Category:

Photography

BirdingFeaturedPhotography

What a show: Battle of the Hummingbirds reaches its peak

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

   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 summer 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.

   We’re reposting this piece on the hummingbird battles after spending the past two weeks in Western Massachusetts where we watched this story play out a summer ago. We’ve been refreshing our most popular stories this year while we work on a book about bird conservation across the hemisphere. (Here’s a link to Simon & Schuster’s summary ahead of the April 2023 publication date.)  These hummingbirds are in their final weeks before migration starts toward the end of this month, which makes this a time of plenty of battles as these birds bulk up for their journeys south. 

Continue Reading
0 comment
6 FacebookTwitterEmail
Birds storiesFlightPhotography

Tree Swallows caught in midair: A rare glimpse of these aerial acrobats

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

     Most of the time, tree swallows move so astoundingly fast it’s hard to see anything but a blur. They’re in such constant motion they rarely stop long enough to offer more than a glimpse of their deep blue-and-white plumage that looks like a tiny tuxedo.

A Tree Swallow comes in for a landing. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

     So I was surprised one windy afternoon last month on the plains of eastern Wyoming when I came across a full dozen Tree Swallows clinging to a barbed-wire fence. The wind was so strong they were momentarily grounded. When they did try to fly, the wind held them in place for a time as they took off and landed.

     It was as if these little aerial acrobats were frozen in the air.

     As long as the wind kept up, I had a chance to catch these birds in the midst of takeoffs, landings, feedings, squabbles, gobbles, squawks and occasionally quiet moments of stillness.

     Nobody knows these hyperactive birds better than David Winkler, a long-time professor at Cornell University who researched swallows throughout his career before retiring two years ago. He’s still working with his swallows, to his great delight.

     “They’re masters of the air,’’ he said. “I never get tired of looking at them.’’

      Winkler has studied the swallows’ migration, feeding and mating habits, their flight dynamics and nesting routines. He started toward the beginning of his career as a professor of ornithology, and he found no end to the questions about swallows he hoped to answer.

The wind blows a swallow slightly off course.

     What he finds most fascinating is their tireless drive, the same thing that makes them so fascinating to watch in flight. “They don’t let anything get in their way,’’ said Winkler.

This is a post we published last year while traveling the continent following the birds. We’re rerunning some of our most popular pieces this year while working on our book on conservation across the hemisphere, to be published in the spring of 2023 by Simon and Schuster. Watch for details as this gets closer.
Continue Reading
1 comment
0 FacebookTwitterEmail
Bird of the WeekBirds storiesMigrationPhotography

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

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

 

 

Here’s a delicious fact about Cedar Waxwings: They can strip a tree of its berries in such a rush the juice turns to wine and they get too buzzed to fly.

Robert Rice, a veteran bird scientist who spent his career with the Smithsonian’s Migratory Bird Center, explained what happens: “They can eat so much fruit, it ferments in their gut and they go wobbly for a while,” Rice said.

Few other birds feast in such a mass frenzy, and the phenomenon is on display this time of year as bands of waxwings dine their way north from the lower U.S. and Central America and as far up as Canada.

It’s a magnificent sight, one I assumed I’d miss this year with our limited mobility. But the other day, wandering through the trees not 50 feet from our home, I noticed what looked like a new arrival. It was the first of a flock of Cedar Waxwings that gradually became an avalanche, all collecting insects as if their lives depended on it.

They began high in the trees, then gradually worked their way down to the lower branches. Today insects were on the menu, and one bird after another took a turn working the branches, all the while ignoring our presence as only the migration enables. It’s a gift to birders, and photographers, enabling closeup views you rarely are granted.

Flying Lesson: The Cedar Waxwing is a study in nature’s design, with touches of yellow, red and brown slashed across a form that is almost always in motion. A good bit of that motion is spent on its frantic feeding. They go overboard on that front as well.

This is a post we published at about this time last year as the waxwings came sweeping through town. We’re rerunning some of our most popular pieces this year while working on our book on conservation across the hemisphere, to be published in the spring of 2023 by Simon and Schuster. Watch for details as this gets closer.
Continue Reading
1 comment
2 FacebookTwitterEmail
BirdingFeaturedPhotographySouth America

Tanagers are one big, beautiful family of birds. Except when they’re not?

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

      For almost an hour, I decided I had a new favorite bird. It was a blend of bright yellow and black with a little yellow toupee on its head and deep blue wings. This was an Orange-bellied Euphonia, and a member of the tanager family.

