On June 21st I began yet another "back to back". On this one I went to New York for eighteen hours, came back to London for another eighteen hours, and then went back to New York again - this time for about twenty-four hours. All very well, but what, you may well be asking, has this to do with birding or bird-blogging? Let me explain...

Normally when I go birding after a series of long flights I do so on my own. I can be quick and precise or I can be lazy and unfocussed depending on how I feel. Mistakes don't matter, because there's no-one there to witness them. When I discuss blogs and blogging it is with people (mainly cabin crew) who have never read or written one and have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. If I talk rubbish, no-one knows better enough to contradict me. It's an ideal situation for a bird-blogger with permanent jet-lag and permanent insecurity. I live in a comfort-zone of my own making, and usually I'm quite happy inside it....

New York, though, is the home to Mike, who with his wife Sara, writes 10000birds.com, one of the most entertaining bird blogs on the web. Mike is fairly new to birding, as he readily admits, but is improving rapidly. He is certainly not new to writing. His blogs are wide-ranging, well-written, usually funny, and always smart. He has ideas. There is a sense of purpose behind what he posts that my befuddled ramblings rarely seem to match. Apparently, though, we liked what each other was doing (or trying to do) with our respective blogs, we'd emailed each other a couple of times to say so, and we thought - as I was coming over - it would be a good idea to meet up and have a chat...Time to step out of the comfort-zone...

We met up at JFK airport, close to the renowned Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (photo above) about forty minutes from Manhattan. A wide expanse of bay and saltmarsh, this nationally important area is famous for migrants and wintering wildfowl: in mid-June it's not really famous for anything except fresh air and as an escape from the intensity of New York city itself. We did see some interesting birds (Yellow-crowned Night-herons, Glossy Ibis, Willet, Yellow-billed Cuckoo, and Willow Flycatcher for instance), but this was always going to be a social trip, a chance to weigh each other up and decide whether the next time I got rostered a New York I'd mail Mike or if I did whether he'd mail back. Hey, we're all busy people - who can waste time?

I'm glad to say though we got on really well. Mike is a guileless, intelligent bloke, who - as I'd guessed - takes his writing seriously, and has some great ideas for where his blogging will take him. It's always refreshing to meet a person who genuinely cares and is enthusiastic about things - be it the planet, wildlife, his son (Mason, who came with us and who Mike clearly adores), or his writing. It's good to be made to question your motivation. To look at things in a different way. To step out of the comfort-zone in fact...you never know what you might learn...

A very entertaining and interesting couple of hours indeed then ("interesting" being a "very good thing" in my book).You know, there are times when I'm tired and irritable, when I never want to see a plane ever again, when I really wonder why I tap away at a keyboard when I could be curled up on the sofa with my long-suffering partner Jo...but then again there are times when you make an effort, when the air is fresh and there's an Osprey flying around over your head, and when you find yourself having a really good discussion with a new friend you only made because of all those hours tapping away at a keyboard - and it all makes sense again...

That blog that Mike writes? 10000birds.com...

Ospreys Pandion haliaetus

Tree Swallow

Willet