New York City Birds

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Welcome ! This site is devoted to all aspects of NYC birding. For a major metropolitan area (or if you're a New Yorker, the major metropolitan area) NYC provides a surprisingly large number of high-quality birding locations and experiences. The highest-profile of these locations are Central Park and Jamaica Bay but in fact many places in the city offer good birding. These places often offer better birding than comparable areas outside the city, ironically in part because of loss of habitat in the urban area concentrates the birds in what remains.

This site has two major aims: first to promote birding in the city by providing location guides to good birding places in the city and beyond - an extension to my Central Park Birding site launched in 2005; secondly to provide a resource for ID issues that naturally come up when you start birding these locations. Both of these things are under active development, and get worked on in my "spare" time.

In addition to the site-specific content outlined above I've provided quite a few links to outside pages that might be of interest based on my own set of biases. Suggestions are always welcome. A subset of these are listed below, and the "+more" links lead you to more comprehensive listings on separate pages. My other projects, hosted on parallel sites, include my photo gallery and my home page.

I think this trip report captures the excitement and wonder that birding in NYC is all about.

--Phil Jeffrey

Sightings

+more sightings

Recent reports on eBirdsNYC
Recent reports on Metro Birding Briefs
NYC Bird Report highlights for Central Park (note: there are NO active sightings - now a static record)
NYC Bird Report highlights for Jamaica Bay
NYC Bird Report highlights for Prospect Park, Breezy Point, Fort Tilden, Jacob Riis Park.
Dianne Taggart's Long Island birding sightings section.
New York State email list [via birdingonthe.net].
New Jersey Rare Birds email list [via birdingonthe.net].
New Jersey Birding email list [via birdingonthe.net].
Experimental: species mentioned on regional lists - sorted by species
Experimental: species mentioned on regional lists - sorted by difficulty code/species

Birding Locations

+more locations

NYCBirds Locations wiki
My Central Park Birding site
Where do you want to go birding: New York.
Where do you want to go birding: New Jersey.
Dianne Taggart's Long Island seasonal hotspots
Experimental: Google maps annotated with birding sites

Mailing Lists

+more mailing lists

eBirds NYC mailing list, now a Yahoo group - all NYC metro bird sightings - also as RSS
My archive of some of the last posts from the previous eBirds incarnation.
Metro Birding Briefs mailing list - NYC metro rare bird sightings - also as RSS
New Jersey Rare Birds email list
New Jersey Birding general sightings email list

Web Sites, Blogs and Forums

+more sites

My page at philjeffrey.net and my gallery
Marie Winn's page
Ben Cacace's blog
Rob Jett's blog
Angus Wilson's Ocean Wanderers site
Lincoln Karim's Pale Male site
David La Puma's Woodcreeper.com for NEXRAD migration tracking

Birding and Bird-related Organizations

+more sites

New York City Audubon.
Prospect Park Audubon
New Jersey Audubon.
NYC Sierra Club.
Linnaean Society of New York. (new URL)
Brooklyn Bird Club
New York State Area Records Committee (NYSARC)
Cornell Lab of Ornithology
American Birding Assocation (ABA)

Programs of Interest to Birders

+more info

Christmas Bird Count - Central Park's CBC was amongst the first ones.
Cornell's eBird - record your bird sightings
Great Backyard Bird Count
Project Feederwatch
Breeding Bird Survey
Patuxent Bird Banding Laboratory (to report banded birds).

Identification and Listing

+more info

NYCBirds Identification wiki
Patuxent ID info center
Cornell's All About Birds Guide
Birds of North America Online - a subscription (fee) service
SORA archive at U.Minnesota (ornithology literature)
Surfbirds online Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe
VIREO - Visual Resources for Ornithology
ABA checklist of North American species

Bird News

+no expansion link

American songbirds a being wiped out by banned pesticides - related - "Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?"
eBird article on 2007 Boreal irruption
Birds can "see" Earth's magnetic field
Experience counts in off-course migration
Spoonbill Sandpiper on the brink of extinction
Houston Press: "Border Fence May Destroy Wildlife Habitat"
NYTimes: "Border Fence Seen As Threat to Wildlife"
NYTimes: "A Rising Number of Birds at Risk"
Environmental News Network (ENN) and RSS feed:
BirdLife International news
Global climate change and birds from Partners In Flight

Bird Photography

+no expansion link

ABA code of birding ethics applies no less to photographers
General: Photo.net - general photo news, reviews and tutorials
General: Luminous Landscape - mainly technique and hardware
Digital: Rob Galbraith - Digital Photography Insights, and also his CF card database
Digital: Dpreview.com - digital photo news/reviews
Photoshop: What's New in Lightroom 1.1 from Digital Outback Photo
Photoshop: What's New in Camera Raw 4.1 from Digital Outback Photo
NYTimes: "City May Seek Permit and Insurance for Many Kinds of Public Photography" - although this does not seem to apply to city parks

And now for a little humor.....

The Onion has published this little satirical piece about birder obsession, which seems to be rather apt as we are prone to agonizing over how to ID Empidonax flycatchers in the field with deathly seriousness.

FatBirder Web Ring



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