Throughout the northeast lots of Gray Catbirds are migrating south on a daily basis. It is also peak falcon migration right now. You can probably guess that this combination isn’t going to fair too well for some catbirds…sure enough, today at the Cape Henlopen Hawkwatch we had a Merlin fly in after crossing Delaware Bay, drop down into the brush near the hawkwatch, and … Read More
Little Creek: Delaware’s Shorebird Hotspot for 2014
Alan Kneidel received a B.A. in Biology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2008. He has since contributed to a variety of research projects, spanning from the Arctic to tropical South America. He is currently a Master’s student at Delaware State University, focusing on the spring stopover ecology of trans-Gulf songbird migrants on St. George Island, Florida. While … Read More
Cape Henlopen Hawkwatch – September Highlights!
Ah…fall migration, my favorite time of the year! Warblers streaming through the trees, thrushes calling from the understory, and raptors filling the skies – all while the leaves slowly change color, and with each cold front we move closer and closer to winter. I am living and working down in Delaware for the season, and have been trying to make … Read More
Peregrine at Harvard
Moving from rural Pennsylvania to college in the city was a big transition for me. Part of this had to do with the birds. My yard list back home is up to 187 species, whereas my list here in Harvard Yard stands at a measly 28 species. This list does include some interesting birds: a Wild Turkey seen trotting down … Read More
Monday Morning Blues
My friend Mark Mizak found a kayak that he wanted to buy online, but it was in New Jersey. Mark is heading south to Florida for the rest of the winter before heading back to Montana to work as a wildlands fire-fighter. He offered to take Josh Lefever and I along to get his new boat on a day-trip to … Read More
The rewards of patience – Snowy Owl vs Peregrine Falcon
Our friend Tom Johnson has been getting some spectacular footage of Snowy Owls this winter, including the following video of a pair of Peregrine Falcons that did not take kindly to Snowy Owls that encroached on their stretch of the beach. With this huge irruption, it is interesting to think about how many Snowy Owls might have visited that stretch … Read More
Hunting for a Gyrfalcon
My friends and I always plan a New Years trip to kick off another year with a few days of birding the Atlantic Coast. This year the focus of our trip was clear from the start – there was a Gyrfalcon on Long Island. Reports had been coming in sporadically that the immature Gyrfalcon seen a few times last winter … Read More
Friendly Peregrine
It’s not every day that you hear the words ‘friendly’ and ‘Peregrine’ in the same sentence, but if you haven’t heard already there is a ridiculously tame and cooperative immature Peregrine Falcon hanging out towards the back end of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR’s Wildlife Auto Loop. Refuge staff have said that it isn’t one of the locally-hatched birds as … Read More
The worst bird in North America
The ABA has a lot of contenders for worst bird – American Crow, House Sparrow, Yellow Warbler. Some people hate Brown-headed Cowbirds for their uncanny ability to threaten the populations of the critically endangered Kirtland’s Warbler (one of the ABA’s best birds) among countless other passerine species by laying their eggs in the other’s nest. Personally, I rather like BHCO. … Read More
Owling in Ottawa – Part 1
After an eventful first day to our trip to Ontario, we were excited and ready to start birding around Ottawa. We had a hearty breakfast and made our final plans for the route we would take for the day. Due to the shear number of good birds around Ottawa, we were planning on dedicating the whole day to birding the … Read More