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.✨
We're jealous of this Snow White moment...
Bird of the Week: The Evening Grosbeak
by Marsh-Billing-Rockefeller National Historical Park (Flickr)
📍 Found in North America
🎶 Click here to hear their calls
If you see a flash of yellow in the winter snow, you could be looking at an Evening Grosbeak. This sunny Finch is double the size (about 8 inches) of your usual Finch and has a thick beak strong enough to bust through seeds with ease (they especially love sunflower seeds). Males have a telltale yellow belly with white-and-black-striped wings and a dramatic golden eyebrow, while females have an almost inverse coloring, with gray, white, and black wings and a blonde necklace.
Evening Grosbeaks are irregular migrators and will show up in the far east and south in some winters, but not others. Unfortunately, they are getting harder to spot as their populations are declining.
Fun fact: Evening Grosbeaks were originally only found in the west, but migrated further and further east after the mid-1800s, possibly because of the proliferation of ornamental box elders, an important food supply.
by Mick Thompson (Flickr)
Give a hoot
Birding bits you should know about...
by Airwolfhound (Flickr)
🦉 Sunday is For the Birds
Superb Owl Sunday X
The Super Bowl may be over, but these magnificent photos of superb Owls are here to stay.
🦃 Gobble Gobble
Can Staten Island learn to love its ‘nuisance’ wild turkeys?
Wild Turkeys can run up to 25 miles per hour and go after cars and pedestrians. Watch out!
🎶 Birding By Ear
Memorize Bird Songs by Using Mental Images
Try to picture what you’re hearing the next time you’re listening to birdsong.
Your shot
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 @dana_mnyc on Twitter
A quote
at night,
pine branches scratch
the gibbous moon.
velvetine mouth, the opening dark
I am not the only creature
stirred from sleep: far off,
a grosbeak whistles.
the fragment of winter in me
Drips.
— “Grosbeak” by MacKenzie Turner
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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.
