My baby sister and her husband live in University Park, Maryland . . . just a few miles outside of our nation’s capital. Their neighborhood is a beautiful suburb of lovely homes all meticulously landscaped, lots of green space and several small streams. This combination makes for terrific backyard birding. Saturday morning we woke […]
The snowiest March in memory, surgery recovery and the general demands of life have limited our birding since February. Yet there are signs of hope . . . the first Ospreys arrived in the area this week; a bunch of beautiful male Purple Finches suddenly appeared at our feeders this morning (first of year); and […]
Ingrid is a teacher, so nine months of the year . . . the idea of dropping everything to chase a rare bird is only a dream. I’m fortunate to work at home and rather independently . . . so I’ve been known to sneak out with binoculars and camera when there are birds to […]
Those of you that follow this website or use the Big Year Birding App know that we post to this site every couple days . . . namely because we are out Birding every couple days. But we haven’t posted in three weeks . . . here is why. I have a bad left […]
Winter continues to hang-on here in Maine. We usually see the first Ospreys about the first of April, but somehow this year I think they will be a little later than usual. We had originally planned to spend Sunday having brunch at one of our favorite restaurants which is closing for good in a month […]
After packing up the car to begin our journey home this evening, we were excited to get our San Diego Big Day – eleven straight hours of birding – underway. It was a chilly morning once again, but thankfully the temperature quickly rose to 61 degrees by 11:00 AM, and the fierce winds of the […]
We rose before dawn to begin our “Birding the Border” tour today. But then, what serious birding trip doesn’t begin with the human species rousing themselves from sleep before the avian? Wind and chill temperatures throughout the day kept the bird numbers low according to our guides, but you could not have proved that by […]
It was a chilly 39 degrees when we arrived at Lake Hodges for the “Dances with Grebes” guided walk. The grebes are Clark’s and Western’s. The western grebes do a courting ritual called ‘rushing’ that appears as dancing. [ngg src=”galleries” ids=”282″ display=”pro_mosaic”]We traveled down a winding trail, flat in placed and hilly in others through […]
The last two days have been getting to and resting up for the San Diego Birding Festival . . . which starts on tomorrow on February 22. Yesterday we has an 8 hour drive from La Grange to San Diego . . . a trip through almond groves, towering mountains and big city traffic jams. […]
On day #2 in La Grange, California . . . we got down to some serious Birding. (Day 1) Ingrid went on a hilly 6 mile run in the morning and got a lifer . . . a Mountain Bluebird. I spend a couple hours walking the roads and meadows near our son and his […]
As another 8 inches of snow was bearing down on the Northeast, Ingrid and I were cuddled up together in the back row of a United 757 jetting to California. We landed about 10:00 pm, jumped in the rental car and immediately started retracing our steps . . . driving due east for two and […]
The Brant is a long distance migrator. They breed north of the Arctic Circle and winter between Long Island Sound and South Carolina. They are occasionally seen in Maine while moving through during migration . . . but don’t stay very long. This winter, three Brants have taken up residence in Cape Elizabeth, Maine . […]
Ever have one of those days that everywhere you look you see the same bird? Today it was the Tree Sparrow. At lunch time today I set off for Durham, Maine . . . a Lark Sparrow was being seen at a feeder. While the Lark Sparrow is a common species in the west during […]
During a conference call, I caught a motion out of the corner of my eye. When I looked up I was surprised to see Sharp-shinned Hawk on the ground about 10 feet away (it had apparently missed a Juno under our feeders). The hawk immediately flew to a tree by the river, where it remained […]
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