You are browsing the archives of Trips.

Memorial Day at Sandy Hook was sunny. Memorial Day at Sandy Hook was windy. A strong south wind and a very bright sun battled all afternoon as we (we being Daisy, me, and various and sundry of Daisy’s relatives) tried to eat outdoors and enjoy ourselves at Sandy Hook, NJ. Of course, like the last [...]

I don’t know what is wrong with me. After a wonderful day last Saturday doing a Big Day in Queens I decided to do another Big Day upstate this past Saturday with Will from The Nightjar. The last two years when Will and I have done the Hudson-Mohawk Bird Club’s Century Run we ended up [...]

After walking what felt like halfway across Queens I arrived at Flushing Meadows Park and found it totally packed with people. There were soccer players, remote-control car racers, barbecuers, and a whole host of other folks enjoying the great outdoors. What there was not a lot of was birds. It was frustrating, to say the [...]

It was shortly after the Red-necked Phalarope that I had to make a pretty major decision. We, being Mike, Carrie, and me, had received word of an amazing array of wood-warblers in Forest Park, and were practically salivating at the idea of our first-ever Kentucky Warbler. Forest Park is only a quick drive north of [...]

A couple of weeks ago I decided to do a Big Day limited to the borough of Queens and traveling only on foot and by mass transit. Yesterday, Saturday the tenth of May, was the day that I chose to do it, in the hopes that migration would be in full swing without the earlier [...]

On Sunday, after returning from upstate, I hustled out the door as soon as I got home and made tracks for Forest Park. The local listservs had been loaded with reports of great birds in Manhattan and Brooklyn but hardly anything had been reported out of Queens. Somehow I doubted that the flood of migrants [...]

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 [...]

When the alarm went off at six Sunday morning I briefly contemplated turning it off and staying in bed. But the siren song of birding, represented by an American Robin greeting the gray dawn, dragged me out of bed and into Forest Park. The drizzlymist really limited the usefulness of my binoculars so I birded [...]

Seeing as Mike has already stolen the thunder of our best birds of the day (well, he did get better pictures) I figured I would mention a couple of the other species that were around after Mike departed Central Park to be a good father. There were a couple in particular that I wanted to [...]

Yes, it is time once again for the bad rhymes and horrific meter of a birding adventure described in verse. To set the stage I will say that Charlie flew in last Friday night and had to be back to his hotel to get ready to fly back to England by mid-afternoon on Saturday. This [...]

After my exhausting birding adventures with Mike, Charlie, Jean, and Patrick, which will soon be described in great detail, I’m sure, I had Mike drop me off at, no, not my apartment, but Forest Park! The sun was out and the afternoon was still young. My energy level was at a pretty low ebb though, [...]

When one is trying to see as many birds as one can in a year without resorting to an automobile one must not only see as many as the expected birds as possible but must also chase the rarities that can be chased. Chasing rarities, of course, is normal for any big year, but when [...]

This post is rather belated and the birding that will be described actually occurred last weekend.  I’m not sure how I managed to not write about this particular birding outing yet as it had all the hallmarks of a successful trip.  Anyway, last Sunday morning was sunny and not cold or windy so it was [...]

I really should have titled this post “I Love New York!” Why? Because where else can one be at their desk in their office near the end of the work day, get an email about a vagrant western bird in a city park, and be looking at it fifteen minutes after leaving said office? Nowhere [...]

No, by the title I don’t mean to imply that 6,667 birds were out birding at Jamaica Bay (Why would birds be out birding?  They would be out peopling if they were doing anything). The 2/3 of 10,000 Birds that headed out to the marvelous refuge were Mike and myself, Mike so he could see [...]

I got an early start yesterday morning in the hopes of finding migrant warblers in Forest Park. The rain and strong south winds we had the night previous had given way to strong northwest winds yesterday morning and sunrise was obscured by lots of clouds. In other words, it was a pretty gray start to [...]

On Saturday, a mere two weeks after having moved into my new digs in Queens, I decided it was time for a major birding expedition. After a week of examining subway lines and bus schedules and checking weather reports I figured that a ride on the E or F subway lines to Woodside to catch [...]

When discussing my birding plans for Sunday with some New Yorkers I was met with blank stares, queries about my sanity, and outright derision. Apparently, New Yorkers, at least non-birding New Yorkers, do not wake up very early on Sunday morning in Queens in order to take the F train all the way into Manhattan [...]

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn and was in Forest Park, binoculars and camera at the ready, when the first fingers of light hit the forest floor.  The birds weren’t quite awake yet.  I waited patiently and ended up seeing the same darn birds that I saw this past Sunday.  Not [...]

After a grueling ordeal yesterday, which involved loading the contents of my third floor, two-bedroom apartment in Albany into a ginormous U-haul truck, driving said truck to Daisy’s studio apartment in Woodside, Queens, and once again loading up the truck and then driving to Kew Gardens, Queens, and unloading the truck and getting everything up [...]