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Flying Lessons essay

How is a warbler like an apple-glazed donut? Both are impossible to resist.

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal September 29, 2020

There’s a spot on the boardwalk next to the Town Hall in Duck, N.C., that everyone knows is famous for doughnuts. This morning dozens of customers wait in line for up to half an hour, and the fall menu boasts flavors like Pumpkin Streusel, Pumpkin Roll and Maple Bacon.

A.Chestnut-sided Warbler, one of the many warblers passing through the Duck boardwalk region. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal.

Only a few yards away there’s another place that should be famous, but very few people have ever heard of it. Here, atop the live oaks and the willows is a different fall menu — the Chestnut-sided, Black-throated Green, Black-and-White, Prairie, Palm, Black-throated Blue and Northern Parula warblers.

Doughnuts are my weakness — oh the lengths I will go and the calories I’m willing to trade. Today at the donut shop there’s a deliciously wicked autumn confection called Caramel Apple Pie (apple glaze with salted caramel drizzle), and my stomach is growing.

These flavors won’t be around for long, but neither will the fall warblers – hands down my favorite birds.

Many of them have flown in from their nesting grounds in Canada and the Northeast, touching down on the Outer Banks only long enough to fatten up for the next leg of a journey to the Gulf of Mexico, then across the waves to their wintering grounds in Latin America. According to eBird, there’s a darn good chance of spotting 15 types of warblers and a “reasonable” chance of seeing 11 others along the boardwalk today between the Methodist Chapel and the Duck Donuts shop. That’s almost a third of all the warblers found in the U.S.

Here’s a video of a Black-throated Green Warbler, frantically collecting fuel for its migration:

September 29, 2020 0 comment

Beverly's Birding Basics Birding Flying Lessons essay How we're birding now Migration

You’ve started down the path to becoming a birder. What next?

by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal August 25, 2020

written by Beverly Mills Gyllenhaal

Let’s say you started birding in the pandemic, bought binoculars, and now you’re hooked. You can identify the songbirds and woodpeckers in your neighborhood. So what happens next?

A Chestnut-sided Warbler we found in Massachusetts this summer. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

I’ve been thinking a lot about that question while hiking through an Audubon sanctuary in western Massachusetts, peering through bushes looking for fist-sized birds that have no interest in being seen.

Time is of the essence. The American Redstarts, Chestnut-sided Warblers, the Black-and-Whites, the Yellow Warblers and all the other varieties that spend the summer here will start migrating south any day.

Not that long ago, I didn’t know a warbler from a sparrow. So exactly what does it take to become a good birder? Once you’ve moved past the cardinals, blue jays and robins, what’s keeping you from finding the Indigo Bunting or a Rose-breasted Grosbeak?

A female Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Becoming a birder is a process, and it could go any number of ways. Some of it depends on your personality, how much time you have and how mobile you are. Do you like to collect things? Do you crave the thrill of the hunt? What’s your frustration tolerance?

Let’s say you’ve spotted a bird you can’t identify. Would you rather use a book to compare diagnostic markings such as eye rings and the color of a bird’s bill and feet? Or would you prefer a phone app designed to help you identify the bird easily and instantly. Perhaps you’d want a fellow human who can guide your way.

August 25, 2020 2 comments

Conservation Flying Lessons essay

New Flying Lessons column: What are Florida Birds Telling us?

by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal May 13, 2020

written by Anders and Beverly Gyllenhaal

Florida is a head-spinning place to go birding. One day you’re chasing a flock of Roseate Spoonbills across 140,000 acres of pristine wetlands, and the next you’re watching Purple Gallinules forage in a ditch a short jaunt from a Starbucks.

Roseate Spoonbill / Photos by Andes Gyllenhaal

A few weeks ago, we tracked Endangered Red-cockaded Woodpeckers through a state park without meeting another soul. On nearby Interstate 95, two Sandhill Cranes grazed on the grassy shoulder as traffic whizzed by a few feet away.

The Florida peninsula has a rich avian landscape, home to more than 500 species, found from the mangroves in the Keys to the Panhandle’s oak hammocks. An impressive 10 million acres of parks, refuges, and other protected areas are managed for conservation.

Sandhill Crane

But Florida is on a collision course with its birds. People and birds tend to like to live in the same places here, and with 21 million residents, Florida now ranks as the third-most-populated state.

It’s fascinating, so Florida became the first stop on our five-month road trip around the country — a birding safari of sorts. In January, we packed up our Airstream trailer, gathered binoculars and cameras, and headed south from our home in North Carolina.

This is a new column running in the latest issue of American Bird Conservancy magazine and is reprinted here with permission from the Bird Conservation quarterly. The column, under the name Flying Lessons, is meant to build on our travels to explore what we’re learning from birds. While we’ve had to put off our birding trips for the time being, we hope to be back on the road before long. We’ll post these columns as they appear. You can get a subscription to the magazine if you donate $40 or more to the conservancy. Here’s the donation link. Finally, if you’d like to see the column as it’s running in the spring edition of the magazine, you can find it here.

May 13, 2020 0 comment