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Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

BirdingHow we're birding now

Gucci discovers birding, and it’s never been more fashionable. You don’t want to miss this!

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

It’s official. Birding’s cool factor is off the charts. And a certain bird nerd, one who has endured an abundance of ridicule and eye rolling from her offspring, is feeling fairly smug. Birding’s coolness is nothing short of a miracle, and here’s how it happened:

In March national headlines started blaring, “Birding is the New Black” and “You Have No Choice but to Become a Backyard Birder.” Then bird feeders started flying off the shelves, and bird watching was proclaimed an economic bright spot in an otherwise dismal economy.

Next came news of scientific studies proving bird watching’s positive effect on mental health – again, a bright spot at a time when global mental health is teetering toward the edge.

As a longtime birder and the butt of a few too many birding jokes, I find this appreciation for birding long overdue. With each new headline I’ve been texting my kids: “Look at this! See? I’m not the only one!” Their responses, on the other hand, haven’t been nearly as validating as a cultural shift of this magnitude deserves.

Here’s a glimpse of the Gucci/Northface clothing line that drops on Friday.

But as of this coming Friday, all of that changes. Luxury brand Gucci and outdoor apparel powerhouse The North Face are dropping a collaboration of “high-fashion meets functional” clothing with the stylish birder in mind.

I realize this is hard to fathom. So I am going to pause here for a few moments while you click here to enjoy a digital fashion spread that Gucci sponsored, called “Birdwatching with Gucci, The North Face and Flock Together.” (Flock Together is a club in England made up of real-life birders, some of whom were chosen to model the collection.) Be sure to scroll down to the video with the birders in front of a VW camper van, and click the volume button to start the sound. It’s a hoot.

Or you can go straight to the video on Facebook by clicking below. This isn’t like any birding outing you’ve ever seen before, which is part of the fun:

 

So there you have it. Birding has reached a pinnacle of fashion coolness that few will ever achieve. So take that, my dear children, take that! And what I will take is that Gucci birding jacket for Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

 

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Bird of the WeekSpecies

In the blink of an eye, this bird reminds us how much there is to learn

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Great Blue Heron

Anders and I are back in Florida for the next several weeks, indulging a passion for chasing the birds. It’s our sixth birding adventure to the winter home of millions of birds – from stately herons and egrets, to sassy songbirds, opportunistic seagulls and menacing hawks.

It’s like reuniting with old friends — hearing the familiar squawks and calls, being able to distinguish a breeding bird with only a glance, and knowing that a warbler is a Palm just by the shake of its tail feathers.

Palm Warbler

We started this birding quest not knowing the difference between a seagull and a tern, never mind the pipers and plovers. By day we’d search for birds to photograph. By night we’d thumb though the guidebook page by page, comparing our photos with the colors of beaks, feathers and feet to figure out just what it was we had found.

We’ve come a long way in our knowledge of birds, and it’s all too easy to puff up and shake a little tail feather myself. (Aren’t I something, looking through my new binoculars and being the first one to spot a Red-shouldered Hawk hiding in the middle of a palm tree. I have taken to calling myself the Hawk Whisperer.)

Red-shouldered Hawk

While revisiting some of the wildlife sanctuaries near our campground in Melbourne on Florida’s northeast coast, I realized I was starting to get a teeny bit bored. The first time you see a Roseate Spoonbill foraging, it’s magical. (Click here for the video.) The fifteenth time, not quite so much.

Just about then, at Viera Wetlands just up the coast, along walked a Sandhill Crane. (They do in fact walk almost right up to you. For this video, click here.)

With a blink of that Crane’s eye, my perspective on repetitive birding got rearranged. Think you’ve seen it all? Better look again.

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Bird of the WeekBirdingBirds stories

How one squirrelly nuthatch can change your world view

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Last in a series

If it’s a crisp fall morning, with the sun highlighting the gold and orange of the still-moist leaves, it’s possible that luck could bring you a visit from a nuthatch. And if you get that chance and if you have the time, you’ll want to sit quietly and pay close attention.

