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This is just a quick post to share two of the latest birds that made it onto my year list after a quick run to Doodletown and to Mine Road on Saturday morning. The Orange County / Rockland County border by the Hudson River, where Bear Mountain State Park, Harriman State Park, and the United [...]

Being a birder and living in Queens as I do I can’t help but be drawn to the waterhole at Forest Park during spring migration. The waterhole, an unassuming little vernal pool, is often the only water in the eastern half of Forest Park which means that any bird that wants a bath or a [...]

Queens, New York, Spring 2010 This blog post has one purpose and one purpose only; to showcase the amazing array of wood-warblers that made their way to the Forest Park waterhole during spring migration in 2010.  There are a couple of species of which I wish I had gotten better pictures (especially Cape May Warbler), [...]

“Sweet-sweet-sweet I’m so sweet!” “Sweet-sweet-sweet I’m so sweet!” “Sweet-sweet-sweet I’m so sweet” When you are walking through habitat suitable for Yellow Warblers in late April and throughout May you can be forgiven for thinking that the little yellow birds want you to lick them like a lollipop. They sing hidden behind thick tangles and perched [...]

This will be a quick and happy tale. I was at work in New Jersey. An email went out over the listservs that Eric Miller had found a Golden-winged Warbler at Crocheron Park in Queens. I got out of a work a bit early and drove to Crocheron Park. After about a forty-minute vigil the [...]

I sort of feel it’s sort of my duty, as the 10,000 Birds beat writer covering the southern tier of the continent, to be the bellwether of goodies to come, the sherpa of spring, if you will (please don’t).  You see, “spring” in the sense that birders in the far northern reaches experience it, has [...]

Wood-warbler mania has taken over my brain leaving me unable to do much but look for wood-warblers, dream of wood-warblers, and devise plans as to how I can see more wood-warblers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that this time of year I am pretty much a one-trick pony, a single-track record, a birder stuck in [...]

In New York, as is the case across most of the area where the “eastern” wood-warblers migrate, there are four species that are almost always the first to appear. Palm Warblers, with their tail-pumping and low-foraging habits, tend to get much of the attention. The Louisiana Waterthrush announces itself with loud chip notes and a [...]

Nothing frustrates me more than a report of a good bird that reaches me while I am at work or on my way there. And the frustration is magnified all the more when the bird, like the one Thursday morning, is reported from Queens and is also one that I have not yet seen in [...]

I was thrilled to be seing warblers so early in March, until I remembered that Townsend’s Warblers can be seen along the west coast during the cold months. This didn’t detract from the pleasure of finding one of North America’s most strikingly marked wablers. A quick search in the archives here at 10,000 Birds found [...]

For far too long there has been a bird that North American birders have mocked, derided, persecuted, hated, and, perhaps worse of all, ignored.  It is a common bird, seen in cities, suburbs, and agricultural lands.  One reason it is so widely disliked is its ubiquity, another is the fact that it is an introduced [...]

In between moments of staring at and trying to photograph distant Snail Kites at Kaliga Park on East Lake Toho in St. Cloud, Florida, Doug, with whom I had been birding all day long, found a Yellow-throated Warbler foraging behind us. And while Snail Kites are awesome, especially when you are adding them to your [...]

On my last visit to Bryant Park I not only spent time photographing the wintering birds there but also carefully watching them, trying to figure out how such a small urban park with so little proper habitat could possibly be providing enough food for birds that aren’t used to a diet of bread crumbs and [...]

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. [...]

We light the oven so that everyone might bake bread in it. -José Martí For the second time in three years there is an Ovenbird hanging around in Bryant Park well into December. I am convinced that, like José Martí, the Ovenbird seeks to nourish the masses.  But instead of feeding the Cuban masses hungry [...]

We birders birders on the eastern half of the continent are quite familiar with the ubiquitous Northern Parula, whose buzzy song is often one of the very first new birders learn because of its pervasiveness at nearly every spot in the east from mid-April on.  Before the callous lumping of all those warblers into the [...]

I think most of us in North America have come to the somewhat disappointing conclusion that fall migration is pretty much finished for the year. I mean, once the Dark-eyed Juncos start showing up there’s really no denying it, is there?  You’re done.  You might as well hang it up and learn to enjoy the [...]

Last week I was doing a birding tour of the east and west slopes of Ecuador and encountered some warblers that have already made it to Ecuador.  It is really amazing how far and how fast they can fly to improve the living conditions that assure their millenarian survival.  Here are a couple of pictures [...]

Though it was pretty warm for an October morning when I spotted this bird at Fort Tilden, Queens, it was fluffed up as if it was suffering from extreme cold.  Maybe it was trying to be a big tough guy considering the volume of sparrows in the vicinity of where it was foraging?  Somehow, I [...]

One of my greatest joys is photographing birds out my big studio windows. I have lots of plants that attract birds; clumps of gray birches, mulberry trees; a hummingbird garden lousy with salvias and fuchsias. Fuchsia “Gartenmeister Bonstedt” is one plant that’s a must-have for me, so much so that I save it over the [...]