2019 was easily the fullest, most dramatic year of my life for birding. In contrast, 2020 has by necessity been a much more subdued affair. Birding close to home has nevertheless been unexpectedly rewarding, with no shortage of unexpected surprises spotted from my fire escape and at nearby Astoria Park. As the end of the school year drew nearer, the responsibilities of remote teaching gradually began to wind down. I was able to take a few small-scale trips away from my immediate neighborhood over the course of June, tracking down some old familiar favorites like Yellow-breasted Chat, Least Bittern, and Black Skimmer. Once our virtual graduation ceremony was behind us, I set my sights on a particular long-overdue target. My 2020 efforts have unsurprisingly lagged behind my usual pace for scoring the first lifer of the year.
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When I first moved into my Astoria apartment in early December, I immediately began keeping a “yard list” of birds seen around my new home. My expectations for the potential of this urbanized neighborhood weren’t particularly high, but I reasoned that watching for birds of note outside my window would be a fun way to pass the time between proper birding outings. Now, of course, the current state of the world is rather different than it was at the start of 2020. I wouldn’t have guessed that apartment birding would swiftly become the only kind of birding I could regularly partake in. When New York first implemented social distancing regulations, I was concerned that the struggles and stresses of this challenging new reality would be amplified by a lack of access to nature.
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My fondness for Snowy Owls is well-documented. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to live in a corner of the continent where sightings of these nomadic raptors are an annual occurrence. I’ve spent many a winter’s day trudging about on the barrier beaches of Long Island in search of Snowies. It was through such scouting efforts that I honed my field craft skills, gradually growing from a curious kid into a proper birder. Nowadays, my non-birding friends are quick to turn to me when they want to see an owl in the wild. I’ve managed to successfully connect a number of interested parties with Snowy Owls over the years, providing awesome looks at remarkable birds from a respectable distance. Most recently, my coworker Max accompanied me down to the South Shore for a February break owl prowl.
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Chasing Florida State Vagrants in January 2020 Birding has many facets, as many of us know. It gets us outside, exploring new and fascinating places we wouldn’t normally visit. It connects us with people we may never interact with otherwise. But one part of the hobby that really drew me in nearly 11 years ago and continues to do so now, is searching for and chasing vagrant birds. Anywhere in the world I go, I always try to put myself in the mindset of a local and shift my thinking to encourage myself to be fascinated with rare species that shouldn’t be in that region. From looking for an American Tree Sparrow in California (a bird common in Illinois in winter) to seeing a Spotted Redshank in Hawaii (after already having seen one in Indiana of all places), I always am up for a chase.
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My recent move from Nassau to Queens was one of the final big events in a very eventful 2019. A few months out, I’d consider myself comfortably settled in, and the pros certainly outnumber the cons so far. Somewhere in between “notably shorter, easier commute” and “return to reliance on laundromats” on the Cool-to-Lame Scale lie the changes to my birding schedule. Birding is such a major aspect of my life that it comes as little surprise it would be dramatically affected by a major lifestyle shift. As with the general process of relocation, the differences noted so far are a mix of good, bad, and unexpected. My new abode has a clear and present contender for a primary patch just a few blocks away. Astoria Park lies along the shores of the East River in northwestern Queens, directly southeast of Randall’s Island.
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Like many nature-based bloggers, I enjoy closing each year with a retrospective highlight reel. Ever since 2016, this personal countdown has taken the form of a Top 10 Lifers post, detailing the best new species I tallied during the preceding months. 2019, however, has been the undisputed biggest year of my life thus far. A pair of long-awaited dream trips finally became reality, and through these international adventures I racked up a year list of 753 species that includes 422 incredible lifers. That total also fails to take into account all of the wonderful people, places, and non-avian wildlife that I found along the way! To limit my celebration of 2019’s natural marvels to just 10 specific life birds seems unthinkable. As a result, I will instead detail the more general experiences that made this year so memorable.
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Who doesn’t love a Big Day? Any excuse to get out and count birds in the name of science is a worthwhile cause in my book. eBird has been orchestrating Global Big Day events each May since 2015, an international effort to record as many of the world’s species as possible within a 24 hour period. Last fall, the Cornell-based team launched an October Big Day initiative as an autumnal counterpart for the new spring tradition. With a clear schedule and a near perfect forecast on the horizon for the 19th, I was eager to contribute my own observations to the worldwide total this year. Stephane shared my aspirations, and he reached out to see if I wanted to coordinate our efforts to maximize coverage in Nassau County.
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Late summer is usually a busy time, filled with pre-work preparations and plenty of outdoor exploration as vacation ends and migration begins. This year I was fortunate enough to join a pair of offshore journeys with See Life Paulagics. The first was a two-day cruise from Point Pleasant, New Jersey on the Voyager in mid-August. The latter was a September overnight outing aboard the tried-and-true Brooklyn VI. Both trips visited the deep blue waters off the continental shelf near the mouth of the Hudson Canyon, and both trips, as expected, delivered plenty of great encounters with marine beasties. August 17-18, NJ Voyager Pelagic I have attempted to join two-day “extreme pelagics” on several occasions in the past, and my efforts have seldom worked out as planned. The main name in the game for double-length tours is the Brookline Birding Club, which runs biannual expeditions out of Hyannis, Massachusetts.
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As I worked my way down the slopes from O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, I made a few stops to bird some different habitats. At Duck Creek Road, I connected with another visiting birder who I’d seen up around the resort over the past 24 hours. I spent some time chatting with him as as we explored the woodland edges and open pastures along the road, where we watched Superb Fairywrens forage alongside Red-browed Firetails and tried unsuccessfully to get a visual on a Paradise Riflebird calling in the treetops. We swapped notes on our recent adventures and compared our upcoming plans; he was apparently headed to Papua New Guinea for an extended birds-of-paradise tour. I explained to him that I was headed inland, and I still had some miles to travel before I reached my bed for the night.
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On the morning of July 15th, my day was already a huge success before most Australians had gotten their first cup of coffee. It was difficult to leave the scenic shoreline and cooperative cassowaries of Etty Bay behind me, but I knew there was more excitement awaiting me to the north. With a motel booked for the next two nights in Cairns and my flight to Brisbane fast approaching, my focus shifted to the making most of my remaining time in northern Queensland. There was still no shortage of places, activities, and species that I wanted to fit in before the second leg of the vacation began! Working the Wetlands My first stop on the road back from the Cassowary Coast was Eubenangee Swamp National Park.
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