My White-breasted Nuthatch

My nuthatch was a White-breasted with a black-and-blue back and an evocative black stripe on its head. He seemed to say watch me. Not only am I good-looking, but I’m smart and industrious, too.

Putting words into the mouth of a bird may be a silly habit, but I can’t seem to help myself. This bird spoke volumes to me.

If I had my way, we’d just give everybody in Congress a pair of binoculars and put them in the woods.

As I sat on a picnic table a couple of weeks ago in a campground near Nashville, I thought the nuthatch was doing his usual thing — creeping up and down the trunk of a tree, probing the bark for something to eat. Then he started hammering away as loudly as a woodpecker.

Hatching a nut

Strange. I’ve seen these birds crack nuts open with their beaks, (thus the name “nut hatch”), but I’d never seen one imitate a woodpecker – or a squirrel for that matter. Suddenly I realized the bird was boring holes in the tree to hide some of his nuts.

 
Here’s a gallery of our White-breasted Nuthatch, ignoring gravity, climbing its tree, hiding food and preparing for the winter:
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BirdingMigration

Headed for the birding superhighway and a perfect migration pit stop

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

We’re on our way to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to witness something magical.

By the hundreds, flocks of songbirds, ducks, swans, skimmers and other shorebirds will touch down on this chain of islands and wildlife preserves to take advantage of nature’s perfect pit stop.

A Black Skimmer at the Pea Island preserve

When it comes to the fall migration, an 85-mile swath of northeastern North Carolina, from roughly the Virginia line to Cape Hatteras, won the geographic lottery. It has some of the richest and most diverse natural habitats for birds in the United States.

“This area is the halfway stopover point on the Atlantic Flyway for birds that are migrating to tropical areas,” said Becky Harrison, head biologist for the N.C. Coastal Refuge Complex. “And there is a continuous stretch of geographic features and habitats that’s easy for the birds to follow.”

Flying thousands of miles requires enormous energy, so periodically birds must stop, rest and refuel. “Birds are following the resources,” Harrison said. “Because this area is so connected, it means there aren’t a lot of decisions for them to make.”

American Oystercatchers speed along the surf on the Outer Banks

Flying Lesson:  Birds of every species will come when there’s a path of supportive habitat. This unique string of refuges is a model for how we can care for birds. 
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Bird of the WeekBirdingFeatured

Listen up: This Bird of the Week is the Life of the Party

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

A birder walks into a clearing, and there’s a Song Sparrow singing its heart out. In chimes a Robin, followed by a Grosbeak and a Tanager, a Wood Thrush and a Warbler, all chirping at the same time.

Sounds like a bunch of songbirds out having a party. But it’s only the Northern Mockingbird. He is the party.

This could be the start of a great joke, but it’s just too infuriating. So many times it sounds like you’ve hit the birding jackpot only to be fooled by one wily, nondescript, gray-and-white bird.

It’s awful having your dopamine high dashed like that, and it’s happened more times than I care to count. Over the years I’ve come to seriously resent this bird.

So. The Mockingbird is a “mimic” – a type of bird who’s remarkable for his ability to imitate the songs of other birds. The male can have a repertoire of more than 150 songs, and he continues to learn new ones throughout his life. He even mimics the sounds of insects, animals and things that aren’t alive. Machinery for example. Researchers have identified Mockingbirds with 203 imitations.

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BirdingFeaturedMigration

It’s World Migratory Bird Day — and there’s a lot we can do

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

As photos of migrating birds popped up on a big screen last night, a couple dozen birders from the Audubon Society of Northern Virginia sat in a conference room at the National Wildlife Federation headquarters taking careful notes. Saturday is World Migratory Bird Day, and these folks were getting their marching orders.

