Flying Lessons
  • Home
    • Our story
    • Birding and the Airstream
  • Photo Galleries
    • Photo Gallery Index
      • Belted Kingfishers Gallery
      • Counting Raptors
      • Birds of Glenwood Gardens
      • The Barred Owl Nextdoor
      • Magnificent Frigatebird
      • Woodpecker’s Nest
      • Red-shouldered Hawk Gallery
      • Blue-gray Gnatcatchers
      • In search of Warblers
      • Purple Gallinule
      • Sandhill Cranes — and their chicks
      • White Ibis Gallery
      • Catching Birds in Flight
      • Roseate Spoonbills in all their glory
      • A Rookery for Storks
      • Shore Birds
      • Dining Out
      • Love is in the Air: Two Barn Swallows’ take on the Birds and the Bees
  • Videos
  • Closeups
    • Birds in Flight
  • Beverly’s Basics
  • All Posts
    • All Posts
    • Facebook Posts
    • Flying Lessons on Instagram
    • Bird of the Week
    • Sharing birding tips
  • Get email updates
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...
Flying Lessons
  • Home
    • Our story
    • Birding and the Airstream
  • Photo Galleries
    • Photo Gallery Index
      • Belted Kingfishers Gallery
      • Counting Raptors
      • Birds of Glenwood Gardens
      • The Barred Owl Nextdoor
      • Magnificent Frigatebird
      • Woodpecker’s Nest
      • Red-shouldered Hawk Gallery
      • Blue-gray Gnatcatchers
      • In search of Warblers
      • Purple Gallinule
      • Sandhill Cranes — and their chicks
      • White Ibis Gallery
      • Catching Birds in Flight
      • Roseate Spoonbills in all their glory
      • A Rookery for Storks
      • Shore Birds
      • Dining Out
      • Love is in the Air: Two Barn Swallows’ take on the Birds and the Bees
  • Videos
  • Closeups
    • Birds in Flight
  • Beverly’s Basics
  • All Posts
    • All Posts
    • Facebook Posts
    • Flying Lessons on Instagram
    • Bird of the Week
    • Sharing birding tips
  • Get email updates
Category:

Birdsongs

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).

Continue Reading
December 22, 2020 0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterEmail
BirdingBirdsongs

Birding by ear takes plenty of work, but the rewards last a lifetime

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal June 24, 2020
written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Second of two parts

After months of hoping to find this outlaw of a bird, finally, we were close. Very close.

A male Hooded Warbler in Pisgah National Forest / Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

Coming from a dense stand of old-growth trees in the Pisgah National Forest in Western North Carolina, I could hear this miniature Robin Hood galloping along on his horse. Then he’d toss his hat in the air with a triumphant – but very quick — “Woo-hoo.”

That’s how I visualize the Hooded Warbler singing – three gallops followed by a two-beat, joyous crescendo. It’s is my trick to remember the difference between this warbler’s song and any of his 36 tiny wood-warblering cousins.

If you clump them all together, the 37 warblers that are likely to sing, chip and chirp in the eastern half of the country can make more than a hundred sounds. But the cool thing is, every one of those sounds is unique to just one bird.

When they’re camouflaged by dense foliage, which songbirds often are, the only way to tell if a particular bird is close is to hear it. Suddenly your odds for finding – and photographing — the bird increase exponentially. (For a recording of the Hooded Warbler, click here.)

Like learning a language

At the heart of it, birdsong is a foreign language. Every bird speaks its own, minus the mockingbird and a few other mimics. More than 100 species can be nearby at any given time, depending on the season and habitat. The resulting cacophony at dawn in springtime is beautiful, astonishing and overwhelming.

Continue Reading
June 24, 2020 3 comments
0 FacebookTwitterEmail

Sign up for Flying Lessons

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

White-eyed Vireo Gray Catbird Red-shouldered Hawk Northern Flicker Cedar Waxwing Barred Owl American Goldfinch Northern Waterthrush Summer Tanager Northern Cardinal Carolina Chickadee

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

Our Facebook page

Our Facebook page

Can a bird sing with a banjo?

Sign up for our weekly newsletter


Quotes for the birds

“In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.”

— Robert Lynd, Irish writer, essayist and journalist

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

 

Categories

  • Beverly's Birding Basics (9)
  • Bird of the Week (32)
  • Birding (84)
  • Birding and the Airstream (4)
  • Birding research (41)
  • Birding technology (2)
  • Birds stories (26)
  • Birdsongs (2)
  • Breeding and Nesting (10)
  • Conservation (23)
  • Featured (30)
  • Fledging (2)
  • Flight (7)
  • Flying Lessons essay (3)
  • How we're birding now (8)
  • Migration (31)
  • Photography (56)
  • PhotoPost (3)
  • Postcard (5)
  • Research (2)
  • Species (11)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Video (6)

How to reach us

Flying Lessons
Raleigh, NC.
FlyingLessons1@gmail.com

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.

Popular Posts

  • 1

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

    February 6, 2020
  • 2

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

    December 13, 2020
  • 3

    Cedar Waxwings are dining their way north: Don’t miss the show

    April 17, 2020
  • 4

    What a show: Battle of the Hummingbirds reaches its peak

    December 30, 2020
  • 5

    What a show: Battle of the Hummingbirds reaches its peak

    August 20, 2020
  • 6

    We used to snicker at Snowbirds — until we discovered this Airstream getaway

    April 9, 2019

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.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

@2017 - PenciDesign. All Right Reserved. Designed and Developed by PenciDesign