Yet another round of catch-up.

     Been birding, been momming, been working, been social, even had an adult only weekend. So in that timeline, blog upkeep has been not a priority. Good news is, on this ultra frigid day where I had zero desire to be outside, I can catch up a bit! In the time its been, I've led some bird outings, birded with friends, and birded solo, so it's been a bit of everything.

On a walk with RISE and NYC Plover Project, I took on a small group to walk the beach with. Enjoyed this common loon downing a crab.

Buffleheads were not in short supply. Saw a number diving along the shoreline.

*bloop*

There were no shortage of ring-billed hulls, but likely the best and most rewarding part of this walk, in the Edgemere neighborhood was getting a number of folks on a razorbill, for many, their first ever!

Last weekend, I visited Baisley Pond Park on Saturday to enjoy the variety of ducks, including this American Wigeon.

Of course, the Baisley Pond Park phenomenon, always reliable for redheads.

Also very reliable are the Ring-neck ducks. This is a female trailing a male.

A gorgeous American black duck.

A fairly disgruntled ring-billed gull who made a stink after some bread was dumped.

Bread dumping is annoying, but always makes for good opportunities to photograph gulls.

After Baisley, I stopped off at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. The East Pond was fairly sparse, but this red-breasted merganser was one among the ruddy ducks she was floating with.

My favorite part of Jamaica Bay winters are the snow geese. I love their giant, noisy flocks.

I was hoping to catch a Northern Pintail this day, and how lucky was I, had two flyover and this third swimming on the West Pond.

Last Sunday I co-led a bird eventwith an amazing birding friend for the Feminist Bird Club. We didn't even get away from the parking lot before seeing our first birds, a pair of American Kestrels.

This female kestrel flew in to join the male we spotted originally. She was rather close, but only silhouetted from our angle.

Had a far off belted kingfisher who later decided to give us the fly-by without a glance back.

While viewing an eared grebe, a rarity for these parts we didn't realize a group of four killdeer were watching us! It was a great walk, lots of weird ducks to spy and on our way out, we had a kestrel with a vole just tearing into her meal right in front of us.