Eastern Phoebe

Eastern Phoebe

The eastern phoebe is a common flycatcher that can be found in most of the eastern half of North America at one time of the year or another. During the summer their range extends north into the upper region of Canada. During the winter they head south to the Gulf Coast, Mexico and even parts of Central America. The reason for their annual migration is due to the availability of food, as with most birds. Like most flycatcher the eastern phoebe's diet consists primarily of flying insects. During the summer there are a lot of insects in the north where the days are longer. Come winter they must leave areas that can no longer support insect life due to the cold.

Eastern phoebes are not very social birds. They usually stay clear of other phoebes. Even during the mating season they only spend a short time together as a mated pair. They do not seem to be as antisocial with humans though. Their ability to adapt to man, such as nesting on building or under bridges has helped them to thrive while other less tolerant species have declined.

My World: Maplewood Nature Center

Now that it is April it will not be long before the spring migration reaches Minnesota. Already migrating waterfowl have begun to move into the area and soon they will be followed by waders, raptors, songbirds and the rest.

I am looking forward to getting out to some of my favorite spots and actually getting to see a variety of bird life. One of those spots is the Maplewood Nature Center.

The Maplewood Nature Center is not very large, but it does have some really nice ponds that attract migrating and resident waterfowl.

One of the first ducks to return to the area, other then mallards who stay here year round, are the wood ducks. I have already begun to see wood ducks at several area ponds stacking out their territory.

One of birds that I frequently saw on the ponds of MCC last summer were green herons.

It is fun to watch green herons foraging through the shallow water and thick vegetation looking for small fish and invertebrates.

They slowly wade through the water their heads down and eyes on the water and when they find some prey they strike quickly with their long beak.

Sometimes you see them just sitting motionless at the waters edge waiting for an unwary prey to swim by.

There is also a small tree island in the main pond that was one of the best places that I visited last year to find fly catching birds.

The eastern phoebe is one of the most common flycatchers that we
see in Minnesota.

Another frequent visitor during the summer is the eastern kingbird.

They may not be as bright as their cousins the western kingbird, which are black and yellow, but they have a great personality.

The most exciting flycatcher that I saw at Maplewood was the olive-sided flycatcher. Since we are just at the southern edges of their summer range we do not always see these birds during August, when picture was taken.

It is fun to watch them take off from where they are perched at the top of a tree and do intricate maneuvers in the air. At first you are not sure why they be making acrobatic moves while they fly but when they land if you look closely you will probably see a fly, dragonfly or bee trapped in their beak.

Vermillion River Birding

Well we got our first real snow of the year yesterday. Fortunately we missed the bulk of the storm, over in South Dakota some places received several feet of snow from this storm. I expected that when I looked outside this morning that I would find a new white covering but I was happy to see that none of the snow that fell accumulated. Considering that it was over 70 degrees early last week the ground was apparently still to warm for the snow and it all melted. The temps have below freezing at night now so it probably wont be too long before we are cast into a winter wonderland. One good thing about the cold weather is that perhaps it will encourage the winter birds to head south. I have not seen too many of the birds that winter in the area yet probably because of the unseasonably warm temps that we had last weekend. If we continue to see these cold temps then the lakes and rivers will begin to freeze and the eagles will begin to congregate in the places where the river remains open during the winter.
One of the rivers that does not remain open during the winter is the Vermillion River. During the winter it is pretty quiet but back on August 17th I did a bit of birding down at the Vermillion River. The eastern phoebe, pictured above, is one of the most common types of flycatchers that we see in Minnesota during the summer.
A bird that is much less common is the indigo bunting. Indigo buntings spend the summer on breeding territories mostly on the eastern half on the US. During this time the males are in their breeding plumage, blue and black, and are easy to spot.
In winter they molt into plumage that is much more like that of the female, pictured above. They migrate south at night using the stars to guide them to their wintering grounds down in south Florida, Mexico and Central America.
In the river I found a lone solitary sandpiper. Although they can be seen alone solitary sandpipers are not really solitary. They got their name because of the fact that they do not migrate in large flocks like most other shorebirds do.