Orange-bellied Euphonia. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal.

      An hour later, a new favorite took its place. This one was deep blue all over, except for a a touch of black on its wings and a black mask on its face, punctuated by the brightest red eyes. It turned out to be Masked Flowerpiercer, and it, too, was a tanager.

Masked Flowerpiercer

Golden Tanager

      Within minutes I was won over by a new bird, which arrived in a flash of yellow before taking a perch just a few feet away. That was long enough to let me stare in wonder at the laced pattern on its wings that flowed up to a bright golden yellow on its head with an exclamation point of a black dot under its eyes. This was a Golden Tanager, the most striking bird I’d see for at least another hour.

     It’s tough to keep a favorite for long in Ecuador, one of the world’s hot spots for birds of all kinds. But on our recent trip there, it was impossible not to be swept away by the rainbow of tanagers we encountered over 10 days of travel along the country’s northern half. It was my first trip here, and so  keeping up with the names and families of hundreds of species I was seeing for the first time was hopeless. What I did notice was this: Almost every one of what I found to be the most captivating species was related to the sprawling carnival of birds that fall into the tanager family.

Blue-winged Mountain Tanager

     Only when I got home and had a chance to study up on tanagers did I realize what a complicated family this has always been. When I talked to one of the world’s experts on bird identification, I learned that there’s no end to the disagreements, rearranging and new ideas about what is and what isn’t a tanager. Frank Gill, a former chief scientist at the National Audubon Society who has devoted much of his career to sorting out the families of birds, said the tanager family has always been a conundrum. “So it’s messy,” said Gill. “It’s quite, quite messy.”

Moss-backed Tanager

      Gill laughed and remembered a story from his undergraduate studies years ago. “I had this professor and he’d always ask us this question, ‘What is a tanager?’ ” said Gill, and the class would get into a discussion about the boundaries of this family of birds. “So the question has been hanging around for a long time.”

     Dan Lebbin, vice president of threatened species for the American Bird Conservancy with whom we traveled on our trip to Ecuador, said there’ve always been disagreement about who is and isn’t a tanager. “Tanagers have been historically a grab-bag of similar looking and often colorful, fruit-eating birds,” he said. But for years, that was based on assumptions that are now being challenged by genetic testing that discovered some members thought to be part the family actually weren’t related. The two common tanagers in the Eastern U.S., for instance, the Summer and Scarlet Tanagers, have turned out to belong in the cardinal family.  It turns out that one of the Ecuador tanager species, my first favorite, the Orange-bellied Euphonia, is also thought to be a finch, not a tanager.

        Keeping the tanagers straight is particularly dizzying in Ecuador because they can be flowerpiercers and honeycreepers and still be part of the tanager family.  It doesn’t help that this is the second largest bird family. In Ecuador alone, there are about 65 species of tanager. Here are some of the spectacular birds we saw on this recent trip:

       The questions about who precisely should be in the tanager family will be coming to a head as the organizations that oversee classifications go to work with the spread of genetic research that shows in no uncertain terms which of the birds are part of the family — and which actually belong to other groups. Gill said he’s not looking forward to sorting through whether to consider changing the names of some of these birds.

Masked Flowerpiercer

    But Dan Lebbin said the precise relationships between these birds are important to understand the evolution of bird families and to track bird populations in a time of dramatic change. “None of this is important to most people,” he said. “But it is important to understand biodiversity and life on our planet, to understand how species’ lineages evolve and major patterns of evolution and bio-geography.”

Glistening-green Tanager

     So in the end, the tanagers not only captured my attention by the hour. They also launched me off on a worthy discovery. Now that I’ve started learning the tanagers from the flowerpiercers, I hope they don’t get booted from the family.

 

Here’s another in our posts on the birds of Ecuador, this one about the wealth of hummingbirds. 

 

 

 

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterEmail
BirdingFeaturedPhotography

They unlock the Earth’s treasury of hummingbirds. Does it help or hurt the birds?

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Mashpi, Ecuador

     We’ve spent so many hours chasing hummingbirds over the years that I was caught by surprise when one of these tiny birds turned the tables and landed on my outstretched hand. Light as a penny at about three grams, this curious little creature felt like nothing more than a puff of air. It sat staring at me as if it had a question to ask.

Violet-tailed Sylph. Top photo is a Blue-chested Hummingbird.

