Category: spring migration
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Heron Homecoming 2025: A Great Egret Returns
A Great Egret returned to Inwood Hill Park over the weekend, an expected homecoming for one of the stars of the park’s Salt Marsh. I have lived in the Inwood neighborhood for over a decade, and I’ve observed at least one Great Egret every year. Sometimes, more of them will appear, but often it’s just…
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As Foretold, a Red-breasted Merganser Visits Inwood Hill Park
Cornell Lab’s BirdCast resumed posting live migration tools on March 1, noting on the Migration Dashboard for New York County that among the expected nocturnal migrants this time of year we should look for Red-breasted Mergansers. And, sure enough, a Red-breasted Merganser showed up in our local waters. On the early morning of March 6…
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American Goldfinches Gather for an Early Spring Feast
This past week, near the stone stairs at W. 207th Street in Inwood Hill Park, American Goldfinches have been busy pulling apart the new buds on elm saplings and gorging on them. They flit about a group of young trees, opening the buds and chewing on the flowers. On the morning of February 28, I…
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Notes from Spring Migration 2024 – Common Yellowthroats at the Masked Ball
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a Common Yellowthroat. It was several years ago in Central Park during spring migration. I was new to birding and learning the ropes from seasoned birders. I was dazzled by the warblers and couldn’t quite keep up with the sightings. We were along The Loch on Central…
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Inwood Hill Nature Center Opens and the Summer Begins
On Saturday, June 1, 2024, Inwood residents and visitors finally got to walk inside the Inwood Hill Nature Center. Shuttered for twelve years following extensive damage from Hurricane Sandy in October of 2012, the renovation of the Art Deco building in Inwood Hill Park (originally designed as a boathouse before it became a nature center)…
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Scaling the Heights with the Black-and-white Warblers
For a bird I’ve seen infrequently, the Black-and-white Warbler has played an oversized role in my personal life over the last decade. When I moved to the Inwood neighborhood of Northern Manhattan in 2014, I wasn’t familiar with the area. I just found it to be wild. I had previously lived in Greenwich Village, and…
Birds of Inwood 