Borealis Birding

03/13/2026

https://www.eagle-eye.com/tour/southeast-arizona-birding-tour/?departure=2026-07-25

Heya folks! Lets go birding in Arizona this summer! I'll be leading a fantastic tour for Eagle-Eye Tours and I want you to come along! After the summer monsoons begin, Arizona comes alive in its second spring. One of my favorite times to be exploring the mountains and canyons of the Arizona/Mexico borderlands, birds can be everywhere at this time of year. Some species wait till now to began their breeding season, while the first stirrings of southbound migration can be evident. Hummingbird diversity is at its peak, while family groups of warblers, owls and trogons can be found in Sierra Madre woodlands. Other wildlife is is frequently encountered; many species of herps, mammals and butterflies are found no where else but in this ecoregion. And all set against some of the most spectacular scenery one can find in North America!

Please reach out if you have any interest or questions. I hope to see you there!

09/21/2025

A few weeks ago, I co-led with my friend Ed Corey, an excellent seabird cruise from Vancouver down to L.A. and boy howdy the voyage was just teaming with sea creatures! We had big numbers of several species such as Sooty Shearwater, Buller's Shearwater, Black-footed Albatross, lots of jaegers, many of which were Long-tailed, and over 20 South Polar Skuas. We had great storm-petrel diversity with Leach's, Chapman's Fork-tailed, Ashy and Black Storm-Petrels being seen. Birds like Sabine's Gull, Arctic Tern and Red Phalarope were all abundant and showed well. Some of the goodies we had included Hawaiian Petrels, Flesh-footed Shearwaters, Manx Shearwater, Guadalupe Murrelets and Tufted Puffin.
And it was a fantastic trip for cetaceans too! We had a couple pods of Baird's Beaked Whale, including a herd that was doing a lot of breaching, many baleen whales like Fin, Humpback, Sei and Bryde's Whale, as well as a morning with 10-12 Blue Whales, and several dolphin species like Common Dolphin, Northern Right Whale Dolphin, White-sided Dolphin, plus Dall's and Harbor Porpoise.
The spring cruises I do are great for getting rarities, but the amount of marine life one can see on an early fall voyage is simply stupendous!

07/09/2025

I was pleased to catch some nice waves of warblers this spring around my local patches at home in the UP. Days of cold weather really brought out their birbness. I love all kinds of birding, but a warbler fallout with these gorgeous little beasts feeding at your feet is a really special event!

06/26/2025

Spring tour season is a whirlwind with barely a moment to spare so I'm just now getting to the backlog of photos taken the last couple of months. Here are some of the highlights of my early May WINGS Owls & Warblers tour to Southeast Arizona!

05/15/2025

Howdy all! Louie Dombroski, Gary Palmer and I will be running a big day in support of the research programs at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory. We are all former counters at WPBO, and are happy to help the Observatory fund their counts. Our team, the Yoopland Sandpipers will be tearing across Delta County in the southern UP on May 24th to try and see as many species of birds as we possibly can to helpp raise money to continue the vital bird monitoring that WPBO has conducted for over forty years now.

Recently WPBO has gained a Research Director, hired a fantastic field staff that has been breaking some record high counts of birds and has been collecting data for an experimental Morning Flight Count for the first time ever!

Please consider donating or pledging to our efforts to help keep WPBO’s count programs running as well as expanding! We are grateful for for any assistance you can provide! Here is a link to support our big day!

https://wpbo.org/birdathon/

03/17/2025

The Raptor Count at Whitefish Point Bird Observatory is Underway

Spring migration is in motion, and the WPBO Spring Raptor Count is officially underway. From March 15 through May 31, dedicated raptor counter Sean McLaughlin will be stationed at Whitefish Point, documenting the movement of migrating birds of prey.

Sean is a seasoned hawk watcher from Pennsylvania with experience counting raptors along the Appalachian ridges and, more recently, at Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory in Minnesota. This season, he’s eager to experience migration and track the incredible diversity of raptors passing through Whitefish Point.

Follow along with the count in real time on Trektellen: https://www.trektellen.org/count/view/4562

If you're visiting Whitefish Point this spring, be sure to stop by the hawk deck, say hello to Sean, and witness the spectacle of raptor migration in action.

03/11/2025

I just returned from a delightful jaunt through beautiful Belize!

01/13/2025

Heya folks! Been a minute since I've checked in with everyone here at Borealis Birding. I'm gearing up for the 2025 tour season and it is already really filling up fast. But I do want to push one tour in particular- my spring Texas migration and Hill Country tour in mid April. One of my most birdy trips of the year, we regularly get 260-280 species of bird and when the winds are just right, the migration can be stupendous along the coast!

This is a guaranteed tour to run but still has a lot of room for sign-ups so if you want to get a jump on your spring migration, please join us!

The Upper Texas Coast is a birding paradise during the spring. Our Texas Spring birding tour will take in the migration spectacle as tens of thousands of birds pass through this region. We will visit High Island, Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge, the extensive salt flats and marshes of the Bolivar P...

07/19/2024

In June 2024, I had the opportunity to assist my colleague Gavin Bieber on a WINGS tour to Alaska. I had been there before, but this trip would be twice as long, and cover far more ground. We had a base camp in Anchorage, but spent a bit of time each in Nome, Seward, Denali Highway/Fairbanks, and up to Utqiagvik(Barrow). Alaska is a spell-binding place and I treasure every experience I've had there. This was a fantastic adventure, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the amazing wildlife, mind-bending scenery and getting a chance to even socialize a touch as there were lots of friends old and new up leading their own tours across this land primeval. I'm already excited to go back next year!

Here is the ebird trip report if you would like to see a full accounting of the birds and mammals I saw there.
https://ebird.org/tripreport/250048

03/19/2024

Just finished up a very successful tour of Belize! What a wonderful place to go birding!

09/11/2023

I encountered my first Orange-crowned Warbler of the fall a couple days ago on September 8th. This is typically the last species of warbler to appear in fall migration and is one of the most regularly misidentified bird species at this time of year. I suspect many birders confuse this species for another bird in the same genus, Tennessee Warbler. While for the most part adult Tennessee Warblers have enough plumage differences to easily separate them, the problem lies with very fresh juvie Tennessee Warblers. With the young birds, they can present as a very greenish monochrome bird and what trips up most birders is that the pale supercilium that is normally pretty bold, starts off with a greenish wash over it, making it almost disappear from contrasting with the rest of the face. The other issue is Tennessee shows a yellowish-green flanks and vent; this feature is mistaken for the undertail coverts as the bird twists around rapidly foraging trying to fuel up for the next leg of its journey. A secondary characteristic to use is- I had to grab my jacket to bird that morning! Even on Lake Superior, Orange-crowns typically don't even make their first appearance until the weather turns a bit colder, to see one before Labor Day on the shores of Lake Superior is notable! Even then they don't start to move till there is that nip in the air and other classic mid/late September migrants make an appearance such as Rusty Blackbird, Ruby-Crowned Kinglet, Lapland Longspur and Winter Wren start migrating. If you take a look at my eBird checklist from that morning, you'll see that I had all of those species as well that morning, all first of fall migrants for me. A take-away tip might be, if you're sweating while wearing shorts and tee-shirt, it might not be an Orange-crowned in front of you and worth a second, more critical look!

Submitted by Skye Haas.