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The Tennessee Warbler is a poster child for the boreal forests of Canada and the far northern United States.  Its population actually fluctuates in response to the availability of Spruce Budworm and though it nests on the ground it is entirely inseparable from the forests of the north during breeding season.  As autumn arrives and the days [...]

Every spring the wood-warblers come north bedecked in breeding finery and every autumn they head back south again in more muted colors. The trickle of migrants becomes a flood and then slows to a trickle again, leaving us New Yorkers with a host of Butterbutts and few other wood-warblers to tide us over until spring. [...]

On 6 October I came across an American Redstart in Edgewater, New Jersey, that seemed perfectly normal at first, when I was only viewing the bird’s left side.  It was foraging and even flycatching like any other redstart would.  When I saw the bird’s right profile I realized something was wrong but it took me [...]

Yesterday evening I returned to Kissena Corridor Park, site of an amazing array of rare and difficult-to-see birds over the weekend, and enjoyed birding with some fellow Queens birders.  We refound several of the birds that had been seen earlier in the day and on Saturday.  But the wood-warbler in these images caused a disagreement [...]

There were 1,805 pairs of Kirtland’s Warblers found in Michigan this year, second only to 2009′s 1,813.  The population has stabilized with neither increases nor decreases of greater than five percent since 2007.  A couple dozen pairs also nest in neighboring states and provinces.  Of course, Kirtland’s Warbler isn’t out of danger and won’t be [...]

It is not every day that one gets a taste of Cape May while at Magee Marsh.  In fact, this might be the beginning of some kind of birding black hole that sucks all of the birding world into a single spot (though it feels that way right now with nearly 1,000 birders having gathered [...]

I have taken refuge on the high ground as Irene batters the east coast of North America and Nanmadol swamps the Philipines, Taiwan and east China, but my thoughts and best wishes are with anyone who has been affected by the storms. If Mexico City itself was not high enough, the mountains to the south rise above [...]

On the same day that I tracked down and digiscoped Cerulean Warblers at Doodletown Road I had the genius plan of also getting over to Sterling Forest State Park and digiscoping some of the Golden-winged Warblers that breed there.*  Now those who bird in New York State regularly are probably shaking their heads right now [...]

There are many reasons to visit Doodletown Road in Bear Mountain State Park, a jewel of a park in Rockland County, New York.  Perhaps it is the history of Doodletown that interests you?  Maybe you are hoping for an encounter with Crotalus horridus, otherwise known as the Timber Rattlesnake?  Or could the steep uphill climb [...]

Lumpers, rejoice!  Splitters and armchair tickers, cry into your beer.  The Yellow-rumped Warbler will remain the Yellow-rumped Warbler, at least for the foreseeable future, and will not be split into two, three, or even four species.  That is, if you believe in the authority of the American Ornithologists Union, which voted down a proposal to [...]

You’ve no doubt heard the famous expression, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain.” The pithy lesson contained herein reminds us that we control our own destinies, that if someone will not come to us, we must perforce go to them. But what if the mountain had come to [...]

Note: This is an account, originally published in June 2006, of my quest to remove a jinx bird from my bird-watching soul. I am sharing it again here, at the request of Corey Finger, who takes some sort of sick pleasure in seeing other birders squirm and suffer under the weight of their obsession with [...]

It really has been great to see such beautiful pictures of wood-warblers all week, especially when it has been so long since we saw any in the USA. It made us reach for our field guide for North America, but that really does not compare to the real thing. I had spent several holidays with [...]

This is, simply enough, a gallery of wood-warblers that have cooperated and stayed still long enough for pictures to be taken this spring.  Some of these shots are not the most gorgeous of images but they were all taken this spring, which means that sometimes I had to take what I could get.  Wood-warbler photography [...]

It has been an interesting experience to visit two destinations on the east coast and compare the advance of spring from one to another. Washington DC was sunny, warm and flushed with green on Easter Sunday. 48 hours later however, Boston, Mass., was gloomy, chilly and the trees were still bare. Early leafers like the [...]

In this post, we shall celebrate the beauty and variation of a veritable wood-warbler whose taxonomic inclusion into this glamorous group has been overlooked far too long, whose charisma has thus tragically and largely gone unnoticed and whose beauty has been severely under…   mis…   err …  [coughs] estimated wrongly until very recently. Ladies and Gentlemen, [...]

I first met Jacob Drucker within a month of my moving to New York City.  He was with a group of young naturalists pulling invasive plants out of Forest Park.  Since then I have only been able to stand back and watch in awe as he has become an amazingly good birder, with the advantage [...]

Lloyd Spitalnik is a well-known New York City based birder and an exceedingly accomplished bird photographer. His work has appeared in such publications as Audubon, Natural History, Birder’s World, Wildbird, Birding, The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and WWF Songbird calendars.  Lloyd is one of three men responsible for the annual Jamaica Bay Shorebird [...]

“Kommt Zeit, kommt Rat.” [old German proverb] “Kommt Zeit, kommt Art.” [old Jochen birding proverb] May 2005 was a very good month for me. Why? Oh, because I got to spent the entire month birding around the Great Lakes, and how cool is that!? May + Birder from Overseas + time to bird = birding frenzy at [...]

GLEN ROSE, TX,  MARCH 2007 – The Golden-cheeked Warbler (Dendroica chrysoparia) is one of the United States less accessible avian species. The golden-cheek closely resembles its cousin, the Black-throated Green Warbler, but its coloration is high contrast black, white, and brilliant yellow. This lovely little wood warbler winters in Mexico and Central America, migrating only [...]