Birding at the Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary

The Vince Shute Wildlife Sanctuary is the best place to see black bears in Minnesota but it is also a pretty good place to do some birding, even though you have to do it all from the bear viewing platform. While we were there photographing the bears we did take time out to snap a few pics of some of the birds that we saw.
Eastern phoebe are pretty common through out Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes is great habitat for millions of bugs, which makes it great habitat for eastern phoebe and other flycatchers
Like many species of birds, the female goldfinch is not nearly as bright or colorful as her male counter part. This usually indicates that it is the female of the species that gets the privilege of selecting the mate. The males are all dolled up with their bright shiny feathers because they need to work hard to attract a good mate.
When I first spotted this bird I was not too excited because I thought that it was a house finch, which are fairly common through out most of the US all year long, but when I took a closer look I noticed that it has no streaks on its flanks. I believe that it is actually a purple finch, which we usually see only during the winter when they migrate south from Canada. Although Orr, MN is not all that far from the Canadian border.
The most exciting bird to watch that night was this yellow-bellied sapsucker. In southern Minnesota we usually only see sapsuckers during migration, but some birds do stop and spend their summer in northern Minnesota. The yellow-bellied sapsucker is the only member of the woodpecker family in the eastern half of North America that is completely migratory. They spend their summers in Canada and the Northern Great Lakes area and winter in the southeastern US, Mexico and Central America.
One of the ways that sapsuckers eat sap from trees is illustrated in the picture above. They will make shallow rectangular holes, in the tree, from which they lick up sap with their tongue, if you look carefully at the picture above you can see the birds tongue. These holes must be maintained regularly to maintain the flow of sap. The other way that sapsuckers extract sap is by creating a small deep hole in which it places its bill and probes for sap with its tongue.

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.

Some Dodge for you while I drive

I apologize for my lack of witty reporte on this post and the last. I am leaving shortly for a short trip and have been trying to get things taken care of so that I can leave. I will try and blog a bit while I am traveling. This will depend on the Internet connections at hotels and how much time that I have when I am not out shooting. Here are some more pics from Dodge Nature Center for you to enjoy while I drive.

eastern phoebe
cedar waxwing

house wren
sora
painted turtle

St Croix National Scenic Riverway Marshland Visitors Center

On our way home from Crex Meadows we stopped at the St Croix National Scenic Riverway Marshland Center. The St Croix National Scenic Riverway is a national park consisting of 252 miles of habitat encircling the St Croix and Namekagon Rivers on the Minnesota and Wisconsin border. The Marshland Visitors Center is only open by appointment but the small grounds surrounding the center as well as the trails following the river are good places to look for passerines. Since Michelle was already tired from our trek around Crex she decided to stay in the car while I took a quick look around.
I did not find anything all that exciting but a few birds did peek out and took their turn in the spot light. This eastern phoebe are sometimes difficult to photograph because of their dark heads. One of the things that I look for when photographing wildlife is to try and get a glint of light in the eye. This helps to make the bird or animal look more life like. When a bird has a dark head the eye often gets lost in the pic. Fortunately it was bright out, which usually helps, and my new lens is much better at picking up light.
Angle of the subject in comparison to the sun is usually important when you are trying to get a shinning eye. The sun light is hitting the breast of the chipping sparrow above and it is not hitting the eye. This makes the eye look flat and two dimensional which does not help the picture to look life like.
When the angle is changed on the chipping sparrow the eye looks more three dimensional and life like.
Unfortunately in wildlife photography you can not control the weather or your subject. You can try and get a perfect angle but sometimes rivers, trees or other things make it difficult or impossible. Try as I might I could not get this field sparrow to pose correctly. This does not mean that the pic is not worth taking, especially since it is the first field sparrow that I have seen this year, some times you just have to be happy with what you get.
There is no use crying over spilled egg. I actually found this egg on one of the hiking trails. I do not know my eggs very well so maybe some one out there can tell us what kind of egg that it is. The small hole in the egg is interesting. I wonder if another bird used its beak to put a hole in the egg to retrieve the contents and then perhaps discarded it when it was finished with the rich yellow protein filled yoke?

First 2008 Trip to Crex Meadows

The nice weather continued on Sunday so Michelle and I made our first trek of the year up to Crex Meadows. Unfortunately most of the ducks had already moved on to the north but there was still plenty of things for us to photograph.
Yellow-rumped warblers are all over the place right now. I see them at every park that I visit and Crex was no exception.
Although not as common as the yellow-butts I have spotted quite a few eastern phoebes.
Michelle spotted this northern flicker and was quite proud of her self for identifying it.
There were a few shorebirds around, mostly greater yellowlegs. In August I am registered for a shorebird workshop out in South Dakota. I should have a good opportunity to get some nice shorebird pics then.
We did see a few ducks that were still around. Most of them were blue-winged teal but we did also spot a single northern shoveler.

The trumpeter swans have begun to build there nests. When we visit again in late June they will probably have some cygnets for us to photograph.
Most of the osprey platforms were occupied with nests. One of the nests had been taken over by eagles but the others were acting as home for osprey pairs. Unfortunately most of the platforms are pretty far out and don't have a very good view. One of the platforms on the north east side of Crex had a little better view from the road. As we stopped to check out the osprey this bird took off from the platform and came over to check us out. That allowed me to get a couple of closer pics as he flew over head.