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!