Nuthatch Pipes Up

It’s been several months since anyone’s heard a peep out of the Contemplative Nuthatch, who you may remember in connection with a Brazilian Nuthatch Snow Party last year.
He’s back with a story and trademark nice photos of a red-tailed hawk that’s been causing trouble in his Ithaca environs. If you’re squeamish, avert your eyes [...]

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Miracle at Gate C15

Fortunately, I had put on my brown leather Adidas yesterday morning, and checked everything but my shoulder bag. Thus unencumbered and with the best possible traction, I was able to pick up amazing speed on the moving walkways of O’Hare.
My plane from Syracuse, which took off three hours late, landed 30 minutes after my San [...]

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Google for Twitchers

 
You’ve got to start back to blogging sometime, I guess. Here’s one for all you plugged-in readers who know what a twitcher is.***
Someone at eBird had the great idea to feed rare-bird sightings into a Google widget. Now you can get a fresh list, right down to the last harlequin duck and wandering tattler, every [...]

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Stood Up By Shearwaters

The Hutton’s shearwaters that circled our albatross boat nest in only one valley in the  world – up in the mountains that loom 8,000 feet over Kaikoura. Each evening, thousands of adults raft up on the water just below the peninsula’s cliffs. Sometime after dark, they fly up a particular grassy swale toward the [...]

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Wandering along the Kaikoura Canyon

 
The new year ticked over while I was in Kaikoura, New Zealand, a southern hemisphere version of Monterey. That is to say, a deep submarine canyon veers close to shore and pumps nutrients into the surface waters. Seabirds and whales gather for a year-round feast. Seals lounge on flat mudstone reefs; kelp fronds drape the rocks and anemones [...]

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