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
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
Ruddy Turnstone and banded Common Tern at BESP
Four of us went back out to Bald Eagle State Park this morning to try to find the Ruddy Turnstone again. As soon as we arrived at the dam, we saw the Ruddy Turnstone foraging down in the grass alongside Killdeer and Bonaparte’s Gulls. Twice the entire group flushed for some reason but then quickly resettled on the grass. The … Read More
Six Species of Shorebirds at BESP
This morning, I made a very quick run out to Bald Eagle State Park to see if any interesting birds were put down by the storm at the swimming beach. As soon as I pulled up to the beach parking area, I saw some Caspian Terns loafing with a few gulls. The Caspian Tern group contained 2 adults, 1 juvenile, … Read More
Semipalmated Plovers and Sanderlings at BESP
Yesterday afternoon Nate Fronk reported Sanderlings, Semipalmated Plovers, and Semipalmated Sandpipers at the Bald Eagle State Park swimming beach. I wasn’t able to run over yesterday, but first thing this morning Josh Lefever, Mark Mizak, Ian Gardner and I drove over and met up with Nate and Drew Weber. Four juvenile Sanderlings and two adult Semipalmated Plovers were foraging on … Read More
Storm Birding 8/28/11
With ‘Hurricane Irene’ moving up the east coast, and coming in it’s closest contact yet with Pennsylvania today all of us Centre County birders were excited to see if it would cause any interesting birds to stop at Bald Eagle State Park or any of the other water bodies in the county. Anna and I got to Bald Eagle early … Read More
New Jersey Birding – Part 3
For the fourth day of our trip, on the 22nd, we really didnt have anything planned, so we figured we would just spend some more time at the Avalon Sea Watch since we all had a great time there. So after a quick stop at Higbee Beach (where bird activity was basically nonexistent) we drove over to Avalon. As we … Read More