Birding has been good

With spring migration in full swing now, and no nasty weather to stop it sightings have really picked up. I was lucky enough to go home to Pennsylvania for a day and was able to find 7 species of warbler close to Lake Ontelaunee, one of my favorite places to bird in my county. My [...]

Great Turtle Race

Get This Widget!Great Turtle Race

So I found this great website where you can follow The Great Turtle Race. It’s a little more fun than Rat Race but maybe not quite as exciting. Eleven Leatherback Sea Turtles are being tracked from the coast of Costa Rica on their journey to the Galapagos Islands. You are encouraged [...]

Big Migration

Looks like the birds are really on the move tonight. It’s quite exciting to be able to see the movements on radar. For more information on this technique as well as commentary and predictions on the flight in New Jersey, check out woodcreeper.com.

Warblers are a’coming!

Just to whet your appetite on what’s to come, here is my somewhat poor digishot of a Louisiana Waterthrush. I thought that putting everything in b&w except for the warbler itself would jazz it up a bit. I know that there have been recent controversies about doctoring photos but you have to remember that this [...]

Montclair Hawkwatch update

It appears that Broad-winged Hawks are finally starting to arrive. We had our first double-digit day yesterday and hopefully as this weather clears we will get an excellent flight. Here are the numbers so far for the season.

Daily Raptor Counts: as of Apr 11, 2007

Species
Day’s Count
Month Total
Season Total

Black Vulture
0
1
15

Turkey Vulture
10
55
258

Osprey
5
40
66

Bald Eagle
0
0
1

Northern Harrier
2
6
15

Sharp-shinned Hawk
9
43
120

Cooper’s Hawk
2
18
60

Northern Goshawk
0
0
1

Red-shouldered [...]

Rainy day birding

There are some things that can be said for rainy day birding. There are also somethings that could be seen as a major drawback. From my experience this morning at Garret Mountain, I would suggest not going out in driving rain in early April. It’s just setting you up for a really damp bit of [...]

The Onion features birding

I guess birding has finally made it. Our sport has been featured in the great satirical newspaper, The Onion. Focusing mainly on apparent errors in the Sibley Guide to Birds it is humorous at times although not really that great. Hopefully someday birding will actually get featured in a clever satirical article, but we will [...]

Fortunate series of chases

I had an excellent Easter. I saw 2 of the 3 birds I chased, missing only Yellow-headed Blackbird. That miss is not too big of a deal because between Scott’s Oriole (1st PA record), Lazuli Bunting (3rd PA record) and Y-h Blackbird, the blackbird is the most likely to turn up in PA again in [...]

Mourningcloak

The Mourningcloak (Nymphalis antiopa) is a medium-sized (2-4 inchwingspan) butterfly which is easily identified by the yellow trailing edge to its wings. On the inner edge of the yellow border there are iridescent blue spots making it very striking and distinctive. It belongs to the family Nymphalidae which are known as the ‘brush-footed butterflies’. Their [...]

Inquisitive Birds

Some days at the hawk watch the weather is less than ideal and the the hawks are not flying. These are the times when it is particularly fun to watch the other local birds behavior. Since I am stationary most of the day, the birds become used to my presence and settle down to enjoy [...]