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Heading West: A long-awaited trip gets started at...
It’s a bird-eat-bird world: Pileated Woodpeckers Part 2
It’s springtime — and these Pileated Woodpeckers get...
Keeping up with the Jays: Half a century...
High hopes for a nearly extinct sparrow as...
A visit to this exotic bird park is...
Love Birds: What’s it take to make her...
Taking off in a cloud, Snow Geese create...
Gucci discovers birding, and it’s never been more...
This small wooden box may hold the future...
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Author

Anders Gyllenhaal

Anders Gyllenhaal

Birds storiesPhotographyVideo

It’s a bird-eat-bird world: Pileated Woodpeckers Part 2

by Anders Gyllenhaal March 24, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Two male Pileated Woodpeckers battle for supremacy. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

We heard the clamor from our woodpecker’s nest and instantly knew something was up. The bird’s usual call was replaced with a high-pitched, staccato screech and both the male and female birds leaped around their tree as if the place was on fire.

Last week, we wrote about the idyllic life these two Pileated Woodpeckers created within a few steps of where we are camping. This week, we got a reminder that nature is unpredictable and sometimes violent. By the end of the week, the pair were forced out of their nest just as they were trying to start a family.

The cries we heard that day were the precursor to an attack from another Pileated Woodpecker who wanted to take the place of the male. We scurried over to see what was going on just as an attack was about to begin. The two male birds jumped from one branch to another, howling furiously. Then they tumbled to the ground as if in a western, falling head over tails as they wrestled. We though the duel might be over, then the two males flew to the top of the nesting tree and began circling each other while trading jabs and squawks.

Pileateds are the largest woodpeckers in North America, more than a foot tall with a wingspan of two feet. They are powerful birds with large claws and sharp beaks. All of those tools came into play as these two battled for the advantage.

Finally, our original male took a powerful swipe at the intruder, who then flew off in what turned out to be the end of the threat. Both the male and female climbed up and down their nesting tree, ready for another assault that never came. Eventually, they settled down and went back to readying the nest they’d worked on for the past two weeks.

Here’s how it looked in a video: 

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March 24, 2021 2 comments
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FeaturedSpeciesVideo

It’s springtime — and these Pileated Woodpeckers get down to business

by Anders Gyllenhaal March 17, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

We’ve always been drawn to Pileated Woodpeckers. Who can resist these magnificent birds, with their striking yodel, two-foot wingspan and bright red crests set against more than a foot of jet-black plumage?

The male Pileated outside its nest. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal.

So when two of these woodpeckers showed up for several days running in a dead tree right next-door to our campsite, we were captivated. It was hard to get anything done; they’d sound off a dozen times a day, and I’d have to drop everything and see what was going on.

The female outside their nest cavity

 

Something was up indeed: It’s springtime – and we had a romance brewing before our prying eyes.

We’ve always had to catch Pileated Woodpeckers in brief glimpses when they’d appear on a birding walk, or zip by overhead on their way to somewhere else. This encounter turned out to be different. The pair decided to build their nesting cavity 30 steps from our spot on the edge of the busy Land Yacht Harbor Airstream park in Central Florida where we’re spending a few weeks. They seemed used to people and didn’t mind my keeping up with their progress.

They chose a tall dead pine and started chopping out their cavity 25 feet up the trunk. The male did most of the work in the beginning, then the female took over. She was tireless, working away for hours at a time, then picking up mouthfuls of chips and tossing them out the front door as if spitting tobacco juice.

Here’s a video of the two working on their nest, to the Beatle’s love song, “I will:” 

 

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March 17, 2021 1 comment
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Birding researchConservationPhotographyVideo

Keeping up with the Jays: Half a century of research is slowly paying off

by Anders Gyllenhaal March 9, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal
 

The Florida Scrub-Jays have come to recognize the white Ford pickup that bumps along the sandy roads headed their way. They’ve long since become accustomed to the familiar figure that jumps out of the cab and starts walking along the roadway. The birds are zipping his way at full speed within a minute or two of his arrival.

It’s the monthly census at the Archbold Biological Station– and the jays are more than willing to be counted. 

The driver is Reed Bowman, the state’s expert on Scrub-Jays who’s spent 30 years studying these endangered birds in search of a way to help their population rebound. The monthly census gives the birds something they want — peanuts that Bowman scatters along the road to draw the birds. And Bowman gets what he needs: a close look at the birds to make sure they’re all accounted for and healthy.

Reed Bowman checking off the jays he’s spotted. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

“Here they come,’’ Bowman says, on his second stop of the morning, where the jays were particularly eager to reach him.  They land and wait in the stunted oak undergrowth nearby. Then they plunge forward and go after the treats. Bowman raises his binoculars and quickly spots the colorful bands on their legs that identify every individual bird.

