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It has been almost two weeks since the text message that said “Gray Kingbird Viera Wetlands.” The person who sent the text was the same person who sent the text message that had sent me running after a Grace’s Warbler less than a month earlier. How does a single birder manage to make me drop [...]

Today I shall weave a tale of dispair. A tale of jealousy. Of hopelessness. Of anger, fear, aggressioon….the dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your…..ahem. Let me start from the beginning. It was the year 2010. One Seagull Steve was living in San Francisco, on a [...]

Originally found on Saturday, 7 January, by Peter Priolo, the Barnacle Goose in these pictures has been present on Eastport Lake in Eastport, New York, since, though it does fly out to feed in nearby fields from time to time. I *ahem* coincidentally happened to be in the area on the day after it was found and [...]

On my way to work this morning I thought I would take a quick stop at Inwood Hill Park way up on the far northern tip of Manhattan.  The park is barely out of my way to my office in New Jersey so I figured I would be remiss in my birding if I didn’t [...]

Western Screech-Owl (Megascops kennicottii) photos by Larry Jordan It’s been an interesting winter in my neck of the woods. Birders in Northern California have been treated to rare sightings of several species, sending avid twitchers from all over the west in our direction. There is a Falcated Duck at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, Mountain Plovers and Northern Waterthrush near Sutter [...]

At 10:45 AM my phone beeped with a text message.  The message was only four words long. Within a minute I had let Daisy know that I would be gone for a couple of hours, grabbed my microwaving beef pattie out of the microwave, kissed Desi goodbye, grabbed my gear, and gotten out the door. [...]

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 [...]

On 22 December a birder named David Rankin was hiking in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York when a fellow hiker asked him what the bird that just flew off the trail was. Fortunately David had a camera because it seems unlikely that anyone would have believed his report of a Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, a [...]

It is one thing for a single hummingbird to show up at a single location in the northeastern United States in November.  In fact, it wouldn’t even be surprising to have several hummingbirds show up at several different feeders – western hummingbirds that have lost their way are becoming a more and more common occurrence of late. [...]

Until today the only Painted Buntings I had ever seen were in Honduras. And, despite their absurdly gaudy appearance, I am sad to say that those buntings were not given their due because of the sheer volume of insanely good birds that were there for the watching.  This bunting was different. This was an absolutely [...]

All twitchers will experience it at some stage or another. That most dreaded of disappointments. The dip. For those that might not fully comprehend, the birding slang-term to “dip” or to “dip out on” a bird is to go looking for a particular species and not find it. That bird can then be referred to [...]

Hoopoe Upupa Epops With a name like that you would just want to see this bird! It sounds good and it looks good….even a non-birder would be impressed! We saw these birds in Egypt in 1994 and they were just great and Grant saw 5 in Busan, South Korea a few weeks ago, just after [...]

When Mike still lived in the Bronx, lo those many years ago, he would regularly make the run up to Yonkers, in southwestern Westchester County, to visit the Lenoir Preserve.  Though he regularly sang its praises I never took the time to visit the small park along the Hudson River. That changed this week when [...]

The Brown Booby is a bird that helps explain why birders don’t always want to share what they are doing with non-birders.  Explaining to people that the main goal you have for a visit to Cape May is seeing a Brown Booby and you will, at the least, get an odd look.  Others will crack [...]

There are a few birds up here that, while we may find as just part of the fauna, others would foam at the mouth for a chance to see.  Ivory Gull? We’ve got those. Common Ringed Plover? In spades. Northern Wheatear? Of course. Breeding plumaged Lapland Longspurs, Red-throated and Pacific Loons? Yawn. http://youtu.be/w4r575oOJ8I But birds [...]

There was a time, a few years back, when I had some really good luck getting on a run of first state records for North Carolina.  There’s no denying the adrenaline pumping, heart pounding excitement that comes with the announcement – be it phone, or email, or text – of something that has never been [...]

My successful chase of a Northern Wheatear on Wednesday set my mind to churning and I decided to try to find something else to twitch on Friday morning before work. There were a host of great shorebirds in New York’s Orange County on Thursday early in the day but reports of roads being flooded out [...]

When you are a New York City-based birder that is pretty pleased with the amount of boxes ticked off on your New York State checklist you would normally want a rarity that you have not seen in the state to show up within an hour drive of your home.  But you do not want this [...]

After dipping on an extremely rare bird twice in two days I decided to further punish myself yesterday morning by once again braving New York City traffic on the trip from Forest Hills in Queens to Brooklyn’s famed Coney Island.  To add an extra level of difficulty I brought Desi along with me for the [...]

When Doug Gochfeld posted a belated report he had received of a Gray-hooded Gull* in Coney Island on the New York State birding listserv I was fascinated.  Here was a bird that had only been confirmed in the ABA area once before** and it seemed as if this bird was destined to be a single-observer [...]