If you scrolled back through this space's March and April posts over the years, you'd find a significant number of entries devoted to gulls. Specifically, gulls tied to an annual phenomenon that we have referred to as "plankton feeding." Each late winter/early spring, Long Island Sound is home to mats of floating plankton that have been proven to mostly consist of barnacle larvae. These gazillions of larvae provide an irresistible food source to staging and migrating gulls and waterfowl. Typical scene off Stratford during the plankton event Towing for plankton, most of which ar ..read more

I am very excited to be returning to Brazil's Pantanal in 2024, this time as a guide for Sunrise Birding. This will be my third tour to this must-see region. For those not familiar, the Pantanal is the world's largest freshwater wetland and is THE place to see Jaguar in the wild. In addition to other fascinating mammals such as Tapir, Giant Otter, Maned Wolf and Giant Anteater, the area boasts several hundred species of birds in beautiful open savannah and riverine habitat. The birds there are not shy and tend to be quite photogenic in fact. Join us on what promises to be an unforgettable adve ..read more

It did not take long after the March 2022 visit to plan a return trip to Varanger for the breeding season. This time I teamed up with Mike Sylvia, former Massachusetts birder who is currently residing in Ireland. Having been to the area so recently, and having read through Biotope's fantastic "Birding Varanger" guidebook multiple times, planning was pretty easy. The one big change this time would be doing our forest birding in northern Finland instead of the Pasvik Valley. The Finland leg increased our chances at a few target species such as Broad-billed Sandpiper and Parrot Crossbill, among o ..read more

I've finally gotten around to making some of my favorite images available for purchase as fine art prints. All prints are made on professional grade giclee satin luster paper and feature archival fade-resistant pigmented inks, meant to last a lifetime. Custom requests are welcome. Visit MY ONLINE STORE for a look! Also please feel free to contact me about printing any image featured on this blog :) Instagram: @NaturallyNickPhotos -Nick ..read more

Back in early 2022, as travel was beginning to regain steam after the height of the pandemic, I was looking for a solo northern adventure that would offer an opportunity to view the aurora borealis, a natural phenomenon that I had been wanting to observe for some time. Early Spring was an appealing time because, as much as I wanted to experience the lights, I had little interest in spending an entire vacation in darkness. The aurora "shoulder seasons" of autumn and spring hold significant daylight at the high latitudes, enough to combine typical daytime outdoor activities with nighttime aurora ..read more

While active migration has always been my favorite bird behavior to observe, my interest in the phenomenon called “morning flight” of nocturnal migrants had been minimal due to the unfortunate reality that I lived well over an hour’s drive from the nearest known reliable observation site, Bluff Point State Park in Groton, CT. In autumn 2020, thanks to improved public access to Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, CT, I began to explore the northern tip of Willard’s Island as a morning flight viewpoint and was pleased to find that under the right conditions a reliable flight could be observ ..read more

When this team of Connecticut birders first assembled back in May 2009, our lofty goal was to someday beat the long-standing state Big Day record of 186 species. That first year we tallied 177...a solid effort, but not quite in the ballpark. The following year we came oh-so-close with a total of 185...tantalizing! In 2011 we kept the improvements rolling and crushed the old record with 192 species. We have run dedicated Big Days nearly annually since in hopes of reaching the mythical number of 200, but we have done no better than 193 (2018). It's been quite a ride! Over the years we have impro ..read more

Before officially signing off re: Argentina, I thought I might comment more on the logistics for anyone out there considering a similar trip. I mentioned this in the Intro, but right now Argentina is quite cheap due to a healthy exchange rate, at least for North American and European travelers. On-the-ground costs were quite cheap. For instance, we got a great little Airbnb with four separate single beds and a small kitchen setup for USD $247 for five nights. As there were three of us to split the cost, it came to less than $17/person/night. That was generally the going rate throughout the tri ..read more

Nov 4 Road trip! Though we had an Airbnb in Ushuaia for five nights, we wanted to take an overnight to the Patagonian Steppe around the town of Rio Grande. As you can probably infer from the topo map below, the habitat there is quite different from that of Ushuaia and brings a different selection of birds to the table, including one of the most sought-after Southern Cone species of all. Departure from Ushuaia was in the pitch black, which is quite early at this latitude in November! We began in Rio Grande itself at some salinas on the west side of town in search of Magellanic Plover. We put i ..read more

Oct 28 We completed the entire drive to Bahia Blanca the day before, so all we had was a short ride northwest of town to the pastures that PAMPAS MEADOWLARKS call home. Just a bit past the turnoff for Chasico we parked the car and focused on fields looking west. It didn't take long for a skylarking meadowlark with dark underwings to declare itself as a Pampas, though we had to take great care to separate these birds from the numerous LONG-TAILED MEADOWLARKS and scattered WHITE-BROWED MEADOWLARKS that also reside here. We spent a while soaking in this rare species that the three of us are unlik ..read more