“See that white and green (band), that bird right there?’’ he says. “And there’s red, (and) red. They both have antennas sitting on their back. A little bent up, but not bad.’’

Bird counts everywhere are an important part of tracking the health of species in general, but the regular census at Archbold stands apart. Every month for the past half century, the Archbold bird staff has fanned out across the 8,000 acres dotted with pines, stunted oaks and palmettos to build an unparalleled historic record of the Florida Scrub-Jay population.

About 85 families of jays live here, one of the few areas where they’re stable and even increasing on some tracts. Researchers believe the answer to saving the disappearing species lies in this intense study. It focuses not only on population size, but on their overall health, how the birds live, particularly how they mate, build nests and raise young.

Can Florida and the endangered Scrub-Jays co-exist? 
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March 9, 2021 0 comment
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Postcard

Love Birds: What’s it take to make her his Valentine?

by Anders Gyllenhaal February 13, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Flying Lessons Postcard

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He has the key to her heart

There’s no Valentine’s Day in birdland, but we thought this was a nice view into the courting ritual of another species. We caught up with these two Cedar Waxwings in Northern Virginia early in the mating season. They circled the air together, then landed on a branch side by side. That’s when he made his move. What’s the gift he offers her with such valor? It’s a tasty insect. This is a common way for birds to prove their devotion — not to mention their hunting and snagging skills. Happy Valentine’s Day all around. 

February 13, 2021 0 comment
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FlightMigrationPhotography

Taking off in a cloud, Snow Geese create a winter wonderland

by Anders Gyllenhaal January 27, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

KNOTTS ISLAND, N.C. — Suddenly the steady honking and squawking from this gaggle of Snow Geese shifts to a higher pitch, and one of nature’s great performances begins.

First just a few, then dozens, and finally hundreds of the bright white birds begin to rise up from a brackish pond on Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge in Northeastern North Carolina. Within seconds, every square inch of air is filled with flapping, wailing geese. The mass moves up, veers right and then left as if a conductor is guiding the cloud of snowy white.

The scene is mesmerizing, a gift for patient observers along the mid-Atlantic coast this time of year. Each gigantic cloud puts an exclamation point on an unusual story: At a time when most bird species are in decline, populations of Snow Geese are booming.

White Pelicans

They’re not hard to find — spread across marshes and fields from coastal New Jersey to the Carolinas — but it takes patience and a little luck to catch an entire flock on the wing.

After two days of searching, our moment came near dusk on the remote Knotts Island just south of Virginia Beach. This cluster of geese had been bobbing on the surface for hours before something, heaven knows what, startled them. Instantly they were clamoring toward the sky.

Tundra Swans, the second largest swans in North America, flying in formation over Mackay Island refuge.

Becky Harrison, the supervisory wildlife biologist at Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge near Nags Head, N.C., saw the first arrivals in November. Their numbers gradually build toward a peak in mid-February.

There’s actually a trio of grand white birds that overwinters here, Harrison said. The Tundra Swan is the most elegant, the American White Pelican is the largest, but Snow Geese are the most impressive in their huge numbers.

Here’s a video of the scene: 

Snow Geese in the Pea Island refuge. Photo by Becky Harrison

Snow Geese spend their summers in the far north, breeding along the tundras of Canada and Alaska. They’re best known for their bright white plumage with black wing tips, for their powerful flight and for their ravenous appetites.

Snow Goose / Photo by Becky Harrison

Researchers aren’t sure what’s behind the growth in population that has brought them back from near extinction a century ago. They suspect that the warming climate undermining many species is working in the goose’s favor. Every fall hundreds of thousands migrate not only to the East, but also down the Mississippi to several lower Midwestern States and also to California’s Central Valley.

Not everyone is glad to see them.

“All these big birds,” said biologist Becky Harrison, standing under a Tundra Swan specimen, “they’re just so striking.”

At Mackay Island, refuge manager Mike Hoff said during the day the geese often feed on the crops and vegetation in fields several miles away. With their growing numbers, wildlife managers say they’re damaging vegetation on the tundras as well.

But when the birds return to the refuge each evening by the thousands, they are a sight to behold. Part of the Snow Geese’s success is thought to be how they stick together – whether flying in formation or resting in the marshes. When you add in the Tundra Swans and White Pelicans, the masses of white forms out on the water are one of the great wonders of winter birding.

 

Tundra Swans catch the last light of the day on Mackay Island.

And here’s a migration video that shows the annual migration routes of the Snow Geese across the U.S. and Canada:

And finally, here’s a gallery of the big white birds found along the eastern coast this time of year:

A cloud of Snow Geese taking flight

Snow Geese return from foraging

The clamor at the start of the mass flight

Tundra Swans in formation

White Pelicans

An adult and two juvenile Snow Geese / Photo by Becky Harrison

Tundra Swans

Tundra Swans adrift

Tunda Swans

The cloud of Snow Geese settle back down.

