawn is still merely a thought and no sunlight has cleared the horizon.  At [...]

On Independence Day, the 4th of July, I was sitting in the kitchen of my parents’ house drinking some coffee and sharing some homemade pancakes with Desi while my mother talked to my aunt on the phone about plans to meet at the Saugerties 4th of July parade.  After hanging up my mother mentioned, offhand, [...]

This past weekend had the family and me visiting my folks for Easter in my hometown of Saugerties, New York, “Where,” as the slogan says, “The Catskills Meet the Hudson.”  Because I am an absurdly early riser of late I had some time before breakfast on Sunday to get out for some birding.  The only [...]

My trip upstate this past weekend was about more than family, food, and feathers (though all three of those things figured heavily).  Somehow we also found time to look at a variety of cool insects, and, of the insects, we most appreciated the butterflies.  As regular readers here know, butterfly identification is not my forte, [...]

While in my hometown of Saugerties, New York, this past weekend there was one activity that I had no choice but to do early Saturday morning.  You see, my younger brother, Jonathan, found a guy selling a very nice canoe a couple of months ago and he bought it for an absurdly low price.  Ever [...]

Now that Daisy and I have a child our number of visits upstate have lessened dramatically.  The thirty-minute subway ride to Manhattan followed by the nearly-two-hour Metro North railroad journey to Poughkeepsie where a relative with a car picks us up for a forty-minute drive to Saugerties is more than enough without an infant in [...]

I spent my weekend in upstate New York with Daisy visiting my folks and we had a good old time eating far too much food, having far too much fun, and, somewhat unfortunately, considering some of them were of the biting variety, seeing far too many bugs.  The wet summer that has been the bane [...]

Folks might remember that last year I did what I grandly called an Anti-Global Warming Big Year, the idea of which was was to see as many species as possible while burning as little carbon as possible.  To offset the carbon dioxide released from a flight to California and back from my home base in [...]

Window feeders are great.  Especially when the birds that come to said feeders are used to people walking up to look at them.  They’re not so great when the squirrels learn that the window serves as an effective barrier to human intervention and start launching airborne assaults, commando style, from the roof to the feeders [...]

Daisy and I spent this weekend in Saugerties visiting my folks, and, as is only to expected when we spend a weekend upstate, especially when it is the weekend of the Great Backyard Bird Count, I spent quite a bit of time watching the feeders and photographing the birds that showed up for free food.  [...]

While home for holidays in I didn’t just go chasing after a Northern Hawk Owl.  I also watched the feeders frequently, often outside my parents’ house hidden in a woodpile.  Seriously.  In a woodpile.  You see, the woodpile is next to the deck which is where the feeders are, and the deck is attached to [...]

Though I did enjoy my birding with Will across the wilds of Greene and Albany Counties, most of my birding over the Thanksgiving Day weekend was done at my parents’ and and my aunt and uncle’s feeders.  My dad  had only put his feeders up about a week earlier and hadn’t drawn much of a [...]

Though I’ve been back in the city for almost a week I haven’t come close to using up all of my upstate birding tales yet!  Like the last time I visited my folks I spent some time photographing hummingbirds, but this time I was at my Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Paul’s house taking advantage of [...]

Way back when I started my Anti-Global Warming Big Year I decided that if I flew somewhere and stayed there for more than a couple of days I could count the birds I saw there provided I offsetted the carbon that the flight produced.  So I counted a bunch of birds in California that I [...]

Being upstate is great.  Not only do I get to see my folks, swim in their pool, and enjoy the great outdoors, but I also get tips about the locations of cool birds.  But I really shouldn’t have needed a tip to know the location of the Cliff Swallows I’ve checked out a couple of [...]

During my second trip upstate in the last three weeks (and after my second Big Day in as many weekends) I was up for some relaxation Sunday, and got it with my family. Of course, for me, relaxation includes watching birds, so the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds coming to my parents’ feeders featured prominently in my relaxation [...]

This weekend Daisy and I traveled upstate to my hometown of Saugerties for a wedding. We had a blast and my good friend Mary (whom I’ve known since we were geeky adolescents ) looked beautiful as she married Mathew, and I wish them the best. Now that we are geeky adults we are less concerned [...]

My contribution to the Great Backyard Bird Count this year, the first year I have participated, consisted of me sitting at the windows of both my aunt and uncle’s house and my parents’ house watching the feeders.  Of course I am aware that the Great Backyard Bird Count can include birds counted anywhere but I [...]

The eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is either a boon for those who consider them cute and like to watch their antics or a bane to those who want just birds to sample their backyard suet and seeds. While at my parents’ house over Christmas I watched the many, many, Gray Squirrels congregating around and [...]

As always when I am in the car, while Daisy and I drove to my folks’ house in Saugerties, NY, to join family for the Christmas holiday, I paid careful attention to any and all bird life I could see. I did not, however, expect to have yet another encounter with what is now by [...]