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This small wooden box may hold the future...
Looking for resolutions? Here are 10 ways to...
What a show: Battle of the Hummingbirds reaches...
A Pileated Woodpecker in holiday mode
Which is the best birdsong ID app? We...
A Prothonotary Warbler comes calling on a visit...
A Summer Tanager shows off its yuletide plumage
How on earth? Great White Pelican shows up...
The free Merlin app puts the magic into...
A glimpse of a rare Vermillion Flycatcher
Flying Lessons
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      • Magnificent Frigatebird
      • Woodpecker’s Nest
      • Red-shouldered Hawk Gallery
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      • In search of Warblers
      • Purple Gallinule
      • Sandhill Cranes — and their chicks
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      • Catching Birds in Flight
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      • A Rookery for Storks
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Author

Anders Gyllenhaal

Anders Gyllenhaal

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  – 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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Bird of the WeekBirds storiesMigrationPhotography

A Prothonotary Warbler comes calling on a visit like no other

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 20, 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 of a Prothonotary Warbler we crossed paths with for a visit we still treasure.  We’re posting one of the highlight pieces each Sunday this month.

All warblers are wonderful to watch, particularly males in the spring. Nature gives them fresh feathers, all the better to snare a mate. For some warblers, spring markings and colors intensify to the point that they look nothing like their normal selves.

My favorite is the Prothonotary Warbler.

Of the 37 species in the Eastern U.S., the male Prothonotary is the only one that glows. His head is a saturated yellow-orange, earning him the nickname “Golden Swamp Warbler.”

Finding a Prothonotary feels like finding that last, hopelessly hidden Easter egg. You have to see it to fully appreciate it, and every time, he takes my breath away.

Yesterday we got lucky. A male in its full spring splendor shot out from under the bridge where Anders and I were standing and headed straight for a bush not 10 feet away and directly in front of us. In the past four years, we’ve seen this bird four times in four states without the lengthy encounter that this little bird gave us.

The visit was a photographer’s delight – perfect late afternoon light and a bird so hungry he foraged out in the open for a good 15 minutes.

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December 20, 2020 0 comment
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PhotographyPostcard

A Summer Tanager shows off its yuletide plumage

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 15, 2020
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

The reddest bird of all

The Summer Tanager stands out for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that the male is the only completely red bird in North America. This time of year, that earns him a place in this yuletide gallery devoted to our favorite holiday bird photos. We ran into this tanager and its greenish yellow mate this summer near Nashville, and at first knew they were near only from their distinctive songs and calls. Tanagers spent their time high in the canopy, often hidden away from birders. But we kept looking and, like unwrapping an unexpected present, we finally spotted him one day on a lower branch, as seen in this top photo. We might have been imagining it, but after a few days of hanging around them, they seemed to accept us as part of the landscape and we saw a lot of them. We’ve treasured that encounter, and the photos it gave us, the rest of the year. Here’s a post we wrote on them back in the fall. 

December 15, 2020 0 comment
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Bird of the WeekBirds storiesPhotography

How on earth? Great White Pelican shows up on the other side of the world

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 13, 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 of a Great White Pelican that transfixed north Florida birders early this year when the species usually found in Africa and Europe showed up in the U.S.  We’re posting one of the highlight pieces each Sunday this month. 

It wasn’t a Great White Shark, but for Florida’s best birders, it may as well have been. When the first reports hit that a Great White Pelican – usually found in Africa or India – had been spotted in a wildlife refuge near Titusville, well, you can imagine what happened next.

This is one of the largest birds in the world with a wingspan that can reach 12 feet. And even though it has the strength to cross an ocean without stopping, people couldn’t quite believe it had somehow landed in Florida.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves, but here’s a close-up of our Great White Pelican.

The first photo in early February  showed a distant bird that looked like the American White Pelican, only much bigger with a striking orange and pinkish tint. There’s also a diamond-shaped patch of day-glow orange over its eyes.

Then came several sporadic sightings around the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, a vast wilderness spanning 140,000 acres with one 7-mile road winding through. More often than not, the reports were of dashed hopes and a flock of regular pelicans seen from afar.

But the sightings persisted, and Florida Facebook birding sites lit up with speculation about the pelican’s whereabouts. So without much to go on, we drove up from our camping spot an hour south of Titusville to see if we could find this guy.

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December 13, 2020 0 comment
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Postcard

A glimpse of a rare Vermillion Flycatcher

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 9, 2020
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Flying Lessons Postcard

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A gift of the brightest red

We were traveling just after the holidays a few years ago when we stopped at St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge in the Florida Panhandle. The 68,000-acre preserve is one of the oldest in the country, created in 1931 for a stopover for migratory birds. But one rare bird that wasn’t supposed to be there showed up just in time to give us a post-holiday gift. We stopped to talk with the volunteers in the office before wandering the wetlands. Just as we were leaving, she said there was one more thing we should know that they generally kept to themselves to spare the bird from too many visitors. “There’s a Vermillion Flycatcher you can find at a secret spot,” she whispered, and then gave us directions, along with instructions to take only a brief look. Sure enough, moments after we arrived at a particular path, our present arrived, wrapped in the brightest red plumage we’d seen on any species. Its dark brown wings and tail set off the deep bright red that covered its front and head. The flycatcher went about its business, chasing down insects, and then stopped for a few moments on a nearby sign and looked us up and down. OK, it seemed to say, that’s enough. Off we went with a precious encounter we won’t ever forget.

Flying Lessons Postcards are short takes on birds of the season. Each week in December, we’re featuring a favorite photo of a bird with a connection to the holidays. 

December 9, 2020 0 comment
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Bird of the WeekHow we're birding nowPhotography

Quarantined with an Owl Nextdoor: But will we ever find him?

by Anders Gyllenhaal December 6, 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 of a neighborhood owl who turned out to be far more wily than we were. Along with our regular posts, we’ll run a best-of piece every Sunday through the end of the year. 

When we finally spotted our neighborhood’s Barred Owl, perched deep in the nearby woods but still within hooting distance of our balcony, we realized he was one step ahead of us.

Our owl watching from one of his favorite spots / Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

The owl had been watching us long before we found him.

We spotted him planted on a branch midway up a towering ivy-covered tree, camouflaged with a background that perfectly matched his plumage. He was staring down at us as if to say, what took so long.

The Barred Owl is a surveillance wonder. Its huge, dark eyes have telescopic vision. It can sit for hours scouring its territory. It can swivel its heads almost all the way around in either direction, a feat so impressive researchers at Johns Hopkins University conducted a full-fledged study to figure out how owls do what no other creature can. (See the explanation below after the second photo gallery.)

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December 6, 2020 0 comment
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Welcome to Flying Lessons, a website devoted to what we’re learning from the birds. You can sign up here for our weekly newsletter, visit our Facebook page here, spend time in our pages devoted to photos, birding advice, videos and special projects. We hope you enjoy your visit — and make this a regular stop.

FLYING LESSONS VIDEOS

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In-depth stories

Grasshopper Sparrow

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
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Eastern Meadowlark Kissimmee, Florida
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
Black-throated Blue Warbler Raleigh, North Carolina
Copyright by Anders and Beverly Gyllehhaal
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

— “Loving your Flying Lessons blog.” -Susan May, San Francisco

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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Why Flying Lessons

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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