     We were midway up the Andes mountains of Ecuador on a swing through one of the richest parts of the world for all kinds of birds, from toucans to tanagers to Andean Condors. Yet nothing came close to  the treasury of hummingbirds. More than 130 species — the most found anywhere on Earth — fill the rainforests, fields and hills of northern Ecuador.

     In places, there are so many hummingbird feeders that the frenzied birds can mistake you for a plant, and it turned out the bird I encountered did have a question. “He’s trying to see if you’re a flower,” said Juan Carlos Crespo, a biologist who works with the Jocotoco Foundation that was leading our group.

Crowned Woodnymph

The sheer breadth of hummingbirds here is head-spinning. They come in every size and color, some with long trailing tails that end in tiny rudders, some with curiously long peaks that stretch the lengths of their bodies. But it’s the plumage that is most impressive. Depending on the angle, the tones change in the light, some as bright as neon, each new variety seemingly more beautiful than the last.

     We were traveling in Ecuador to gather material for our upcoming book on conservation work across the Americas. We tagged along with the leaders of the American Bird Conservancy as the nonprofit works to protect key species and land across South America. But there was always time to do a little birding, so we stopped at a string of what you could only call bird gardens, where local guides have set up a different kinds of feeders to draw birds, including some of the most elusive species you otherwise would never see. 

Black-tailed Trainbearer

      It was impossible to keep up with all the species without constant coaching from the veterans traveling with us. In one stop, the birds taking off and leaving from one giant round feeder looked like a small airport, as if they were used to taking turns at the hummingbird bar. Here’s a video of that scene:

Andean Emerald

      Guides have figured out what kinds of foods the birds like best and learned ways of attracting a rainbow of tanagers, toucans, and parrots. We ran into disagreements about whether these practices were helpful or harmful to the birds. On the one hand, it builds public support for conservation. On the other, does it make birds rely on food from humans? 

      Crespo, who has researched birds in North and South America, said he was bothered by the spread of feeders since sometimes dozens of them are spread around lodges, hotels and bird parks. He says feeders aren’t in themselves a problem, so long as there’s not too many. “There need to be some rules about them,” he said.

Rufous-tailed Hummingbird

        Paul Greenfield, one of Ecuador’s leading bird artists who’s helped build a number of conservation foundations across the country, said he dismissed the concerns about harming the birds by feeding them. He’s impressed with the spread of small entrepreneurs. “You see them everywhere,” he said. “Now there’s more people interested in birds.”

        Mike Parr, president of the American Bird Conservancy, said the trip made him wonder why the U.S. doesn’t do a better job of experimenting with how to let people get closer to birds. “We haven’t adopted this kind of approach in the United States. Most of the refuges, you have to look at birds through a telescope from a long way away,” he said. “Instead of bringing people closer to wildlife, we’re sort of keeping people away.”

Booted Racket Tail

 

Collared Inca

      We ended up thinking the birds benefitted far more than they were set back. (Here are a couple of links that explore the issues behind feeding birds — including Audubon Society guides on backyard feeders — as well as the use of playback of songs and calls to attract birds.) In a country with so many species, the bird parks and lodges touch just the smallest fraction of the birds that are out there. Some studies even show that where hummingbird feeders are plentiful, the overall pollination goes up in the region, a sign of nature’s health.  We came home thinking that other countries should be following Ecuador’s leads. 

     Hummingbirds have always been among our favorite birds, and we’ve searched out as many of North America’s 15 or so species in our travels, mostly in the Southwest. Some of the most popular Flying Lessons posts have been about hummingbirds, including this one about the battles that break out around some feeders, and this one about how some hummingbirds have stopped migrating because of changes in climate. But we’d never seen anything like Ecuador’s breadth of hummingbird species. Here’s a look at some of the species we saw across the northern portion of Ecuador.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

12 comments
3 FacebookTwitterEmail
ConservationFeaturedPhotography

Pittsburgh’s National Aviary takes you around the world in birds

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

On our way home from traveling 15,000 miles chasing birds all across the country, we stopped at a park in downtown Pittsburgh and came across the broadest collection of birds we’d seen anywhere in one place.

It was the National Aviary, which could be called the international aviary. Hundreds of birds from six continents pass so close by in many of the chambers that you can feel the wind from their beating wings. Some of the world’s most precious birds – Andean Condors, Birds-of-Paradise, African Penguins, toucans, hornbills and cuckoos – share the stage with more common owls, gulls, doves and pigeons.

