I would like to generate some comments on the topic of distinguishing the trill songs of Dark-eyed Junco, Chipping Sparrow, and Pine Warbler.
The idea for this topic came when birding this spring and having the feeling that pine warblers were here, but I could not distinguish them from the numerous Juncos and ever increasing chipping […]

While it won’t earn you a tick mark on your lifelist, I wanted to quickly summarize the Genetic and natural history of the Brewster’s Warbler I mentioned in tuesday’s post “So Many Stories.”
Brewster’s Warbler was first thought to be a distinct species when first documented in 1870. It was later realized to be a hybrid […]

Greetings,
Yesterday I had one of the most satisfying days in a long time. I was visited by my close friend Emily (and her family) before her volunteer work on the Farallon Islands this summer with PRBO. It had been 2 years since I last saw her in the state of Maine where we worked for […]

I have a line-up of posts I can’t wait to get to you but I wanted to drop this quick one due to its radical nature.
Two awesome discoveries last night to accompany an overall great night of birding the Serengeti region of Lime Hollow Nature Center.  The first was an American Woodcock egg that had […]

Greetings,
Today I had yet another fairly slow, but good day of banding at the Palomarin Field Station. Keeping all of our nets open for the 6 hrs of operation (620-1220) we were able to total the maximum net hours of 120, yet, despite having this, only 7 birds were caught on the day. But, one […]

Greetings,
This past Tuesday (May 2nd), Pearl Jam released their first studio album since 2002. Simply titled ‘Pearl Jam’, the album as expected is incredibly tight with great energy and is well worth the listen. Today I finally had a chance to break away from my world of birds at the field station to pick it up at Borders […]

Hola!
On a foggy Cinco de Mayo, fellow bander Cate Brown, and I had a fairly productive day of banding at the Palomarin Field Station.

A foggy morning at the Palomarin Field Station
While overall numbers were low (9 birds), we had a fairly high diversity of species (7).
On the day we caught:

Anna’s Hummingbird (1)
Allen’s Hummingbird  (2)
Hairy Woodpecker […]

Greetings,
I banded up on Grid 4 (Uppers) today at the Palomarin Field Station and had a fairly smooth day with a fair amount of birds (12). All in all we caught a total of 7 species, 3 of which were caught on the last net run of the day. Normally that wouldn’t have been so […]

In a recent edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Eric Dinerstein reported on the Top 10 Most Beautiful Birds in North America as voted on by “6 of the Nation’s Leading Ornithologists”. Surely, being a ‘leading ornithologist’ doesn’t make one’s choice of beautiful birds any more correct than anyone else, even those of non-birders, however it is hard […]

I’ve always been told that to be happy at work, you need to be doing something that you love. Well, there is no doubt that I love my job, and it’s easy to see why: Beautiful scenery, high diversity of birds and other wildlife nearby, and add on top of all that the countless interactions […]