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Saturday was set aside for birding. Redgannet was in town and had all day to get out looking for birds so I had booked us for the pelagic trip out of Freeport and our plan was to find his life Snowy Owl and then get on the boat and enjoy a host of alcids, gulls, [...]

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 [...]

In December in the northeastern United States you expect snow.  In New York City so far this year we have only had a dusting from the Halloween storm that wreaked so much havoc elsewhere and since then the weather has been mild.  In fact, yesterday when I spent the day birding the coast of Long [...]

Autumn is a season of transitions and migrations, a slow descent from summer’s heat to winter’s cold. Sometimes blustery and rainy, sometimes warm and sunny, it is the second best season for birders, only beaten by spring. One of my favorite parts of fall is the long, drawn out duck migration, which seems to never [...]

Black Skimmers are another of those birds, like White-breasted Nuthatches, that people can’t help but like.  They have awesome bills that slice through the water in search of fish, they bark like small dogs, they have a cool color scheme.  It is impossible not to be amazed by skimmers as they effortlessly glide over the [...]

Mother’s Day weekend was deeded over to Daisy long ago.  I had no say in what we were doing or where we were going. Considering Mother’s Day is in early May and I am a birder this situation nearly gave me nightmares.  Fortunately for me I was only subjected to shopping for one afternoon and [...]

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 [...]

It is not every day that you get a phone call alerting you to a bird in your state that has never been in your state before.  But today just that happened when I received a phone call from Jean, a fellow Queens birder, about a Common Ground-Dove being seen well at Captree State Park [...]

This weekend was when I finally, finally, finally, after numerous failed attempts this year due to car problems and weather, got on a boat and went on a summer pelagic trip off the eastern tip of Long Island.  I had visions of shearwaters, jaegers, phalaropes, and skuas in my head when Doug and his dad, [...]

As if Cory’s Shearwaters, a Brown Pelican, and Royal Terns weren’t enough, Seth, Dave, Bobby and I made our way out onto the mudflats at Cupsogue Beach County Park as soon as the tide had receded enough to let us cross the deepest water without soaking our optics.  This is a different strategy then I [...]

On Saturday, for the second weekend in a row, my plan to get on a boat and search for seabirds off the tip of Montauk fell through.  Last week’s villain was a flat tire and this week the problem was a predicted lack of visibility at sea, a product of too much heat and humidity.  [...]

Pity the poor damselfly.  Damselflies make up the practically-ignored suborder Zygoptera in the order Odonata and are overshadowed by their flashier evolutionary cousins of the suborder Epiprocta, otherwise known as dragonflies.  Seriously, can you name a single species of damselfly off the top of your head?  Yeah, until recently I couldn’t either.  In fact, studies [...]

When we left our intrepid pair of birders we had thoroughly enjoyed the appetizers of seawatching and sparrow-seeking and were hungry for the main course of rare-for-New York terns.  Forgive me if I stretch the gastronomic analogy a bit too far, but Patrick and I could practically taste the Sandwich Terns that we were sure [...]

When last I birded with Patrick Belardo he was still cursed so I was really looking forward to birding with him again to determine if whatever evil had a hold on him had let go or if he was doomed to never again see a rarity.  Our plan this past Monday was to take a [...]

Fitting in an outing to see some birds has gotten exponentially more difficult now that I am back at work.  Spending time with Desmond and Daisy (don’t get me wrong, I love it!), putting the nose to the grindstone forty hours per week (which I love a bit less), and the fact that though the [...]

I’ve already shared some pictures from this past Saturday’s trip out along the south shore of Suffolk County looking for shorebirds.  The guy I traveled and birded with, Andrew, has already posted his account of the day on Birding Dude.  So why am I writing another post about the time we spent searching for birds?  [...]

Say the title of this blog post five times fast and I guarantee a life bird within two weeks!  Rather than do a full trip report from a twenty-shorebird-day with Birding Dude I’m just going to put up a few of my favorite pictures from the day and wait to do the full post until [...]

I have been fortunate over the last week in that my folks let me borrow their car, which means I’ve had transportation for which I get to devise schedules and routes for the first time in the over-a-year I’ve lived in New York City.  What does this have to do with anything?  Well, by virtue [...]

This past Sunday I mounted a full expedition out to Suffolk County on Long Island with Andrew Baksh, otherwise known as Birding Dude.  We saw a bunch of great birds (a full post on the day is in the hopper) but an Arctic Tern (Sterna paradisaea) was easily the best bird of the day, at [...]

When I posted a short blurb a couple of days ago about my plans to scour the south shore of Long Island in the wake of Tropical Storm Hanna I had anticipated maybe finding a good tern or perhaps a shearwater near the shore.  But after an hour or so of searching Jones Beach frustration [...]