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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.

We’re closing the year by publishing the most popular posts of 2021 — which was our year of travel across the country. Each weekend, we’ll run an updated version of the original story, a kind of tour of the birdscape from North Carolina to Hawaii, Florida to Wyoming. We’ll feature Snow Geese, Sandpipers, Hummingbirds, Tree Swallows, Pileated Woodpeckers and Palilas. We hope you’ll come along with us on the tour. But if you’d like to skip ahead or go back and read one you missed, click on the links on these birds. Wishing you a wonderful year of birding ahead. 
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Birding researchConservationPhotographySpecies

Can we save this globe-trotting sandpiper? Only if we can unravel its secrets

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

It’s tempting to take the Sanderling for granted: The tiny, speed-walking shorebirds are fixtures on beaches all over the world, easily recognized by how they run along, forever one step ahead of the waves.

The Sanderling is among the smallest and most energetic of the dozens of species of sandpipers. At just two ounces, it’s about the weight of a golf ball. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal unless otherwise credited.

For years, this hyperactive sandpiper moved too fast for researchers to even be sure of its migration routes that stretch from the Arctic Circle to South America. Weighing in at just two ounces, Sanderlings were too small to carry the transmitters used to study other birds.

That’s finally changing. New research tools, such as ultra-light transmitters and techniques that analyze where birds have been by the carbon residue in their feathers, are uncovering the Sanderling’s secrets.

The research tells two stories: One is about the miraculous flying prowess of this globe-trotting species. The other is about how those unique abilities aren’t enough to overcome the changing coastal environment that has cut their population of about 300,000 in North America by more than a third since the 1970s.

Both study topics could end up helping other shorebirds as well.

“So many people think of these birds as doing fine, since they’re on every beach from California to the Gulf Coast,’’ said Jess Cosentino, a researcher working on a comprehensive study of Sanderlings in North America. “But the data is showing us they’re in precipitous decline.’’

We’re closing the year by publishing the most popular posts of 2021 — which was our year of traveling the country to chase birds. Each weekend, we’ll run an updated version of the original story, a kind of tour of the birdscape from North Carolina to Hawaii, Florida to Wyoming. We’ll feature Snow Geese, Sandpipers, Hummingbirds, Tree Swallows, Pileated Woodpeckers and Palilas, the rare the Hawaiian honeycreeper. We hope you’ll come along with us on the tour. But if you’d like to skip ahead or go back and read one you missed, click on the links on these birds just above. Wishing you a wonderful year of birding ahead. 

Hundreds of Sanderling rise above Chaplin Lake on a preliminary flight before their next migration leg. Photo by Jess Cosentino, University of Saskatchewan

We spent a good part of our fall wandering the Atlantic coast, following warblers, raptors and shorebirds on the move. On the National Seashore along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, we found ourselves surrounded by crowds of Sanderlings on the near-empty beaches. The protected stretch of shoreline is one of the primary stopover spots for the birds on their migrations down the Atlantic coast.

Here’s a video that gives you a sense of how Sanderlings work together on the beaches:

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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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Birding researchPhotographySpecies

“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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Birding researchConservationPhotographyVideo

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

by Anders Gyllenhaal
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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Birding researchBreeding and NestingResearch

High hopes for a nearly extinct sparrow as mating season begins

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal
written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

It’s almost mating season for the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow, a spring ritual dating back thousands of years on the Florida prairie. But this may be the year that determines whether a rescue mission can turn things around for the country’s most endangered bird.

A year-old grasshopper sparrow just before its release into the grasslands. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

Every week starting this month, researchers are releasing a half dozen or more young sparrows raised in captivity to try and boost breeding in the wild and stabilize the overall population.

The releases are the final step in a long, complex restoration plan that’s taken shape over the two decades since the Florida Grasshopper Sparrow’s sudden collapse. Now researchers will be watching the sparrows’ every move as they hope nature will take its course.

