Eastern Bluebird

The eastern bluebird is a small brightly colored song bird that is found in the eastern United States, Mexico, and parts of Central America. Birds living in the northern portion of the range are migratory and head south for the winter. Birds living in the southern portion of the range are year round residents. Eastern bluebirds prefer open habitat with some trees but very little undergrowth. They are often found in areas close to people, such as parks, golf courses, and farm fields. Because of this, and their bright color, they are commonly recognized by many people. They are also the state bird of Missouri and New York.

 Eastern bluebirds are cavity nesters. They nest in woodpecker excavations, tree cavities or nesting boxes. The female builds the nest by herself and it is made up primarily of grasses. Both parents help to raise the young and they often have two broods per year. They eat primarily insects, dropping down from a perch to grab an insect on the ground or snatch it from the air. They also eat berries and fruit, particularly during the winter when insects can not be found. Occasionally they will take larger prey such as a lizard or small snake.

Eastern Bluebird

Eastern Bluebird

 There are 3 species of bluebirds found in North America, the mountain bluebird, the western bluebird and the eastern bluebird. Of the three the eastern bluebird has the greatest range, extending from the east coast to the eastern edges of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. They are found as far north as south eastern Canada and as far south as Central America. In the center of the North America their range overlaps slightly with the mountain bluebird. Both species vie for cavities for nesting with the mountain bluebird mostly dominating the eastern bluebird. It is the male bluebird that find and defends the cavity. He will bring nesting materials to the cavity in order to entice a female but it is all really a charade.

    

It is the female bluebird that actually builds the nest. The female also incubates the eggs alone, although he does help by providing food. Chicks are helpless when they hatch and the female needs to continue to brood them for about another week. The male must bring food for the whole family until the chicks can survive on their own then both parents need to hunt for food. Eastern bluebirds eat primarily insects,fruit and berries. A family will typically raise two broods per year with the second brood often wintering with the parents. Birds in the northern portion of the range migrate south as winter approaches. Often flocks of bluebirds will gather together during the winter to forage. Although in mild years it is not impossible to see eastern bluebirds here in Minnesota during the winter.

Eastern Bluebird

 As winter sets in here in the north the world seems to lose much of its color. The green leaves are gone from the trees, soon the ground will be covered with white and the skies are most often gray. Flowers and butterflies are long gone and many of the birds that remain in Minnesota during the winter are brown or shades of gray. Last year we were lucky, as it seems a few hardy eastern bluebirds decided not to migrate south. Instead they over wintered in southern Minnesota. Their bright blue color has sure helped to brighten up the bleak season. Of course last year we did not have much snow at all and the birding was pretty messed up. So if things go back to normal this winter we may have a few months to wait for the color to return to the frozen north.

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Eastern Bluebird

Eastern Bluebird

Prairie Wetlands Learning Center

On my way back home from the Detroit Lakes Festival of Birds I decided to make a stop at the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center located near Fergus Falls, MN. I had the option to visit the center on one of the festival field trips but I choose Itasca and Tamarac instead because the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center was an easy stop on my way home.

The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center is the first residential environmental center operated by the U.S. fish and wildlife service. It began as a grass roots effort back in the 1970's to establish a public use facility focusing on prairies and wetlands. A local group calling themselves "The Friends of the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center," formed in 1989 and through private donations and grants they were able to open the center in 1994. The facility was expanded to include a dormitory and visitors center in 1998 and an education wing in 2008.

The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center is located on the Townsend Waterfowl Production Area, a 330 acre tract of land consisting of native and restored prairie, 28 wetlands and an oak savanna. There have been over 180 different species of birds that have been identified on the center grounds. With the abundance of prairie habitat it is no surprise that many different types of sparrows can be found there.

I have to confess that I have a difficult time identifying sparrows, right up there with gulls and darner dragonflies, so if I have misidentified any of these sparrows please let me know. I believe that the first sparrow, 2 pictures above, is a white-crowned sparrow, the one directly above is a clay colored sparrow and the one below is a song sparrow.

One of these days I am going to have to take the sparrow workshop that Doug Buri and Bob Janssen put on out in western South Dakota. I took their shorebird workshop back in 2008 but have not had the time to get out to take the sparrow workshop in October. Last year they identified 14 different species during the three day workshop. If you are interested in this workshop here is the address where you can find more information.

Besides sparrows there were other birds like this eastern bluebird. Bluebirds seem to be more common these days. That is just my unscientific observation.

Another cool bird that I was able to photograph were purple martins. I have seen purple martin gourds at several different locations but usually there have not been any purple martins. At this locations there seem to be a healthy population.

Besides the prairies the Prairie Wetlands Learning Center also has wetland areas. Around the wetlands I found quite a bit of bird life, such as Canada geese, mallards, American coot, as well as redwing and yellowheaded blackbirds.

While I was on my way back to the car everything went quiet. All of the small birds seemed to just disappear leaving me with just the Canada geese and mallards. A shadow crossed over head and I looked up to see a coopers hawk crossing the sky in search of prey. Since the geese were a little much for a coopers hawk it continued on its way.

Eastern Bluebird

There are three different types of bluebirds that can be found across North America. There is the western bluebird, which is found on the west coast as well as the south western US down into Mexico, the mountain bluebird, whose range includes most of the western half of North America including much which overlaps the range of the western bluebird, and the eastern bluebird, which inhabits most of the eastern half of North America.

The eastern bluebird is the smallest of the three types of bluebirds and the kind that we see around here in Minnesota, although from time to time a stray mountain bluebird may show up. Since much of their food comes from insects most eastern bluebirds leave this area during the winter, however there are frequently eastern bluebirds spotted during the Christmas counts in the area suggesting that a few stay in the area at least through the end of the year. These stragglers probably survive by eating left over berries off of trees and bushes. These pics were taken in October at the Necedah NWR in Wisconsin.

