From here on out, each time I see a Spoon-billed Sandpiper, I wonder if it will be my last. Most of the adults who failed to breed have departed and the few that remain are quietly leading hungry, growing chicks through a landscape under constant aerial surveillance by predatory gulls, jaegers and ravens. One male [...]

Last night the winds were relatively calm and the sun was shining for the first time in at least a week.   The tundra, which was brown when we arrived, has now greened up. Sedges, grasses and the leaves of small willows and other plants have emerged from the crusty carpet of mosses and lichens.  [...]

Here’s a short video I shot in Louisiana at Audubon’s Rainey reserve this past December. I found a huge flock of Black-necked Silts there and watched as a Northern Harrier tried to pick one off.

A few magazine covers to share this month. The cover of Living Bird magazine shows a female Sooty Grouse I photographed on Mt. Rainier last winter. One of my photos also appears on the back cover, a calling Herring Gull. You can receive Living Bird by joining The Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The cover of the [...]

I visited several areas today around Gulf Shores on the south side of Mobile Bay. As was to be expected after seeing the oil really roll in last night there were a few heavily oiled birds in the area. One thing that was particularly disturbing to find were a number of oiled Snowy Plovers. Snowy [...]

Last night I was camped out along a rugged logging road deep in the boreal forest of Alberta. It was a foggy drizzly day rendering the dense forest especially foreboding and mysterious. In the late afternoon a pair of ravens winged overhead and erupted in to their guttural raucous calls somewhere not too far off [...]

I have begun the long and tedious task of scanning my historical slide archive and will be posting some of the images here from time to time. Luckily I have some motivation to do so as I’m getting the chance to look back through many memorable experiences and exciting moments!
I started the process by [...]