Slightly east of Bridgeport and south of Stratford lies a magnificent wildlife venue called Long Beach. The Snowy Owl above (image 1) was photographed at Long Beach in December 2017. With adjacent Pleasure Beach it is noted that they comprise more than 25% of Connecticut’s remaining undeveloped beachfront property. The Dunlin with Sanderling above (image […]
The lucky recipient in the classic Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” got 23 birds over the course of the holiday season. Hopefully they didn’t live in a studio apartment. In the yuletide spirit, we’re taking a closer look at the birds immortalized in the English folk song, first published around 1780. Seven Swans […]
Rare eBird lists for Connecticut remain a little shorter than those for Florida in my experience. Nonetheless I was intrigued by reports of rare species of goose being reported at Donald W. Barnes Boat Launch in Hartford County Connecticut in mid-winter. A species commonly seen here in New England in the winter months was remarkably […]
First stop this morning was Kiln Lane Ely where we parked up and walked down the lane a few hundred yards to view the flooded fields. The first walk along the footpath failed to locate the Ibis that’s chosen to over winter in Cambridgeshire. As I walked back the Jims called to say the target […]
It was our final mornings birding in Barrow and indeed in Alaska as this was the final day of the trip. We decided to head out to the point to get some final views of Polar Bear. As we drove along the coast road the male Snowy Owl from yesterday was perched close to the […]
Today was a key day in the Nome section of the trip with one of the star birds to see. We were up early and headed up the Kougarok Road to Mile Post 72 we arrived at around 06:00. This site is known as the Coffee Dome, the summit of this relatively small hill is […]
I was watching a Canada goose family (Branta canadensis) and was impressed by how often they did exactly the same things at the same time and struck identical poses, especially the goslings. Congruent like the two above.
With all the travelling of the last week I fancied a local jaunt this morning. I popped down to Cornmill Meadow and with a big tip off from Jim I quickly found his Grasshopper Warbler and whilst here a Cuckoo was heard too. I moved on to Fishers Green and walked the […]
The 2015 class of Canada geese (Branta canadensis) naval aviators started flight school this week! I’ve been watching these youngsters on daily dog-walks in the park since early May. When they first showed up I noticed the their resemblance, in size and coloration, to the yellow puffball flowers of the American sycamores (Platanus occidentalis) towering […]
The latestState of the UK’s Birdsreport, published today, reveals many of our most familiar countryside birds are undergoing sweeping changes with some experiencing ‘plummeting population declines’, compared with the 1990s. It is now known that in some parts of the UK these birds have disappeared completely. A section of the report looks at the UK’s […]
The Humane Society of the United States estimates that 10 to 20 million animals from more than 130 species die from lead poisoning each year in the United States, including thousands in Massachusetts. These animals suffer silently after ingesting tainted prey, who may have been killed with lead ammunition and discarded or who died of […]
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a permit to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to kill over 90 species of bird within New York State this year, ANIMAL has learned. The birds slated for killing include owls, herons, hawks, and woodpeckers, in addition to the slaughter of Canada geese that has been widely […]
More than 260 geese were rounded up for slaughter at the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Tuesday morning as part of an ongoing effort to reduce bird strikes at nearby JFK Airport. United States Department of Agriculture workers arrived at the sanctuary in the morning and corralled the geese into crates. This is the second time […]