 

 

 

 

January 27, 2021 4 comments
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BirdingBirding researchBirding technology

This small wooden box may hold the future of hi-tech birding

by Anders Gyllenhaal January 6, 2021
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

The future of hi-tech birding arrived in a small FedEx package the other day. It was a delivery we’d been looking forward to for months, so we went right to work.

The Haikubox, which stands about a foot tall, records songs and calls and immediately identifies the bird species.

Within minutes, I slipped the sleek, wooden box out of its container and plugged it in on our porch, where it went right to work on its ambitious task: Recording all the birdsong, calls and chips from the yard and instantly suggesting which birds are behind every peep.

Not long ago, we wrote about the smartphone apps you can take on the birding trail if you need help identifying birds by ear. This new invention, called the Haikubox, is the mother of the birdsong ID tools. It’s designed to be set up at your home and detect every nearby bird around the clock, day in and day out.

It’s like an instant X-ray of your avian neighborhood  â€“ or at least it will be when the development and fine-tuning is done about a year from now. 

We’re lucky enough to be among the 20 testing volunteers to test out the preliminary version of the Haikubox. We plan to follow its creation and let you know how it goes on its way to the retail market. It’s expected to cost somewhere under $500, although the price hasn’t been set.

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January 6, 2021 0 comment
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BirdingFeaturedPhotography

What a show: Battle of the Hummingbirds reaches its peak

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 30, 2020
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

We’re winding up the year sharing the most popular  — and we hope most compelling — Flying Lesson stories from 2020.  Most of the posts are profiles of bird encounters, including this story, photos and video of the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds we spent time with this summer.  

Only when we slowed the video way down and then blew it up could we see the ferocity of the encounter: The male Ruby-throated Hummingbird hovered above its competitor, then slammed bill-first into the female like a tiny gladiator.

The clash sent the two tumbling into the air. (See the video below.) Once again, the alpha male had done his job in the survival-of-the-fittest world of this smallest, most acrobatic of species.

A female Ruby-throated Hummingbird comes in for a landing on a favorite feeder. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

Much of the daily routines of nature are invisible to us. They take place deep in the woods, fields or wetlands, often at speeds that obscure any real details. Even the most avid birders get mere glimpses of how birds interact.

But the spread of hummingbird feeders all across the U.S. each doesn’t just help support these birds. In exchange for a supply of hummingbird sugar water, we get a close-up look at the way birds establish territories, settle into pecking orders, help and compete with one another and fight to survive.

      Here’s a video about the fierce competition playing out around the feeders:

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December 30, 2020 0 comment
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Postcard

A Pileated Woodpecker in holiday mode

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 24, 2020
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Flying Lessons Postcard

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A favorite woodpecker in holiday pose

We saved our best yuletide photo for the height of the holidays. We’ve always wanted to make a Christmas card with this scene of a magnificent Pileated Woodpecker picking bright red berries, as if gathering them for a wreath. We never got around to it, until now. We think it’s the perfect shot for the last in our series of bird photos with holiday connections. We came across this woodpecker near Savannah, Ga. At first, he was well up a tree, too far away for a good photo. Then he suddenly flew toward us and took up his position in a nearby berry bush. With a little luck, we caught him at just the right moment. We’re delighted to share this scene in wishing you the best in this precious time of year. 

December 24, 2020 0 comment
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Beverly's Birding BasicsBirding technologyBirdsongs

Which is the best birdsong ID app? We tested them all and have a winner.

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 22, 2020
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

     After years of yearning for a technology that can identify birds by their songs, birders are now awash in apps and services that promise to tell you what species you just heard.

     And in fact, the best of more than a half dozen smartphone apps do a pretty good job with the technically complex task of capturing birdsongs and instantly listing the likely birds behind the song.

     But which is best for you? How hard are they to use? And should you go with one of the free versions or spend up to $30 a year?

Leading the field is a free app called BirdNET, which just recently launched an IOS version to go with a popular Android version that has more than a million users.

     We put them all to the test and have clear rankings to share – along with a few surprises.

     Before we delve into how these services perform, it’s worth spending a couple of graphs on the scientific competition that’s behind this progress – and why the science of bird sounds is now coming into its own.

     The bird ID apps are mere sideshows in a race to master the use of sound to study wildlife. The science of bioacoustics, which uses artificial intelligence to analyze audio from the wild, has become a powerful practice in field research.

Click here for our primer on bioacoustics that ran in the Washingon Post.

     The discipline is fueled by the same digital advances powering the internet and has turned out to be particularly effective to study birds. That’s because birds are so vocal and can be found and researched almost everywhere.

A worthy contender is a European app called ChirpOMatic.

     As several major universities, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a number of private companies developed bioacoustic techniques, they found they could spin off commercial phone versions that identify bird calls and songs the same way the popular Shazam app does with music.

