Hey, fellow bird lover! 👋
Welcome back to The Flyer 🐦 So glad you're here. Each month we bring you original stories, stunning bird photos, fascinating tidbits from the birding world, and a little something to make you stop and look up. Whether you're a lifelong birder or just someone who loves seeing a flash of color outside the window — this one's for you.✨
Soothing or scary?
BIRD OF THE WEEK
The Laysan Albatross
by National Marine Sanctuaries (Flickr)
📍 Found in the Pacific Ocean
🎶 Click here to hear their calls
When humans dream of gliding through the air with the ease of a bird, the Laysan Albatross comes to mind. These birds live on the open ocean and command the powers of the sea and the sky, able to travel hundreds of miles a day on the breeze while barely flapping their wings, even through storms. They have long been regarded as tokens of good luck (and hope of land nearby) when spotted by sailors at sea.
The Laysan Albatross is distinguishable from its darker-feathered cousin, the Black-footed Albatross, because of its white belly, light, pinkish bill, and dark markings along the underside of its wings. These seafarers do rest on land, especially in their nesting grounds in Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, and California. They also have long lifespans; the oldest recorded Albatross was 65 years old.
Fun fact: Albatrosses have a tubenose, or a pair of bony tubes above or inside their bills that excrete salt. That means they can safely drink seawater.
by USFWS - Pacific Region (Flickr)
Birding bits you should know about...
by eatswords (Flickr)
🥳 Puffin Party
Puffins of Iceland
If your social media feed looks anything like ours, you’ve seen many photos and videos of puffins roosting on the lush sea cliffs of Iceland. Time to start planning travel to see them in summer 2026…
🪶 Birder Beginnings
When I became a birder, almost everything else fell into place
“Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline while being utterly serene.”
🧑🎨 Seems Sketchy
How to go from watching birds to drawing them
Take your birding habit to the next level by learning to draw the birds you see, with advice from a scientific illustrator.
An amazing bird photo taken by one of our community members. Submit yours to hello@flyingcolors.co to be considered for an upcoming edition!
by @TaniBergeron on Twitter
A QUOTE
As lone the bold Albatross sits on the billow
That rocks him in slumber, beneath his furled wing,
His head on his side has a warm, downy pillow;
And calmly he rides, like a brave ocean king.
Come down from his tour through the air he was cleaving,
And borne on the wave like a crest of its foam,
He fears not its power, while he’s lulled by its heaving,
And rests as the traveller rests him at home.
— from “The Sleeping Albatross” by Hannah Flagg Gould
Thank you for being part of our flock!
Be sure to follow us on Instagram, and if a friend forwarded you this email, you can subscribe here.
Questions? Ideas? Epic bird photos? Reach out at hello@flyingcolors.co
About Flying Colors
Flying Colors makes premium organic wild bird food, offering ethically sourced, toxin-free seeds and nuts of the highest quality to nourish wild birds of all types and inspire birders of all ages.
Each specialty blend and single-origin creation is rigorously sourced & researched, and every jar is produced with love & packaged by hand in small batches in New York's Hudson Valley and tested in our own backyards.