Happy Wordless Earthday: Eastern Bluebird

Wordless Wednesday: Eastern Bluebird

Camera Critters: Eastern Bluebird

There are some birds that are pretty common here in Minnesota during the summertime that people are surprised to see during the winter. The eastern bluebird is a perfect example.

Perhaps people do not expect to see eastern bluebirds in Minnesota during the winter because that is what many of the field guides and experts tell them. Audubon, Sibley and Cornell all do not include Minnesota in the winter range of the eastern bluebird.

Cornell does state that in mild winters eastern bluebirds may be found further north but I do not know of many people who would consider this winter mild, it has been the worse we have seen in many years, and yet I photographed these bluebirds in Redwing, Minnesota on January 5th, 2009.

This is not an isolated incident either. I have participated in Christmas Bird Counts over the past couple of years and pretty much every count that I have worked on in the southeast suburbs of the Twin Cities we have had recorded eastern bluebirds. So I guess it is true that everyone makes mistakes, which is fortunate for those of us living in Minnesota who catch a glimpse of these colorful songbirds during the drab days of winter.

Birding Adventures at Minnesota Valley NWR

The final weekend in June I spent a lot of time in the Minnesota Valley NWR. I started out up by the visitors center. I spent a lot of time at the visitors center last winter. They have a large feeding station that attracts a lot of birds during the winter time. I prefer to photograph birds in their natural habitat over photographing them at feeders, however it is pretty difficult to find birds at frozen lakes and snow covered forests. The visitors center also has large windows in front of all of its feeder stations so that you can stay warm while getting close looks at a variety of birds during the winter.
During the summer I do not pay much attention to the feeders. Instead I am usually in the small field on the east side of the visitors center looking for butterflies and dragons. Each fall or spring they burn these fields down to promote new growth but this year things did not come back very quickly due to our late winter. So I did not find very many insects to photograph. I did find a couple of eastern bluebirds, that appeared to be nesting in one of the nesting boxes that are in the field, which posed for a few shots.

After checking out around the visitors center I decided against venturing down to the river, the trip back up the hill can be a bit strenuous when you are carrying a couple of cameras with large lenses, and decided to head down to the Old Cedar Avenue Bridge portion of the refuge. While I was preparing to go out on the trail, bathing in bug repellent, a bird flew low across the pond adjacent to the parking lot and perched on a low lying branch. I grabbed my camera and got off a shot before he flew off across the pond again in search of more insects. Even though I never got a good look at its breast, which is where many of the flycatchers have their field markings, I believe that it was an eastern phoebe, because of the dark head, white chin and black beak.

Birding Dodge Nature Center

While I did take quite a few dragonfly pics at the Dodge Nature Center, when I visited in mid June, I did get a few bird pics too.

Even though house wrens have a cheerful bubbly song they can be very aggressive and territorial during the nesting season. They will often work hard to prevent other cavity nesters from nesting in or near their territory. This may include filling empty potential cavity nesting sites with sticks or even breaking the eggs of other birds.
At Dodge there seems to be enough room for the house wrens and eastern bluebirds, a competing cavity nester, to coexist. The bluebirds seem to occupy at least one of the bird houses. Inside they will build a nest made of grass, sometimes they use pine needles however there are few pines in the area so they are most likely using grass, and line it with fine grass and feathers. The clutch is typically between 3 to 6 eggs which will hatch in about 12 to 18 days. The young fledge in about 17 to 20 days, sometimes the male will continue to feed the fledglings while the female begins another nest.

Over looking one of the many small ponds that are part of the nature center I found a green heron. Green herons spend much of their time foraging for small fish, frogs and insects at ponds, rivers and other marshy areas. A clever bird, they will sometimes drop bait, like worms, sticks or feathers, on to the water to attract fish or frogs to come to the surface.

I also spotted another member of the heron family at another pond. The great egret hunts its prey, mainly fish, frogs and reptiles, by stealthily wading through the water until it finds something to eat. At that point it will slowly move into position and then lunge forward with its beak to impale its prey.
Dodge has a pretty good population of wild turkeys. Last fall I found about 30 of them on one visit, most of them were females with only a few toms. On this trip their were 3 toms in the field right behind the headquarters building. Turkeys are not what most people would consider a beautiful bird but I like the way that they look in the sun light, their feathers get an almost metallic look to them.

Carpenter Banding

Every once in a while I am fortunate enough to get some time off on a Friday. On those days I like to head over to the Carpenter Nature Center to check out the bird banding. June 13th was one of those days, unfortunately it was also a bit windy that day so there were not many birds that were being caught in the nets. When it is windy the nets blow in the wind and the birds spot the movement and thus more of them avoid the nets. In the hour and a half that I was there I only spotted this gray catbird in the nets. The interesting part of banding is that you get to see birds up close and at angles that you typically don't see in the wild. For instance it is not often that you get at good look at the rufous undertail coverts of the gray catbird.
Since there were not many birds in the nets I decided to take a walk around the grounds to see what I could spot. Chipping sparrows are quit common in the area right now, as are eastern kingbirds.
With all the flies that we have around this year it is no wonder why a lot of fly catchers,like the eastern kingbirds have decided to stay in the area instead of heading farther north.
There were also several eastern bluebirds around Carpenter. I think that they are nesting in the boxes that they have out in the fields. In an earlier post I mentioned that I have seen a lot more eastern bluebirds in the area then I did last year. Maybe the high bug population this year, except for butterflies which appear to have declined this year, has helped to make them more successful in the area.