If you have been to a hawkwatch in New England during mid-September you will have heard people talk knowingly about kettles. Perhaps the term was explained to you as the collective noun for a tight group of thermaling hawks, but that doesn’t tell you about the etymology of this strange phrase. I have heard the […]
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Update #2 April 1, 2016 This is a rough but fairly accurate outline of my route, with nearest major cities. I am trying to contain the costs of this 6-month endeavor by limiting the number of hotel nights. So, if you think you live on or near the route and would be willing to put […]
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I encountered this scene in a Charlestown cornfield on March 11, 2016. The remains of at least six snow geese judging by the eleven wings and three carcasses with neck and head intact. Each carcass had the breast meat cut out as if it were a Sunday roast. According to NHFG there is a spring […]
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I spent a couple of days earlier this month with Eugene Sweeney, a birding friend from Ireland. Instead of hitting Wexford, which is what we have always done when I go home, we headed north to Donegal, hitting Malin Head and Inch Marshes. This was my first time to the latter site and I had […]
Continue Reading →On September 6th, 2016, I leave NH by bicycle to travel south following the Broad-winged Hawk migration from New Hampshire to South America. All going well, I expect to cross five time zones, 40 degrees of latitude, and 5,000 miles in pursuit of the birds. Biologists at the Pack Monadnock Raptor Observatory in southern New Hampshire record several thousand migrant […]
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