As Ingrid and I birded our way from Miami to Texas, we spent a night outside of Gainesville, Florida. The following morning we were up early to search for the secretive Bachman’s Sparrow . . . a non-descript bird that is best found when singing in the late winter and spring. We heard and saw […]
Yesterday, Ingrid and I toured the Miami, Florida area looking for Exotic Birds. Generally speaking, exotics are species brought to the United States from South America or Asia as pets. They escaped (or were released) . . . met up with a similar exotic of the opposite sex . . . and had babies. Many […]
Ethan and Ingrid’s 2024 Big Year (Week 6) A recap of the sixth week of our 48 State Big Year (2024), including time spent on the Space Coast, the Everglades and Fort Myers.
Species Spotlight – Vermillion Flycatcher Perhaps the most vibrant of flycatchers is the Vermilion Flycatcher, particularly the male with his bright scarlet and black plumage and dapper black eye mask. Females are brownish with just a tinge of red on the belly. Vermilion Flycatchers are typically found in the southwest, but like all birds, can […]
A recap of the fifth week of our 48 State Big Year (2024), including highlights from our trip from Maine to Florida.
With apologies to “I Love Lucy” fans . . . Ingrid and I have never been as impressed by Redheads as were today. Thousand and thousands of these beautiful ducks were packed closely together along Pea Island NWF on the Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina. If we see a single Redhead in Maine […]
After a storm delay at the beginning of our trip south (for real, not the fake kind that United Airlines likes to invent), today we made our way from Sturbridge, Massachusetts to Ocean City, Maryland. This, however, was not a non-stop drive as we had planned layovers in New Jersey and Delaware to look for […]
Ethan and Ingrid’s 2024 Big Year (Week 4) A recap of the fourth week of our 48 State Big Year (2024), specifically preparing for three months on the road chasing birds.
On November 1, in a controversial move, the American Ornithological Society announced that birds will no longer be named after people. For instance, the Wilson’s Warbler, named after the acclaimed 19th century Ornithologist “James Wilson” might be called the Black-capped Warbler or something similar. Meanwhile, the Ring-necked Duck . . . which really only has […]
A recap of the third week of our 48 State Big Year (2024), including highlights from the Sax-Zim Bog in Minnesota.
Ingrid and I are closing out the second and final day of our visit to the Sax-Zim Bog by sitting in front of a warm fire at the Alesches’ Accommodations, a lovely lodge located within the Bog. There are a number of other birders here and all are talking about everyone’s most sought after bird, […]
Greetings from the legendary Sax-Zim Bog … a location for birders equivalent to Wrigley Field for baseball fans or the Augusta National for golfers. The bog is 300+ square miles of mixed spruce, aspen, tamarack and pine forest, diverse animal life (wolves, deer and moose) and of course birds. And it is cold. Damn cold. […]
A recap of the second week of our 48 State Big Year (2024)
Ingrid recorded this Short-eared Owl, right about sunset in Richmond, Maine today. Note how the bird flies like a moth . . . in one direction and then abruptly in another. We saw two Short-eared Owl this evening over this expansive agricultural field. We’ve observed that these birds tend to chase each other for a […]
Ingrid and I drove back to Maine from New Jersey today, a bit giddy after seeing a Red-flanked Bluetail yesterday. Instead of driving directly home, we made a couple detours hoping to see a few more birds. Our first stop was an industrial park pond where we had seen an unusual goose at sunset the […]
About a month ago a birding friend invited me to join a roadtrip to New Jersey to see a rare RED-FLANKED BLUETAIL. The Bluetail is an Eurasian bird that can be found from Great Britain over to Taiwan. Over the years, there have been a few reports in North America (Alaska and California) . […]
Last night Ingrid and I travelled to Newburyport, Massachusetts to celebrate the New Year (ok, we were asleep before 10:00 pm) and to pre-proposition ourselves for Day 1 of our USA Big Year. We had learned where a difficult to find Long-eared Owl was roosting in eastern Massachusetts, and we were eager to add that […]
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