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Anders Gyllenhaal

Postcard

Wild Turkey

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

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Celebrating the Wild Turkey

We take a moment this week to honor the wild turkey, a magnificent bird that is barely recognizable from its domestic cousin on our Thanksgiving Day table.  Every year in late November, we like to share a few facts about this bird that is so woven into American culture and lore. The turkey does gobble, but it also clucks and purrs. The domestic versions can’t fly, but the wild birds can for short distances — and at fairly good speeds when necessary. The turkey population has had its struggles in the past decade, as our recent stories reflect, but is doing well in many states. An estimated 7 million wild turkeys are spread across the U.S., and have moved into many places where they weren’t originally found. (That’s the male bird, or tom, above and the female hen to the right) Ben Franklin argued that the turkey should be our national bird, but the Bald Eagle won out. Imagine how it would look on the dollar bill. 

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Tree Swallows caught in midair: A rare glimpse of these aerial acrobats

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Most of the time, tree swallows move so astoundingly fast it’s hard to see anything but a blur. They’re in such constant motion they rarely stop long enough to offer more than a glimpse of their deep blue-and-white plumage that looks like a tiny tuxedo.

A Tree Swallow comes in for a landing. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

So I was surprised one windy afternoon last month on the plains of eastern Wyoming when I came across a full dozen Tree Swallows clinging to a barbed-wire fence. The wind was so strong they were momentarily grounded. When they did try to fly, the wind held them in place for a time as they took off and landed.

It was as if these little aerial acrobats were frozen in the air.

As long as the wind kept up, I had a chance to catch these birds in the midst of takeoffs, landings, feedings, squabbles, gobbles, squawks and occasionally quiet moments of stillness.

Nobody knows these hyperactive birds better than David Winkler, a long-time professor at Cornell University who researched swallows throughout his career before retiring two years ago. He’s still working with his swallows, to his great delight.

“They’re masters of the air,’’ he said. “I never get tired of looking at them.’’

Winkler has studied the swallows’ migration, feeding and mating habits, their flight dynamics and nesting routines. He started toward the beginning of his career as a professor of ornithology, and he found no end to the questions about swallows he hoped to answer.

The wind blows a swallow slightly off course.

What he finds most fascinating is their tireless drive, the same thing that makes them so fascinating to watch in flight. “They don’t let anything get in their way,’’ said Winkler.

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Birds and Flowers: More than just a pretty picture

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Maybe it was because we’d been cooped up for much of the past year, but traveling the country this summer, we were swept away whenever we spotted birds and flowers together. It was like we were seeing them for the first time.

Birds and flowers have a longstanding relationship – going back at least 50 million years, as we’ll explain in a moment. They rely on one another for food, pollination, seed dispersal and nesting materials. They also make the most striking portraits, so much so that we started gathering photos from Florida to California, Hawaii to Kansas. Here’s just a fraction of the scenes we saw.

Flowers are like a dining room for birds. They can find nectar, insects, seeds and buds, a kind of smorgasbord in the right seasons. Birds return the favor by spreading around the pollen the flowers need for reproduction and dispersing the plant’s seeds after consuming them and expelling them as they make their daily rounds.

The connection between flowers and birds isn’t new. We came across this precious fact in reading up on flowers and birds: Scientists in Germany found a fossil of a bird that included remnants of pollen the bird had consumed back in the Cretaceous period 47 million years ago, they announced in a study published in the journal Biology Letters. How many of us can brag of relationships that go back even half that far?

One of the stars of the flower landscape, of course, is the hummingbird. These tiny, 4-gram acrobats are famous for their ability to drink their weight in nectar each day. (Here’s our most popular hummingbird post). While the birds love feeders, our favorite encounters are when hummingbirds go straight to the flowers for their nectar. 

A final note: You can use flowers and plants to attract birds to your yard. You can go after hummingbirds, for instance, with red flowers such as begonias, geraniums and petunias. Sunflowers will attract songbirds. Here’s the Audubon Society’s guidance on 10 native plants that will bring birds to you. Here’s a good post from Nextavenue on how to build your own bird sanctuary by choosing the right flowers, plants and trees. And here’s a post on how to attract hummingbirds to your yard. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Birding researchConservationSpecies

Catching up with the California Condor: A comeback story in the making

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

One of the birds we most hoped to see in our travels in the West was the California Condor, the continent’s largest bird with an inspiring comeback story.

