I’ve often said that people who are more actively observant of the natural world around them are more acutely aware of the seasonal cycle. When you spend most of your free time watching the comings and goings of animals, you can’t help but notice the gradual, steady changes each day brings on our yearly journey around the Sun. This is … Read More
Beyond the Shelf Again
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 … Read More
Whiskered Tern – Cape May, NJ
The ABA area’s 3rd record of a Whiskered Tern was found early this afternoon by Louise Zemaitis and Alec Humann, flying around Cape May Point. Cape May has actually hosted the first two records as well; in 1993 and 1998. One of the former records eventually flew over the Delaware Bay and went to a collection of impoundments in Delaware for … Read More
Conejohela Flats – Black Terns and Stilt Sandpiper
This morning Ian Gardner and I took the short drive down to Conejohela Flats from Hershey. We arrived at 8:20am and kayaked around for 2.5 hours. The weather started off very windy with rough water on the river, and heavy cloud cover. Later in the morning, the wind died down and the sun came out. The water level in the area … Read More
SE Arizona Birding, Day 4 – Chiricahuas to Willcox
This is the fourth posts in a series of posts about my recent birding trip to SE AZ (links to day 1, day 2, day 3). On July 31st, Mark, Chris, Anna and I woke up early and watched the hummingbird feeders outside of the George Walker House in Paradise, AZ. We really wanted to pick up Juniper Titmouse here, … Read More
Desert Shorebirding!
A few of the cuckoos that we fitted with radio transmitters have gone missing, so this morning, Anna and I drove around to all of our cuckoo sites to search for them using our car-mounted radio-receiver. This ‘cuckoo-finder’, as we call it, has two yagi antennae’s, that work in unison to be able to pick up a cuckoo’s radio telemetry … Read More
Cordilleran, Dusky, and Hammond’s (not Least?) Flycatchers Near Boise, Idaho
Today Alex and I ventured out into the rain and headed for Mountain Home Reservoir. We birded the reservoir and added Black Tern to our Idaho list, and nearby at a small riparian area, found two new flycatcher species for our state lists. Alex spotted a Cordilleran low in some willows, a darker flycatcher that appears very yellow at first sight. … Read More