This is a short summary of Saw Mill River Audubon’s 2022 Woodcock Walk. By Brian Kluepfel The arrival and the courtship dance of the American woodcock is an unmistakable sign of spring. I decided in March 2022 that it
Read MoreThe Case Against Caged Birds By Brian Kluepfel A big celebrity news item in December 2016 was the birth of Mick Jagger’s eighth child, Deveraux Octavian Basil Jagger. Mick will turn 80 this year, and even in his
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel The last Carolina parakeet died 104 years ago. Perhaps fittingly, it died in a zoo. Humans had wiped out all the wild birds of this species several years before. On this cold winter’s day, I pay
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel The state bird of Tennessee is not the Nashville warbler, nor is it the Tennessee warbler. It is the northern mockingbird. This was among the factoids I garnered whilst attending the American Birding Association’s Bird of
Read MoreBy Bryan Kluepfel As I head for another trip to South America, I’m reminded that just last year a leader in environmental conservation, Gonzalo Cardona, was killed in Valle del Cauca, Colombia. Gonzalo dedicated the last 23 years of his life
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel The Hudson Valley is full of surprises. One that isn’t obvious to the casual viewer is the migration of thousands of raptors over the great river each autumn. Taking advantage of thermals and convenient geography, a
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel Last Friday, Saw Mill River Audubon (SMRA) held its annual dinner, this year at the Kittle House in Chappaqua. During the outdoor hors d’oeuvres hour, as I approached the bar, I spotted a ruby-throated hummingbird circling the lantana
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel We’re in the death throes of an overly-hot start to August, but sometimes one just needs to get outside. Even in the fiercest of heat, birds are out there, going on with their un-airconditioned lives. So I
Read MoreIn six miles square, the most of that water, we have found so many songs that we never tried to count them. We knew very well that we could not go into lumber camps and the forecastles of coasting schooners,
Read MoreBy Brian Kluepfel When I moved to Northern California in 1990, everything was shiny and new. A year later, in a new apartment, I asked the landlord if I could turn the unused cement bed next to our driveway into
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