The new #mayor of #NYC will be inaugurated in about 28 hours! Amazing and exciting!

Another 2025 #birding highlight, and another owl, was this Cape Eagle Owl, large, spectacular, and very scarce. Gratitude to Garret Skead for hipping me to the location, on the Western Cape, South Africa, where a pair emerged in the purple gloom of dusk. #birdsseenin2025

We were sitting on the patio at our hotel in Costa Rica when I heard what sounded like someone shaking a huge piece of sheet metal out back. That could only be this #birdsseenin2025. Photo courtesy of Sandra Schmid, because mine were just dark blobs. #birding

It’s not much of a photo, but this Chestnut Piculet was high on my list of most-wanted #birds on a brief “long weekend” trip to Cartagena in March. #birdsseenin2025 This tiny, stunning cinnamon woodpecker was definitely among my favs of the year.

Next up in my end of year favorite #birdsseenin2025 in no particular quantity or order is the Chestnut-banded Plover, endemic to Africa and one of the birds I only managed to see once in #southafrica last August. A specialist of salt-pans. #birding

It’s that time year again so I’m posting an arbitrary number of my most exciting bird sightings in no particular order. First up is South Africa’s national bird, the Blue Crane. #birding #birdsseenin2025 in the Western Cape.

Somehow #Duolingo has figured out that the main reason I’m studying #Portuguese is so I can go #birding in #Brazil. “I come to see the birds and the trees”

The “last” of the #Thanksgiving turkey, 2 gallons of home-crafted stock, pressure-canned. I would have it all in quarts, but the rest of my jars are fully loaded with last August’s tomatoes. Quality soups in our future! #canning

Life bird #1200: Mediterranean gull. Bird photography is my passion. 🪶

"You seem happier" Thanks, I deleted all my emails and went to look at birds instead.

Greater white-fronted goose at Hamden Pumping Station in #Hunterdon county, NJ. As you can see, this one is vocalizing! I was able to record it, and it’s now the 803rd species in #eBird for which I have contributed audio! #birding #birdsseenin2025

I just the read the ABA RBA note by @n8swick.bsky.social on the Yellow-headed Caracara in Delaware. This bird was first observed sitting on the Dole plant at the Wilmington waterfront. This is the #1 east coast port of entry for bananas—thousands of containers-worth, most shipped direct from 👉🏻

The amount of talking some birders do, I’m surprised they manage to see or hear anything

6 hours in the Celtic sea on a pelagic birding trip today. Some great birds and some good laughs. This raft of Great Shearwater calling to each other was a surprise.

Burchell’s Coucal is an absolutely mind-blowing giant cuckoo that I saw exactly this single one of in two weeks in #SouthAfrica, a bird made all the more special because I didn’t have it on my list of likely or even unlikely sightings for the trip! #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025

An Eared Grebe I found four days ago at Jamaica Bay’s West Pond in NYC. It’s a rare but approximately annual visitor to the region that looks like a floating Russian fur hat. #birding #birdsseenin2025

One of the most important and magical shorebird stopover sites in the country is the Bolivar Flats Bird Sanctuary in Texas. It is currently under threat from development and we are in a race to save it. houstonaudubon.org/conservation...

Booted Eagle last month near Paarl, #SouthAfrica, where it is an uncommon migrant visitor. Not much larger than many hawks, it still has the structure and long-fingered look of an eagle. #birdsseenin2025 #birds #birding

I’m a complete sucker for elegant ducks, many of which turn out to be teal! This is the Cape Teal, snapped at Strandfontein in Cape Town, #SouthAfrica a few days ago. Petite, handsome, red-eyed, the whole package. #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025

Southern Boubou, uncharacteristically and very briefly sitting out in the open in the coastal scrub of the Western Cape, #SouthAfrica. Their liquid calls are usually heard coming from somewhere deep inside a dense, dark bush. #birdsseenin2025 #birding

Superficially confusing in both name and appearance, the Little Rush Warbler and the Lesser Swamp Warbler occur abundantly together in the vast reedbeds at Strandfontein in Cape Town. This is one of those two #birds. Can you tell which, without reading the alt text? #birdsseenin2025 #birding

Karoo Long-billed Lark on territory a few kilometers south of Robertson, #SouthAfrica a few days ago for @birdsseenin2025. These #birds do an amazing vertical display flight and emit a piercing whistle, making them much easier to find in the pre-breeding season! #birding

Rock Kestrel at Strandfontein in Cape Town, #SouthAfrica about four hours ago, and only about an hour after my landing at the airport here. The #birding has already been awesome! #birdsseenin2025

Enjoy splitting the entrenched centrist interests vote with mayor Adams, 🤡!: Cuomo Will Stay in the Race for N.Y.C. Mayor to Challenge Mamdani www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/n...

