Overall 2024 was a slow year. I didn’t travel anywhere I hadn’t been before, and I lost a month of prime rarity season in New York to a bout with pneumonia that put me in the hospital for over a week. But there were still some interesting birds to be found the rest of the year.<\/p>\n
I finished the year with 364 species total (surprisingly 19 more than 2023, perhaps because I traveled to the West Coast a couple of times for the first time since quarantine) but no life birds. (Harris’s Sparrow was new on my ebird life list, but I did see one on Long Island years ago before eBird was a thing.) I did pick up some species for my state and county lists though.
\n<\/p>\n
Closest to home in Brooklyn, I added Rufous Hummingbird and Brown Pelican to my county list, both big rarities for the borough. My Kings County list now stands at a tantalizing 299, not counting escapees and hybrids. I’m still missing Purple Martin and several shorebirds and pelagic species so maybe this year I get to 300. I missed the Pacific Loon at Floyd Bennett in January and the Greater White-fronted Goose in Prospect Park in December. The loon I tried for once, but it was just too cold and too far away to keep returning until I found it. The goose I went for several times without luck. More effort would have likely paid off, but I was (and am) still weak from the pneumonia. Update: actually the Brown Pelican was #300. Turns out a Thick-billed Murre I saw at Dead Horse Bay in 2005 was not included on my list.<\/p>\n
No new birds for New York State last year. I did add a Purple Gallinule to my Louisiana list, Harris’s Sparrow to my California list, 3 species to my Washington state list, and 9 species to my Arizona list:<\/p>\n
So overall a slow year. In 2025 I plan to travel more, and do at least one major trip to the Neotropics, and one to Europe, so the numbers should start going up again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overall 2024 was a slow year. I didn’t travel anywhere I hadn’t been before, and I lost a month of prime rarity season in New York to a bout with pneumonia that put me in the hospital for over a week. But there were still some interesting birds to be found the rest of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1005685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1005685"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1005745,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1005685\/revisions\/1005745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1005685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1005685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elharo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1005685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}