Starting at dawn they’ll form teams and scour nearby “Important Bird Areas,” counting species to help evaluate how this year’s migrating birds have fared on the flight across thousands of miles to their breeding grounds. Here are some of what they’re likely to see in a gallery of photos Anders has taken from our recent migration trip (run your cursor over the pictures for their species).

 

Bird counts are mostly for the hardcore. But if you’re at all interested in birds, if you’re tuning into this spring’s tweet-and-twitter symphony as you move through your day, if you wonder what it’s all about, tomorrow is a great time to learn more.

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BirdingMigration

A Little More Freedom: Letting go of your worries on the birding trail

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Saturday is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s “Global Big Day,” a highlight of the spring migration when birders around the world count as many species they can find in 24 hours.

My birding bag and I were both getting ready.

This post started out as a way to tell you how to get prepared for a day traipsing the countryside in search of wading birds, wood warblers or anything else that might happen to migrate by. But when I sat down to catalog everything I bring along in my birding bag, I came to a jarring realization.

First I need to explain that my birding bag is a small brown backpack with pink zippers that’s a hand-me-down from my daughter’s time at summer camp. It reeks of sweat and bug spray, but I’m afraid to wash it because it’s so old it could fall apart. And then I might, too.

The whole point of having a birding bag like mine is to anticipate disaster and be fully prepared to deal with it. Inside there’s a tube of sunscreen, a water bottle, gum, lip balm, tissues, hand sanitizer, lens cleaners, a protein bar and dental floss. (Dental floss makes a great temporary shoestring or emergency suture, but mine’s there in case a bit of the protein bar gets stuck in my teeth.)

 

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FeaturedFlight

A pilgrimage to the Wright Brothers Memorial puts the power of human potential on display

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Today is the anniversary of the Wright brothers flight on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where we visited the newly renovated memorial a month ago. What a Flying Lesson it was.

We set off from our campground on a near-perfect fall morning toward Kitty Hawk where the Memorial has stood for over a century. A chunk of granite at top of Kill Devil Hill marks the marvelous December day that – after years of painstaking and obsessive efforts — Wilbur and Orville proved that people could fly.

The original photograph taken the day the Wright brothers proved they could fly.

Naturally birds were part of the brothers’ inspiration, and birds became their instructors as well. The brothers watched birds soaring directly into the wind and noticed that the air flowing over the curved surface of their wings created lift. Birds also change the shape of their wings to turn and maneuver, and the Wrights believed they could find a way to emulate this to block their plane’s tendency to roll in flight. So they warped, or twisted the shape of a portion of the wing. It’s the birds’ twist in their wings that helps them be more agile and aerodynamic.

The details of the quest to fly captivated Anders and me when we read David McCullough’s book “The Wright Brothers.” We’re basically obsessed with birds ourselves at this point, and so for me a trip to the place where humans took flight felt like a necessary pilgrimage.

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BirdingFeatured

Saving Puffins in one place, slaughtering them in another

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Just prior to our first-ever trip to Maine this summer, we heard we’d have a chance to meet up with Puffins.

“You know — the bird with the clown bill that’s on the cereal box,” said my friend Peter, a Maine native.

About 500 pairs of Puffins have been drawn to Seal Island as part of an Audubon project to save the endangered species.

You have to travel to a remote island to see the Puffins, he told me, but they’re amazing. Not to mention cute. The kind of amazingly cute that made me crazy for birding in the first place.

Early one morning, Anders and I boarded a boat along with a couple dozen other tourists for the 20-mile trek out to sea. The destination was Seal Island National Wildlife Refuge, a nesting site for 500 pairs of Atlantic Puffins monitored by The National Audubon Society.

A Puffin shows off its remarkable beak.

Guaranteed close-up views of Puffins and seals are the main reason to pay $75 each for the five-hour trip – but some of us hoped to spy other birds that, like the Puffin, live far out at sea: Shearwaters, Storm-Petrels, Jeagers, Razorbills and Guillemots. (Thank heaven for a self-identified “bird nerd” who stood in the stern pointing out each species as they came along.)

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