Save the Cedar Waxwing

Sunday, December 21st, 2014

For the last ten years or so, the real markers of the holiday season for me are the annual Christmas Bird Counts. I try to get to as many of these as I can. Yesterday was Kings County’s (which actually includes part of Queens County for reasons of convexity). This year I counted at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden on a beautiful cloudy winter day. Conditions were ideal for sea watching, and we had a lot of great birds including all three scoter species (maybe more than a thousand Black Scoters), hundreds of Red-throated Loons, and eight Common Eiders.

However for me the highlight was three Common Waxwings that Joshua Malbin and I found in the woods at Fort Tilden. Shockingly, these were the only Cedar Waxwings anyone saw anywhere in the count circle yesterday, which makes them a save. They usually aren’t that hard to find, and we didn’t think much about them when we did see them. If we hadn’t bushwhacked the overgrown trail behind the West Battery, or been a few minutes earlier or later when we did, the entire count would have missed Cedar Waxwing this year.
(more…)

To The Point

Thursday, December 4th, 2014

My flash piece, “To The Point”, is now available in the January/February double issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine:

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine January/February 2015

You can find it at most newsstands, as well as Amazon and Google Play.

This is my first official Mystery Writers of America qualifying pro sale so I’m pretty psyched. :-)