Hey! I'm Alexandre Lajeunesse and welcome to my author page.
I'm a Canadian birder and trained ornithologist, and the founder of The Birding Insights. This is where I dig into the stories behind rare sightings, range expansions, and the everyday lives of the birds around us. My birding started in Quebec and has taken me all the way to the far end of Patagonia, but honestly the birds close to home surprise and delight me just as much as anything I find halfway across the world. They brighten every adventure, and if you're looking for me, I'm probably somewhere scanning for my favorite, the Long-tailed Jaeger.
My articles
Birding in Tadoussac and the Haute-Côte-Nord: The Complete Site and Trip-Planning Guide
The Haute-Côte-Nord strings ten serious birding sites along a hundred kilometres of Route 138, and almost none of it is documented in English. Here is where to go, when, in what order, and where to sleep.
Seabirds of the St. Lawrence Estuary: A Pelagic Trip That Is Not Pelagic
Puffins, phalaropes and jaegers within sight of shore, on water so rich that whales work it alongside the birds. Here is what comes past the boat on the St. Lawrence estuary, and how to name it in the five seconds you get.
Northern Saw-whet Owl Banding at Tadoussac: A Night With Quebec's Smallest Owl
Saw-whet owls are among the most common owls in the boreal forest and among the least seen. A banding night is the one reliable way to meet one, and it exists because researchers went out after dark and found a migration nobody knew was happening.
Why Raptors Funnel Through Tadoussac: Inside a Migration Bottleneck
Soaring raptors will not cross cold water, so coastlines gather them. Where the Saguenay fjord meets the St. Lawrence estuary, that rule produces one of eastern North America's cleanest migration bottlenecks, and one of its great places to stand.
Côte-Nord Migratory Bird Festival 2026: The Complete Guide to Quebec's Best Week of Fall Migration
Quebec's North Shore hosts its sixteenth migratory bird festival from 21 to 27 September 2026. Here is what the week actually contains, what it costs, and what to book before it fills.
Birding Discord Servers: Rare Bird Alerts Across the US, Canada, and Beyond
The fastest word on a local rarity now travels on Discord. Here is a directory of birding servers by region across the US and Canada, plus a few international and special-interest ones.
How to Document and Report Vagrant Birds: An eBird Guide
The orange R appears the moment you type the name, and the burden of proof shifts to you. Here is how to document a vagrant so the record stands, and so it counts for more than a year of noise.
How to Find Rare Birds: eBird Alerts and Chasing Vagrants
Rarities stop being luck once you build the system. Here is how to stack eBird alerts, follow the Discord channels that break news fastest, read the weather, and chase without wrecking your welcome.
Little Egret in North America: A Third Old World Colonizer
Two Old World herons already colonized North America. The Little Egret is the third, still arriving as a rare vagrant, and with it we get to watch chapter one.
Cattle Egret in North America: An Old World Colonizer's Story
A tropical heron that crossed the Atlantic on its own and conquered a continent in a few decades, the Cattle Egret is now retreating at its northern edge. Here is the whole arc.
Glossy Ibis Range Expansion in North America
Two centuries ago there was one, shot in New Jersey. Today Glossy Ibis breeds to Maine. Here is how an Old World wader crossed the Atlantic and marched north, unevenly.
Little Egret vs Snowy Egret: A Field Identification Guide
In Europe it is background scenery. On the Atlantic coast a Little Egret is a review-list rarity hiding among Snowy Egrets, and this is how to pick it out, and prove it.
Glossy Ibis vs White-faced Ibis: A Field Identification Guide
Two nearly identical dark ibis, one expanding east, one wandering from the west. The whole identification lives in the face, and this is how to read it, honestly.
How to Identify a Vagrant or Range-Expanding Bird
A Roseate Spoonbill hands you the ID; a dark ibis out of range does not. Here is how to tell when a bird is truly out of place, and how to build a case that holds up.
Bird Vagrancy and Range Expansion: Why Birds Turn Up Where They Shouldn't
A lost Tropical Kingbird in a city park and a Glossy Ibis nesting in Maine look like the same story. They are not. Here is how vagrancy and range expansion actually differ, and why both are showing up more often.