Juan Oteyza, the state research scientist who oversees the project along with Karl Miller, watched the first batch of sparrows disappear into the Florida prairie south of Orlando one morning earlier this month. 

“They’re on their own now,’’ he said.

That isn’t entirely true: It’s up to the sparrows to fan out over the grasslands, find mates, build nests and raise a new batch of chicks. But a team of human helpers will be on hand to monitor the mating rituals, locate the nests and then raise them out of the reach of flood waters. They’ll also encircle the nests with fences to ward off predators. Each new family is tracked daily for five months to see if the sparrow population increases.

Here’s a video of this spring’s first release, taken with a remote camera, so the picture is slightly fuzzy. But you can see the sparrow’s hesitant reaction to the prospect of freedom — followed by a plunge into the grasslands: 

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BirdingBirding researchBirding technology

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

by Anders Gyllenhaal
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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Birding researchConservationPhotographySpecies

Can we save this globe-trotting sandpiper? Only if we can unravel its secrets

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

It’s tempting to take the Sanderling for granted: The tiny, speed-walking shorebirds are fixtures on beaches all over the world, easily recognized by how they run along, forever one step ahead of the waves.

The Sanderling is among the smallest and most energetic of the dozens of species of sandpipers. At just two ounces, it’s about the weight of a golf ball. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal unless otherwise credited.

For years, this hyperactive sandpiper moved too fast for researchers to even be sure of its migration routes that stretch from the Arctic Circle to South America. Weighing in at just two ounces, Sanderlings were too small to carry the transmitters used to study other birds.

That’s finally changing. New research tools, such as ultra-light transmitters and techniques that analyze where birds have been by the carbon residue in their feathers, are uncovering the Sanderling’s secrets.

The research tells two stories: One is about the miraculous flying prowess of this globe-trotting species. The other is about how those unique abilities aren’t enough to overcome the changing coastal environment that has cut their population of about 300,000 in North America by more than a third since the 1970s.

Both study topics could end up helping other shorebirds as well.

“So many people think of these birds as doing fine, since they’re on every beach from California to the Gulf Coast,’’ said Jess Cosentino, a researcher working on a comprehensive study of Sanderlings in North America. “But the data is showing us they’re in precipitous decline.’’

Hundreds of Sanderling rise above Chaplin Lake on a preliminary flight before their next migration leg. Photo by Jess Cosentino, University of Saskatchewan

We spent a good part of our fall wandering the Atlantic coast, following warblers, raptors and shorebirds on the move. On the National Seashore along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, we found ourselves surrounded by crowds of Sanderlings on the near-empty beaches. The protected stretch of shoreline is one of the primary stopover spots for the birds on their migrations down the Atlantic coast.

Here’s a video that gives you a sense of how Sanderlings work together on the beaches:

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Can the Wild Turkey survive? Thanksgiving is the least of its troubles.

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Something is after the Wild Turkey. Actually, almost everything is.

A Wild Turkey in Northern Virginia.

A combination of coyotes, loss of habitat, hawks, hunters, climate change and troubles in the nest is undermining the species that once competed for the title of national bird. In parts of the country, populations are down by half and the overall drop is about 15 percent.

“A lot of things like to eat turkeys,” said Michael Chamberlain, a University of Georgia wildlife expert who leads a 15-state consortium working to find a response. 

For the past half century, the Wild Turkey was the poster bird for how to bring back a species approaching extinction. Starting in the 1970s, after decades of overhunting and habitat loss, hunters, environmentalists, wildlife managers and researchers joined forces in a campaign that pushed the nationwide population up to more than 7 million birds. 

Michael Chamberlain

But today, the combination of accelerating development, warming temperatures and all those predators has started setting back that progress, particularly in southern states.  “We thought maybe it was just a natural phenomenon, where the population had peaked,” said Chamberlain.. “But fast-forward to today, the populations are not doing as well.”

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