Andean Condor

With fall migration behind us, we thought this would be a good time to consider how aviaries and zoos can help birders get through the slower times and open up the wider world of birds we can’t see otherwise. Our travels let us visit a series of zoos, bird parks and indoor aviaries along with dozens of conservation projects, research centers and bird hotspots. While we all prefer to see our birds in the wild, institutions such as the National Aviary play a distinct role in a time when birds are in trouble.

Demoiselle Crane

“It is very powerful to see a bird, like a Guam Kingfisher which is extinct in the wild, up close, just feet away from you, and to understand that this bird is one of only a couple hundred left in the world,’’ said Steve Latta, the director of conservation at the aviary. “It gives visitors a sense of how urgently needed conservation efforts are.’’

The aviary sponsors conservation projects around the world, including on some of the toughest challenges for birds. It’s researching ways of battling back against invasive species in the Pacific Islands, studying how Andean Condors in the mountains of South America react to climate change, and exploring migration across the hemisphere through the experiences of the Louisiana Waterthrush. 

Continue Reading
1 comment
0 FacebookTwitterEmail
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.

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. 
Continue Reading
0 comment
1 FacebookTwitterEmail
Birds storiesPhotographyVideo

It’s a bird-eat-bird world: Pileated Woodpeckers on the attack

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Two male Pileated Woodpeckers battle for supremacy. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

We heard the clamor from our woodpecker’s nest and instantly knew something was up. The bird’s usual call was replaced with a high-pitched, staccato screech and both the male and female birds leaped around their tree as if the place was on fire.

Last week, we wrote about the idyllic life these two Pileated Woodpeckers created within a few steps of where we are camping. This week, we got a reminder that nature is unpredictable and sometimes violent. By the end of the week, the pair were forced out of their nest just as they were trying to start a family.

The cries we heard that day were the precursor to an attack from another Pileated Woodpecker who wanted to take the place of the male. We scurried over to see what was going on just as an attack was about to begin. The two male birds jumped from one branch to another, howling furiously. Then they tumbled to the ground as if in a western, falling head over tails as they wrestled. We though the duel might be over, then the two males flew to the top of the nesting tree and began circling each other while trading jabs and squawks.

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, 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. Wishing you a wonderful year of birding ahead. 

Pileateds are the largest woodpeckers in North America, more than a foot tall with a wingspan of two feet. They are powerful birds with large claws and sharp beaks. All of those tools came into play as these two battled for the advantage.

Finally, our original male took a powerful swipe at the intruder, who then flew off in what turned out to be the end of the threat. Both the male and female climbed up and down their nesting tree, ready for another assault that never came. Eventually, they settled down and went back to readying the nest they’d worked on for the past two weeks.

Here’s how it looked in a video: 

Continue Reading
0 comment
4 FacebookTwitterEmail
Birds storiesFlightPhotography

Tree Swallows caught in midair: A rare glimpse of these aerial acrobats

by Anders Gyllenhaal
written by Anders Gyllenhaal

Most of the time, tree swallows move so astoundingly fast it’s hard to see anything but a blur. They’re in such constant motion they rarely stop long enough to offer more than a glimpse of their deep blue-and-white plumage that looks like a tiny tuxedo.

A Tree Swallow comes in for a landing. Photos by Anders Gyllenhaal

So I was surprised one windy afternoon last month on the plains of eastern Wyoming when I came across a full dozen Tree Swallows clinging to a barbed-wire fence. The wind was so strong they were momentarily grounded. When they did try to fly, the wind held them in place for a time as they took off and landed.

It was as if these little aerial acrobats were frozen in the air.

As long as the wind kept up, I had a chance to catch these birds in the midst of takeoffs, landings, feedings, squabbles, gobbles, squawks and occasionally quiet moments of stillness.

Nobody knows these hyperactive birds better than David Winkler, a long-time professor at Cornell University who researched swallows throughout his career before retiring two years ago. He’s still working with his swallows, to his great delight.

“They’re masters of the air,’’ he said. “I never get tired of looking at them.’’

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, 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. Wishing you a wonderful year of birding ahead. 

Winkler has studied the swallows’ migration, feeding and mating habits, their flight dynamics and nesting routines. He started toward the beginning of his career as a professor of ornithology, and he found no end to the questions about swallows he hoped to answer.

The wind blows a swallow slightly off course.

What he finds most fascinating is their tireless drive, the same thing that makes them so fascinating to watch in flight. “They don’t let anything get in their way,’’ said Winkler.

Continue Reading
0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterEmail