WildView™

July 7, 2019

A Burrowing Owl in the Boroughs

- as seen by -

Jen Kepler jmaher

---

I am always looking at birds, even when I’m not birding.

Pulling into a parking lot for horseshoe crab monitoring, I see a bird that does not register in my mental Rolodex™ of local birds. With a very suave turn of its head, our eyes lock, and I immediately recognize this mega-rarity, a burrowing owl. It is just sitting on a fence post at a construction site in Broad Channel, Queens, New York.

I experience a wide range of excitement and emotions seeing this bird for the first time ever in the wild, and it is here in New York City just a few feet from me in the most unlikely of places. It is another reminder of why birding is a pipeline to discovery and adventure, especially when I get to find possibly the seventh record of this bird in all of New York state.

Nikon D5100, Nikkor 200-500mm Lens

---