It’s the most wonderful time of the year – Christmas Bird Count season! Birders are digging out their warmest winter garb, polishing their optics, and marking their calendars to prepare for the all-out birding blitz that is the Christmas Bird Count season.

If you look at a map of the world on your computer screen, thanks to the way we project the curved earth onto a flat plane, at a certain point the map just ends.

Some fowl play was afoot this past weekend in the form of the 39th annual Cape Cod Waterfowl Census.

It’s officially bird feeding season. I usually wait until mid-winter to get into the subject of bird feeders, since there’s not much else to do by then but stare out the window looking for some sign of hope.

It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’ve got that big, brown bird on my mind. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water – it’s an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often, maybe only once a year.

What a difference a cold front can make – as I write this, it finally feels appropriate to discuss winter birds. One particular group of winter birds is as unpredictable as New England weather, and equally fun to discuss – it’s the winter finches.

After I filed my report last week about the Vermilion Flycatcher I found in Brewster, it went viral — for reasons not clear to me, this rare bird story grew wings.

This week I have the unusual pleasure of talking about a really rare bird recently found here on Cape Cod. That part is not so unusual – some might say I do that too much already.

As the old saying goes, “if you love something, let it go, if it comes back it’s yours forever...” yadda yadda yadda – you know the one. Well, I love birds, and I love the challenge of puzzling out their often secret identities.