When Drew first established this blog so many years ago, he christened the new site with a title based on one of the most evocatively named phenomena in birding. The concept of a nemesis bird is something most birders are familiar with, though the exact definition may vary from person to person. It could be that incredible vagrant you “just … Read More
Rufous Hummingbird – Somerset County, PA
Somerset County birder Jeff Payne has been hosting a beautiful immature female Rufous Hummingbird that was captured and banded by Bob Mulvihill to confirm the ID. On November 3rd, my friends and I were able to stop by and watch the hummer off-and-on for almost an hour before heading up to the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch for a PSO field … Read More
Rhode Island Photo Highlights
Last week, I took a little trip to the lovely New England state of Rhode Island. Anytime I visit the Atlantic Coast, I am always impressed by the bounty of birds available, even during days with little migration. Possibly my favorite aspect about that part of the country is the near guarantee of finding a lot of shorebirds. We don’t … Read More
Close Encounter of the Peregrine Kind
After enjoying Delaware’s 1st Anna’s Hummingbird on the morning of January 2nd Josh Lefever, Mark Mizak, and I drove towards Cape May, NJ. Our primary goal for the day was to spend some time birding Stone Harbor Point, one of my favorite birding locations in New Jersey. Stone Harbor Point rarely disappoints and more-often-than-not, we find species there that we don’t see … Read More
Provincetown Birding Part 2
Check out this link to ‘Provincetown Birding Part 1’. By 11:00am, we had arrived at the parking area for Race Point Beach.  Despite how dark and dreary it was, it wasn’t quite raining and the ocean wasn’t too choppy. Darker conditions often provide the most natural lighting while scanning with a spotting scope and it’s never very fun to sea-watch with … Read More
Storm Birding
As anyone in the United States should know, a large storm hit the mid-Atlantic last week, bringing strong winds and rain to much of the eastern United States. This powerful storm brought hundreds of seabirds inland, causing jaegers to show up on inland lakes and storm-petrels to be found flying around major rivers. Birders all over the region flocked to … Read More
Hurricane Sandy storm-birding at Bald Eagle SP, PA
Hurricane Sandy created perfect conditions for rarities to show up in Pennsylvania. I will admit I was skeptical of just how disruptive this storm would be. Hurricanes in the northeast tend to get exaggerated by the media, and they always seem to lose power quickly and break up once they hit land. But Hurricane Sandy was really the perfect storm; … Read More
PA Fall Migration Predictions – End of Oct: Part 1
October is a very special time of the year in Pennsylvania. The first week of the month there are still a ton of neotropical migrants around, but then their numbers start to drop off drastically. Coming to the rescue are the sparrows and raptors, which really excel during the second half of the month. Waterfowl also begin to trickle through … Read More
How we missed the Kirtland’s Warbler
[dc]W[/dc]hen we registered for The Biggest Week, Drew and I excitedly looked through the workshop and field trip offerings to pick something special to add to our week of birding. There was a long list of great field trips to area hotspots, expert keynote speakers, and birding workshops on the docket, but we found one thing that we knew we … Read More
Cape May Trip – Part 3
This is the third part of a series of posts about my recent birding trip to Cape May, which began with Part 1 and Part 2. After our amazing time with the roosting shorebird flock, we began to head south towards Cape May. Our plan was to camp down on Cape May Island, but before it got dark, we wanted … Read More
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