     About a dozen birdsong applications have reached market as the race to create truly reliable versions has accelerated over the past three or four years.

     Today, there are about a half dozen worthy apps, including versions from the Cornell Lab, Princeton University Press, the technology company Wildlife Acoustics, a couple of European firms and several individual U.S. developers who are betting there’s money to be made on these products. Almost all are available for download for both Android and IOS phones. Other more sophisticated bioacoustic devices that can be used in birders’ yards are also under development. 

     While these solutions are cresting, we couldn’t find anything that ranked how accurate they are. So we spent time with each of them, testing their precision and assessing how easy they are to use. There’s one clear leader in the field, three that were right about half the time and several that were almost always wrong in our tests.

     Here are our findings (and we explain our testing approach below).

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December 22, 2020 0 comment
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Here are links to some of the deeper stories we’ve written for publications from the Washington Post to The Miami Herald exploring the frontiers of birding and avian research. This story for the Post was about the role of every-day birders in creating the largest citizen science project in the world. This piece for The Herald looked at the surprising strength of the Roseate Spoonbill in the midst of climate change. And this article and video for The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer is about how some adventurous hummingbirds are abandoning their migration and staying the winter in the U.S. Our latest story in the Washington Post is about a rescue mission for the imperiled Florida Grasshopper Sparrow. 

Miami Herald’s Spoonbill package

Some favorite birds

Barred Owl Orlando, Florida
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Ruby-throated Hummingbird West Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Hairy Woodpecker Prime Hook Refuge, Delaware
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Prairie Warbler Cape May, New Jersey
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Red-bellied Woodpecker St. Joe Overstreet Landing, Florida
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Eastern Wood-Peewee Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC
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Eastern Meadowlark Kissimmee, Florida
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Black-throated Blue Warbler Raleigh, North Carolina
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Northern Flicker Alexandria, Virginia
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal

Birds in Flight

Roseate Spoonbill BIRDS IN FLIGHT FELLSMERE, FLORIDA OSPREY BIRDS IN FLIGHT Orlando, Florida American Flamingo BIRDS IN FLIGHT Rio Largartos, Mexico COPYRIGHT BY ANDERS AND BEVERLY GYLLENHAAL EASTERN MEADOWLARK BIRDS IN FLIGHT KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA Red-shouldered Hawk BIRDS IN FLIGHT Orlando, Florida COPYRIGHT BY ANDERS AND BEVERLY GYLLENHAAL PALM WARBLER BIRDS IN FLIGHT ORLANDO, FLORIDA BLUE-GRAY GNATCATCHER BIRDS IN FLIGHT LORTON, VIRGINIA BROWN PELICAN BIRDS IN FLIGHT ASSATEAGUE, MARYLAND COPYRIGHT BY ANDERS AND BEVERLY GYLLENHAAL WOOD STORK BIRDS IN FLIGHT MELBOURNE, FLORIDA COPYRIGHT BY ANDERS AND BEVERLY GYLLENHAAL

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Quotes for the birds

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

— D.H. Lawrence, writer

Comments, Suggestions & Quips:

On How Birds Teach Humility:

–“NOB. Love it! Great little truths in this post.” – Chara Daum

— “Appreciate your insights, Beverly.” -Ruth Harrell

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On our offbeat video of a Tufted Titmouse singing along with a banjo:

“That is totally cool,” Tony Mas, Dahlonega, Ga.

“This brought a smile to us. Thanks.” John Deen, St. Paul, MN.

“Really amazing.” Florence Strickland, Sunset Beach, N.C.

On the Mandarin duck’s arrival in Central Park:

— “I think he gets his own Saturday morning now.” -Stephen Colby, Raleigh, N.C.

— “What a beautiful bird. Its colors look painted on. Magnificent.” -Christine DiMattei

On the falling numbers of Wild Turkeys:

“I was just mentioning this to a friend, how I used to see Wild Turkeys every time I hit a dirt road, and now it’s almost rare.” -Jeff Brooks.

“There are a hundred times more turkeys than when I was a kid. Fake BS to shake down donations and public funding.” -Vance Shearer

 

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About us

About us

We’re two journalists who’ve traded in our work in publishing and syndicated writing for following and photographing the birds. We live in Raleigh, NC, but are traveling the country every chance we get -- and are sharing the lessons birds are teaching us and the photos we take along the way.

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This website is about what we can learn from the birds around us. Some of the lessons are obvious, such as the way birds can be a barometer of environmental changes. Others are subtle, like the way you, as an observer, have to adapt to navigate the world in which birds operate. We ourselves still have much to learn about birding, a late-in-life pursuit that has captivated us in retirement. But we decided to start writing about the lessons and teachings as we’re finding our way, in hopes that our storytelling and photography will help to celebrate a captivating element of nature.

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