Looking Forward to 2018

2018 will be a very unique year for me. For starters, I cannot do a standard year list, as I will only be at home for about 8 months before I have to go off to college. While I will keep a year list, I want to do something different as well. I am going to start a photographic year list using just my iPhone. While it may seem crude (and it is), pictures taken through binoculars with phones can turn out surprisingly well. That is how the Hooded Warbler in the previous post was taken, and below are a few more examples of photos I took this way:

Winter Wren taken in September at Maintainance Meadow
Red-Tailed Hawk taken in November at Mugger's Woods
Song Sparrows taken in August at The Pond

For a bird to be countable it must be photographed with my phone and be identifiable. The exception would be if I could narrow a bird down to species complex. For example, if I took a photo of a bird that deduced it between a Willow and Alder flycatcher, and I identified it by call, I would still count it.I hope to take many more photos like these in 2018. I am aiming for preliminary goal of 100 species, as I have never done this before. I'm hoping to have lots of fun doing this and bringing many more photos to the blog. And if you're wondering, yes, I will be going out into the icebox that is NYC tomorrow. Happy New Year!

Reflections on 2017

This Hooded Warbler is me 70% of the time

(taken in September at Tanners Spring)

I haven't posted here in a while, so here's the rundown on what happened in 2017

1. I saw a total of 171 species in New York County this year (my last was Red-Shouldered Hawk on 12/12).
2. I participated in the Central Park Christmas Bird Count this year, finding American Woodcock for the count. I was also able to add Northern Waterthrush at the pond the next day, a very late count week addition!
3. I went to ABA's Camp Colorado, finding over 130 species, including specialties such as White-Tailed Ptarmigan, American Dipper, Clark's Nutcracker, Chestnut-Collared Longspur, Burrowing Owl, and many more.
4. I led a birdwalk in Central Park for the New York State Young Birders Club on 9/17, finding a amazingly high variety of birds on what was a slow day for many others, including Red-Headed Woodpecker and Yellow-Billed Cuckoo.
5. There was a HAMMOND'S FLYCATCHER in Central Park from late November to early December. This is a species normally found in the west, and has only been recorded in New York State twice before. I saw it a total of four times, and additionally was the last person to see it on 12/12.
6. I traveled a lot this summer in the northeast, mostly to look at colleges, so I added species for my Massachusetts (a LOT), Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine (a LOT) lists.

I'll follow up on this shortly with a 2018 post.