Blogs

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 4/25/09, 6:45-8:55 a.m. Weather: 68°, overcast, wind SSW @ 10 mph Number of species: 35 No doubt, yesterday (Saturday) will be remembered as the day the weather turned on a dime . The wind shifted from the south-southwest to the northeast, the temperature dropped...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 4/26/09, 10:30 a.m.-1:45 p.m. Weather: 45°, overcast, cloud ceiling below TV towers, no wind, rainy Number of species: 41 I woke up early Sunday morning to the sound of drumming rain and was disappointed. Friends of mine had found all kinds of great birds in...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 5/2/09, 7:05-10:30 a.m. Weather: 46° and clear, wind WSW @ 8 mph Number of species: 41 What a great morning in Estabrook! As soon as I stepped onto the bike path, I heard something I've been waiting for all winter: a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Its song is loud...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 5/9/09, 9:20 a.m.-1:15 p.m. Weather: 48°F, overcast, wind N @ 14 mph. Heavy rain overnight and earlier in morning Number of species: 57 Two sounds greeted me when I woke up yesterday morning: steady rain drumming on the roof and White-crowned Sparrows, steadily...

I haven't been here for very long, just half a day, in fact, but I know already that I love it. I'm at the Nature Conservancy's Matador Ranch in northeastern Montana, Big Sky Country. I'm about 180 miles north of Billings. That's far west of home, north of Wyoming, close to Canada...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 5/23/09 Weather: 55°, wind calm, 88% humidity, light rain Number of species: 52 Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 5/25/09 Weather: 57°F, wind ENE at 8 mph, partly cloudy Number of species: 47 I wasn't able to take my usual Saturday-morning walk...

Location: Estabrook Park , Milwaukee Co. Observation date: 6/20/09, 7:30-11 am Weather: 73°F rising to 82°F, clear, wind W @ 10 mph, beautiful morning after a night of heavy rain Number of species: 40 Considering how many times I've walked through Estabrook and seen dozens of Canada Geese and not...

Location: Estabrook Park , Milwaukee Co. Observation date: 6/27/09, 7:25-10:30 a.m. Weather: 70°F rising to 80°F, sunny, winds calm Number of species: 29 It was pretty quiet in the park this morning. No Osprey circled high overhead. No Peregrine Falcon flew down the bike trail. (These treats were highlights...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 7/4/09, 7:30-10 a.m. Weather: 68°F, cloudy, wind WSW @ 6 mph Number of species: 33 What could be nicer than a walk in the park on the Fourth of July? Yesterday was notable for two reasons. First, I added a bird to the list of species I've seen in Estabrook...

A new report released today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows one of every five Americans watches birds, and in doing so, birdwatchers contributed $36 billion to the U.S. economy in 2006, the most recent year for which economic data are available. The report – Birding in the United States:...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 7/18/09, 7:20-10:45 a.m. Weather: 55°F rising to 63°F, mostly cloudy, wind W-WNW @ 8-11 mph. Number of species: 36 People will tell you that birdwatching loses its luster in the in-between months after the spring migrant pulse and before the birds' return...

Location: Estabrook Park , Milwaukee Co., WI Observation date: 7/26/09, 7:50-10:55 a.m. Weather: 64.4°F rising to 70°F, overcast, winds WNW @ 11.5 mph with gusts up to 17 mph Number of species: 29 Take it from me, you will never look at birds alone in Estabrook Park so long as the Tour de France is on...

"Chuck, as soon as you get home, you'll want to go back." That's what a friend of mine, an experienced world birder, told me back in 2006. I had asked him what I might expect during an upcoming 10-day birding and wildlife safari to southwestern Uganda. The itinerary was going to take...

Location: Estabrook Park , Milwaukee Co. Observation date: 8/2/09, 7:20-10:40 a.m. Weather: 58°F rising to 73°F and clear, wind W @ 5.8 mph Number of species: 34 Just how many species of cuckoo can you see in Estabrook Park? Yesterday I would have said the answer was one, but today I know better. As...

Location: Estabrook Park Observation date: 8/9/09, 8:05-11:25 am Weather: 82°F rising to 88°F, clear, wind SW @ 14 mph, gusting to 21 mph Number of species: 26 A couple of birds caught my interest in the park this morning: The first was an Osprey, which I saw turning wide circles and hanging effortlessly...

Location: Estabrook Park , Milwaukee Co., WI Observation date: 8/16/09, 7:40-10:15 a.m. Weather: 79°F rising to 84°F, mostly cloudy, winds S @ 8.1 mph, gusts @ 17 mph. Number of species: 27 I didn't see any birds along the Milwaukee River in Estabrook yesterday morning, and I didn't mind one...

In a recent article in Birder's World about birding with the iPhone (“In the know, all the time,” October 2009), writer Laura Kammermeier reported on an app that was still in development that taps into the bird sightings on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's popular eBird site. The...

BirdsEye , a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, is being released today. It will show you the locations of bird sightings in your area -- as soon as they're posted to eBird . BirdsEye pairs reports from eBird with photos from VIREO , audio from Cornell's Macaulay Library , and text from Contributing...

Laura Erickson (right) is the science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology , the host of a popular radio program about birds , a frequent contributor to our magazine, and a good friend. She recently published The Bird Watching Answer Book , her fourth book about birds. In it, Laura provides expert...

Don and Lillian Stokes have published a new field guide to the birds of North America (Little, Brown, $24.99). The guide bundles descriptions and photographs of 854 species into a single, squat 816-page volume, and it comes with a CD containing songs of 150 common species. We liked the Stokeses'...

Julie, Matt, and I took the recent completion of our sixth and final Readers' Favorites Survey as an opportunity to kick off our shoes, lean back, and enjoy the many articles about owls, owling, and owl-watching locations that have appeared in Birder's World through the years. Figuring you'd...

What was the temperature where you went birding this long Thanksgiving weekend? When I stepped out of the house on Friday morning, it was 19°F. It wasn't the coldest I've ever been while walking through my favorite local haunt, Milwaukee's Estabrook Park . We are, after all, only at the...

I was able to visit with an old friend last week. An acquaintance from down south. A birding buddy. A pal I used to see daily when I lived in Virginia, but someone I lost touch with when I moved to Wisconsin 10 years ago. Perhaps you know him: a slender fellow, about the size of a robin, gray above...

Attention, photographers! We've created a new gallery for you. We call it People and Places . It's a photo gallery of the places where you like to go birdwatching and the people you see birding at them. Go to People and Places . Places: We're envisioning pictures of places where birders...

The birds and birders of New York City's Central Park have been described in our magazine and others numerous times. They've been the subjects of great books like Red-Tails in Love, Birds of Central Park, and Central Park in the Dark . And who-knows-how-many blogs and websites are devoted to the topic...