Expecting more vicious attacks from the New York Times on Mandani today, like the revelation that he's never had his own landline.

It took three visits to the lily-clogged Sharrott’s Pond on Staten Island, and multiple hours of careful scanning, before this #purplegallinule, the county’s first, finally poked its head up out of the pads just while I was looking in the right place! #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025

What is a double grosbeak day? Is it these two birds with massive bills? From the Pole Farm, Mercer, NJ, #birdsseenin2025 #birds Rose-breasted, and Blue

Anyone want to guess how many dynamic young canvassers knocked on my door in 99 deg heat over the last two days stumping for @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social versus the # of geriatric representatives of the ossified old-guard democratic party getting out the vote for Cuomo? #voteNYC #zohran

i think cuomo did well considering he couldn’t campaign while the sun was up

I was requested not to share the location of this breeding-plumage Dickcissel, actually breeding. It’s very rare as a breeder on the eastern seaboard. I didn’t see the female until HE dropped down low in the tree and they did the wildest wild thing! #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025 New Jersey….

Shit I go out to tend to our new bird feeder and bird bath and all hell breaks loose

Hear me out: birdwatching is inevitable. You can slowly and depressingly descend into it (as this New Yorker article once said) Or you can dive right in. Download Merlin and start to become an expert before the rest of your peers. When they make the descent you’ll be a hero.

A star bird from a few days ago at Plumb Beach, Brooklyn was this Caspian Tern, the world’s largest species of tern, looking crisp and ready to breed! They can show up at almost any time except the dead of winter, but usually aren’t around until post-breeding. #birdsseenin2025 #birds #birding

Everything changed when we got the hummingbird feeders

Off-leash dog walking disturbs ground-nesting birds more than any other human recreational activity: doi.org/10.1111/ibi.... Video of Borys Kala - Polish Society for Nature Conservation, via Mary Colwell's account of X: x.com/curlewcalls/... #shorebirds #waders #Curlew

If you’re here for pretty bird pictures you came on the wrong day! This is the Black-necked Stilt I found yesterday, far, far away across Jamaica Bay’s west pond, at the edge of my camera’s capability, and tortured by heat shimmer. #birds #birdsseenin2025 #birdoftheyear #birding Can you see it?

The Olive-sided flycatcher is a scarce passage migrant through NY city, but an incredibly consistent one. Invariably a king-of-the-hill, it always hunts from bare, high branches. And it is only seen here, in spring, from roughly May 20-June now-ish! #birdsseenin2025 #birding #birds

Freelancing life means I could start my very busy day with an energetic ramble through the nature reserve. A veritable orchestra of birdsong was joined by greater whitethroats, sedge warblers and marsh tits. I said hello to the cows and this family of geese and their goslings. Which one is Ryan?

In my view one of the world’s most stunning #shorebirds, especially in breeding plumage. Here’s a Red Knot I was able to get very close to in Jamaica Bay, NY, a few days ago, only because I was #birding by #kayak. #birdsseenin2025

Boat-tailed Grackle, a giant salt-marsh-loving blackbird, continues its range and population expansion in NYC—we found this one yesterday at Bush Terminal in NY Harbor, staring up at the sky to look for threats. This year’s are the first records there in #eBird #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025

People who go birdwatching are happier than people who don’t.

In case anyone's wondering, this is the kind of birding I'm into www.reddit.com/r/birding/co...

What could possibly go wrong? www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/u...

After a couple of days without any reports it seems likely this staggering Randall’s Island rarity has moved on, probably with the Kingbirds it was hanging around with. This was a USA first for me and a fabulous bird for NY state! #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025 Extra rarely, it stayed several days

I just love me some Dunlin! #birds #birding #birdsseenin2025 Plumb beach, Brooklyn

wilson's warbler I want you so bad baby please

Sapphire-spangled Emerald a couple of years ago already, from a hugely memorable solo #birding trip through São Paulo and Paraná states in Brazil, this one in Capão Bonito on my very first day. July 2023 #birds

This Clapper Rail wandered casually out of the marsh onto the sand, looked around, suddenly realized 6 birders were staring right at it from about 75 feet away, and started to sprint! #birds, #birding #birdsseenin2025 Plumb Beach, Brooklyn

Although you can have no idea how long the bill is on this bird, this is a Short-billed Dowitcher, which, confusingly, has a very long bill, although they say it’s shorter than the Long-billed Dowitcher’s, but barely shorter, if at all, do you get what I’m saying? #birds #birdsseenin2025 #birding