The condor is majestic and also kind of odd, with a wingspan of almost 10 feet and a huge body covered with black feathers resembling an overcoat. When the condor flies you can see patches of white feathers that look like racing stripes.

A mature condor is placed with the young birds at the breeding center to show them how to behave like condors. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

But it’s not easy to catch up with the condor. There are now about 300 of the raptor in the wild, sprinkled across California, Arizona, Utah and Baja California. It’s an impressive number considering the species was down to just 22 birds when wildlife managers realized the species was about to go extinct three decades ago. They caught the remaining birds, brought them into captivity and launched a breeding program that has slowly returned the birds to a portion of their range in the West.

A young condor that has yet to come into its adult plumage and coloring

Today, it takes some luck to see them in the wild.

We are winding up six months of travels to research a book on bird conservation . We hadn’t seen the condor, though. So as we headed east across the northern half of the U.S., we stopped in Boise, Idaho, which is home to the Peregrine Fund. The organization hosts the largest of the four condor breeding centers and has an ambitious program to revive the health of the species that had been one of the symbols of the West.

Two adult condors perched in the center’s aviary

As soon as you drive up to the bluff where the Fund’s World Center for Birds of Prey overlooks the Boise valley, you see the condors on a perch high in the aviary. 

Condors have a regal stance and a thousand-mile stare. They also have a bald head that turns pink and scaly in adults. It’s a striking combination that helps them stand out, even while flying at remarkable heights of up to 15,000 feet.

Erin Katzner,  director of Global Engagement for the Peregrine Fund, has spent the last six years making the argument for saving condors. Although the center works on behalf of raptors all around the world,  the condor is now its primary focus. Started 51 years ago when the Peregrine Falcon was in danger of extinction, the Peregrine Fund engineered the falcon’s comeback. “There are so many falcons today that we can’t even keep up with them,’’ she said.

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“He’s close.” On the trail of a rare Hawaiian Honeycreeper

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

We heard the sweet, staccato song of Hawaiian Palila on and off all day as we roamed the range of this golden-yellow bird, one of the most endangered and treasured species on the islands. 

But the Palila always seemed to stay just out of sight, living up to its status as one of the rarest of the islands’ birds, found only on the upper reaches of the Big Island’s highest mountain.

Our Palila stops for just a moment on the branch of a mamane tree. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

We were visiting with Chris Farmer, the Hawaii program director for the American Bird Conservancy. Chris has spent so much time working with this and other native birds that he’s kind of a Palila whisperer. Sometimes he alone would hear the unique song, usually coming from the other side of the stands of mamane trees that dominate the dry forest.

Hawaii is a magical and complicated place for birds, particularly forest birds like the critically endangered Palila. The native birds face unrelenting pressure from habitat loss, invasive species, diseases and changing climate. They evolved in an era of few predators but now face them at every turn.

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Going fishing: The Reddish Egret shows off its dancing moves

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

If you see a Reddish Egret in the shallows of a marsh, just pause for a bit because you’re about to witness an exotic performance. With wings arched over its head, the bird leaps into the air then rushes sideways through the water. The choreography of crisscrossing feet is worthy of Fred Astaire.

We came across this spectacle on the edge of Galveston Island State Park in coastal Texas one recent rainy afternoon. The scene was transfixing: the egret leaps from the water one moment, tilts its heads far over to the side in the next and then appears to tiptoe.

Made all the more compelling by its willowy springtime breeding plumage, this bird isn’t dancing for our benefit. He’s busy working, and the grand finale is a beak full of fish.

In researching what may be the most beautiful of the egret species, we learned that every part of this comical ritual has purpose. When the bird dances through the shallows, he’s stirring up the fish. By raising his wings overhead, he’s creating a shadow that draws prey to within easy striking distance. A strange and gawky lurch forward is actually an attempt to catch the next fish unawares.

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The perfect gift: A wild warbler party on the gulf coast of Texas

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Prothonotary Warbler

Beverly’s favorite birds have always been warblers — the feisty, colorful world travelers that are among the hardest species to find. They’re shy, skittish and can move so quickly they’re often gone before you get a good look.

