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Phenology is a vital science. Among other things, it has provided some of the earliest and most compelling evidence for global warming. It also lends itself to the interested amateur; all you need is a notebook and a willingness to observe. But good phenology is hard. It requires an ability to look at the familiar [...]

Yesterday, Corey posted that winter had finally gotten to New York, and he went on to show off with a series of mouth-watering winter birds. Well, to be honest, I wasn’t so excited about the junco, but the owl, hawk and crossbill really got the juices going. And a Glaucous Gull is always a treat. [...]

It is finally winter in New York!  This year it was only a couple of months late – not that I am complaining. But, as all good things must, our warm and nearly snow-less season had to come to an end and this weekend it finally did with a blast of arctic air and small [...]

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, [...]

Up until January of this year our airport was at Nanisivik, 30 kms away from town. It was built there to serve the now ghost town, Nanisivik, and Arctic Bay. Besides being a long way from town it had weather issues. At 2200 feet on a mountain top, they built it in a cloud. One [...]

Any season is good for looking for birds if you have the right mindset. Sure, in many locations spring and autumn are the highlights if all you care about are numbers. To the more rounded birder, however, any season provides opportunities to see interesting birds doing interesting things. Winter is often seen as a rather [...]

It has been virtually forever since I last visited Jamaica Bay.  And by virtually forever I mean, of course, that it has been since 20 September, over four months, since I last laid eyes on the West Pond, the North Gardens, or any other portion of the wonderful wildlife refuge that has provided so many [...]

When winter settles down birding can occasionally seem a little repetitive, even the Internet forums and blogs can dry up with little new material. Birding in Britain this winter however has been anything but repetitive with some great birds offering not only a refreshing blast of newness amidst the snow, mist and drizzle but fuelling [...]

It is not every day that the beginning of a birding outing consists of calling 911, but that is how my walk around Meadow Lake started today.  Just as I was getting to Flushing Meadows Park I noticed a plume of smoke coming from scrub on the northwest side of Willow Lake, close to the [...]

Maybe you’ve seen the news, or read it on another blog but here in the UK we’ve had a drop of the white stuff. It closes schools, causes chaos on the roads and has the British media almost falling over themselves to highlight our plight. Whilst the snow that came at the end of November [...]

Over the past week, a prolonged and unusually warm autumn has come to an end in western Montana. Snow is on the mountains, and has even made a brief appearance in the relatively sheltered valley where Missoula lies. Wind chills of ten to twenty degrees below zero are predicted as gusts of up to 35 [...]

In New York City the heat hits you in the gut when you leave the comfort of an air conditioned building, forcing you to blow from your lungs the last of your artificially cooled air.  Your next breath feels like a a burst of greasy, gritty fire in your chest and the sweat is already [...]

Having a borrowed car for a week is much less fun when a blizzard hits and one has to dig said car out of about a foot a snow plus what the plows pile on top.  Daisy knew I was a bit bummed about having a car for a week and only managing to take [...]

As everyone knows by now the eastern United States was hammered yesterday by a classic nor’easter which created blizzard conditions for much of the eastern seaboard.  New York City, where I live and work, was no exception.  My office near Port Authority was technically closed but I (was) volunteered to man the phones for the [...]

This past Sunday was the Queens County Christmas Bird Count, my second living in the borough and doing the count.  We originally were scheduled to do the count on 20 December of last year but, well, weather got in the way so we had to put off the count for two weeks.  Anyway, when Sunday [...]

The nor’easter that blanketed the east coast of the United States did not leave New York City unscathed, and the birds are flocking to the Forest Park feeding stations after the first serious snowfall of the season.  With about a foot of snow down in Queens, many of the natural food supplies that birds were [...]

This year, Monday, 21 December, is the winter solstice, often known as the shortest day of the year, at least for those in the northern hemisphere.  The winter solstice in 2009 will feature nine hours and sixteen minutes of daylight in New York City, with the sun rising at 7:16 AM and setting at 4:32 [...]

The weather forecasts for this week in New York City indicate that temperatures will be dropping into the thirties on the Fahrenheit scale during the overnight hours for most of the week. For those of us well north of the equator the idea that it is December and winter is coming and bringing with it [...]