On July 1st, 2004 I joined a group of other teenage birders on a boat trip from Hog Island, Maine out to Eastern Egg Rock. This trip was part of a week long ‘Coastal Maine Bird Studies to Teens‘ program organized by Maine Audubon. The goal of out ride out to Eastern Egg Rock was to see the Atlantic Puffins that … Read More
Cape May Pelagic – Black-legged Kittiwakes
Famous for their massive nesting colonies throughout the arctic, the Black-legged Kittiwake is a common winter visitor off the east coast of North America. Occasionally, Black-legged Kittiwakes can be spotted from land but the best way to find them is to take a boat offshore and throw out some chum. Luckily that is exactly what we did on the February … Read More
Cape May Pelagic – Northern Fulmars
One of the species I was most excited to see on the February 4th Cape May pelagic was the Northern Fulmar. I had only previously seen one before – a molting dark type on a whale watching trip out of Santa Barbara, California. Luckily on the Cape May pelagic, we encountered 16 Northern Fulmars! All of the birds we saw … Read More
Cape May Pelagic – Northern Gannets!
As soon as it was light enough to see this past Saturday morning, when we left on the Atlantic Star on an all-day pelagic trip being led by Paul Guris of See Life Pelagics, we began to see Northern Gannets. Every so often, one or two gannets would pass by the boat fairly close. But then, later in the day … Read More
Cape May Pelagic – Razorbills, Common Murres, and a whole lotta Dovekies
This past Saturday I joined 40 other birders on a 12 hour pelagic birding trip off the coast of Cape May County, NJ. This trip was organized by See Life Paulagics and was conducted on the 110 foot Atlantic Star. Weather throughout the day was great, with winds around 10 to 15 knots and swells around 2 to 3 feet for … Read More
Photo Study: Black-headed Gull in Cape May, NJ
One of my target birds for our trip down to Cape May, NJ this past weekend was an adult Black-headed Gull that has been seen off-and-on for the past month and a half along the bayshore. My friends and I tried for this bird back in January and couldn’t find it and so decided to give it another chance yesterday. … Read More
Rarity Round-Up: A Four Day Birding Adventure
Click on links throughout this post to see our full eBird checklists and more photos for the locations mentioned! Last week I was sitting around campus with my friends Mark Mizak and Josh Lefever, thinking about the upcoming Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. We knew we would have four days free and we knew we wanted to go birding. … Read More
King Eider and Dickcissel – Cape May County, NJ
One December 28th, Anna and I made a slight detour on our roadtrip down to Florida, in order to swing through Cape May County and try to see a beautiful adult male King Eider that has been hanging out at the Avalon Seawatch. We started the morning off with a quick stop at Barnegat Light to pick up a few … Read More
Rufous Hummingbird – CMBO Goshen Center, NJ
On the afternoon of November 21st, two of my friends and I stopped by the Cape May Bird Observatory’s Goshen Center to search for the Rufous Hummingbird that had been seen there since late October. After about 10 minutes of waiting and watching the two hummingbird feeders, we saw the hummer shoot past us and land in a distant tree. … Read More
Ash-throated Flycatcher – Cape May
On the morning of November 21st, Nate Fronk, Josh Lefever, and I birded a few spots around Cape May before heading over to the Cape Island Creek to try our luck at finding the Ash-throated Flycatcher that had been reported there off-and-on for a few days. It was a great morning for birding. The rain was holding off and birds … Read More