Last week was Beverly’s birthday, which just happened to fall on our stop along the Louisiana and Texas coasts. It was a warbler party every day, as thousands upon thousands had just arrived from their wintering grounds in Latin America and the Caribbean. These songbirds are famished and fatigued, and for once don’t seem to mind us humans hanging around.

Hooded Warbler: “Would you like a close up?”

Some of the birds we’ve encountered are old acquaintances, such as the Prothonotary and Hooded warblers. In other parts of the country and at other times of the year we’ve had to chase them for days to get just a glimpse. But on this trip along the Southern Gulf Coast, we’ve been seeing Prothonotaries at almost every turn. One recent day, a Hooded Warbler ambled around in the brush at my feet, as if saying, “How do I look from this angle?’’ and, “Would you like a close up?’’

Kentucky Warbler

Others are warblers we’d never seen before — the Kentucky, the Golden-winged and the Tennessee. At the Sabine Woods Bird Sanctuary on the Upper Texas Coast, the Golden-winged Warbler was so hungry that it fluttered from tree to bush, hanging like an acrobat, feeding furiously with every stop. It seemed oblivious to us as we followed along just a few yards away.

 

Golden-winged Warbler: An acrobat of a bird

Many types of warblers are getting harder to see because their numbers are going down. A host of forces are working against them: Much of their habitat is being lost to development, and they can fall behind in their breeding routine if insects and plants blossom ahead of schedule due to a warming climate. Warblers migrate thousands of miles twice a year, an exhausting journey that exposes them to hazards all along their routes, such as colliding into skyscrapers. Even something as innocuous as a house cat is a severe threat unless it’s kept inside. Outdoor cats kill millions and millions of birds, including warblers, every year in the United States alone.

Yellow Warbler

When you see warblers hit land just after their nonstop flight across the Gulf of Mexico, it’s easier to appreciate the breathtaking feat of migration. You can witness them jamming insects, fruit and worms down their throats in a glutinous spree that turns their beaks berry red. They’ve hardly swallowed, and it’s on to the next bite.

Migrators are traveling north on a mission, headed to their breeding grounds to claim a territory, find a mate and start a family. The males are dressed up in their springtime best for the courtship rituals ahead.

American Redstart (male)

While it’s hard to choose the most impressive warbler, I was struck this week with the near-neon glow of the black-and-orange America Redstart. Not long after we spotted the male, along came a female Redstart, so the fancy attire seemed to be working.

Thanks to the colorful feathers spring is the best time to see warblers, especially if you’re not used to looking for them. For the best chance, head out to the nearest woods or the edge of a brambly hedge between dawn and roughly 10 a.m., wear clothes in dull colors of leaves or twigs, bring binoculars, stay still and listen for high-pitched chirping and buzzing.

Blackburnian Warbler: Plumage like a sunset

Sometimes the late afternoon can be productive as well. We caught a Blackburnian Warbler at the top of a tree just as dusk descended. Its plumage shone like a sunset in the last light of the day, a blend of black, white, yellow and orange in lightning patterns across its head.

American Redstart (female)

Beverly’s love of warblers has only grown as we’ve gotten more familiar with them. That has meant I’ve spent many hours chasing them, too, trying for the perfect photograph, and as often as not, never getting more than a glimpse of these hyperactive birds. The truth is, I’ve come to be as captivated as she is by these birds and their stories.

Here’s a gallery of some of the warblers we’ve seen the past few weeks. As you can see, these are birthday gifts that don’t need wrapping – each different than the last, but all of uncommon beauty.

 

 

 

 

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Beverly's Birding BasicsBirding technologyBirdsongs

There’s no better time to take a birdsong ID app along with you. We tested them all and found a winner.

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

      With migration in full swing and the birds at their loudest, this is the time of year you’re most likely to run into an unfamiliar song. We’ve pulled out our most popular post of the year as a guide to the slew of birdsong ID apps on the market.

       For a long time, these apps weren’t much help with anything but the most obvious birdsongs — the same ones we’re most likely to recognize by ear. But the technology is advancing and the best smartphone apps do a pretty good job with the tough task of capturing the songs and instantly listing the most likely bird behind behind them.

           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. This is a version of a post we ran last year that we think for good reason turned out to be our best-read post of the year. 

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

by Anders Gyllenhaal
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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