Twice a year, millions of birds embark on long, perilous journeys between their breeding and wintering grounds. These flights, spanning hundreds or thousands of miles, require a lot of energy. In the spring, neotropical migrants travel from Latin America to nest in the Northern Hemisphere, where they take advantage of budding plants and abundant insects. […]
What a frigid morning! But if we were cold, the birds seemed even colder. We had something of a fall-out at Park Point—I’m sure our numbers for most of the songbirds are way lower than the actual numbers. We had a couple of Lesser Yellowlegs (the most we saw as a group was one, but […]
We were up at 05:00 and headed to Hillside Park where we birded from 06:00-09:00. This was a lovely mixed area of forest with maple, oak and pines but full of mozzies. We birded a few miles along the various trails accessible from the car park at the eastern end of Abbott Road. Highlights here […]
More and more birds are arriving in the north woods now. On Thursday the 12th I had my first hummingbird of the season along with a Least Flycatcher and Black-and-white Warblers in my own yard, and I’ve had a few warblers here and there. A few Yellow-rumps and several Pine Warblers were on territory on […]
The first time I ever noticed my aspen tree in full bud, back in early May in 1982, at least one Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, Ruby-crowned Kinglet, and Yellow-rumped Warbler could be seen in its branches just about every time I looked. That has been one absolute constant I can count on no matter how spring unfolds […]
The wood thrush’s song is one of the most beautiful among eastern birds, and its flute-like warble is one of the reasons Vitek Jirinec picked this species to study. “It’s a charismatic species,” he said. “Even the lay public knows about wood thrushes because of their beautiful song. Oftentimes its song is described as the […]
This morning I dropped by Mead Gardens, and I had a pretty good time. Easily the biggest highlight was seeing two Louisiana Waterthrushes. These are really fun warblers, and before this morning I didn’t have any presentable photos of them. All these photos are of the second one I found, which was much more cooperative […]
This afternoon I decided to drop by the Little Big Econ State Park for a few minutes. I’ve driven by this place many times on my way to Geneva WA and other places. I don’t know why I’ve never come here before. Maybe it’s because they couldn’t decide if it was little or big. But […]