Red-breasted Nuthatch

In Minnesota we typically see two different species of nuthatch, the white-breasted and red-breasted. The white-breasted nuthatch is common though out the state while the smaller red-breasted nuthatch typically lives in the north eastern part of the state. Some of the northern most red-breasted nuthatch population will migrate south out of Canada in the winter in search of food, so it is possible to see them in other parts of the state during the fall and winter.
Nuthatches are woodland birds. They are often seen climbing down the trunks of trees upside down. They eat mainly insects during the warm months, many of which the glean from the bark of the trees. During the winter they switch to a diet of mainly seeds. They will even cache some during the summer and fall in preparation for winter. They are a cavity nester and will aggressively defend their nesting cavity from other birds. They will often line the whole of the cavity with tree sap which helps to prevent larger predators from entering the nest.

Five Stars for Jim's Birdacious Bark Butter

Last month I had the opportunity to do a review of Jim's Birdacious Bark Butter. My friends over at Wild Bird Unlimited were nice enough to send me a jar of the Bark Butter as well as a Bark Butter Feeder to try out. I hung the feeder at my house and it has attracted quite a few chickadees and a couple of woodpeckers, at least that I have seen.

A couple of weeks back, when I had the opportunity to head up to the Sax Zim Bog to do some birding, I decided to bring the Bark Butter with. I wanted to test out a couple of things. I wanted to see how well the Bark Butter worked when it was applied directly to the tree and I wanted to see how well it would attract some of the northern specialties that are not very common in the U.S.

When I arrived at the bog I headed over to Admiral Ave to check out the feeding station located there. At the feeding station there was mainly common redpoll and black-capped chickadee. So I went up and spread some Bark Butter on several of the tree branches. Since redpoll are seed eaters they did not pay much attention to the Bark Butter but the black-capped chickadees began to go to the Bark Butter almost immediately after I left the feeding area.

I was not surprised that the black-capped chickadee were eating the Bark Butter, since they had been eating at home too, but I was hoping that one of the northern specialties would show up so I could see how well it would work on some less common birds. Soon a red-breasted nuthatch showed up and began to eat at the Bark Butter. I had white breasted nuthatch that had been on the feeder back home but we don't see red-breasted nuthatch too often in the southern portions of the state.

After watching and photographing the black-capped chickadees, red-breasted nuthatch, redpolls and the single pine grosbeak I got really excited because a pair of boreal chickadees showed up. Boreal chickadees are usually found up in the boreal forests of Canada but a few migrate south during the winter and the Admiral feeder in Sax Zim Bog is the best place in Minnesota to have a chance to see them. I was hoping that there were still a few boreals around because I wanted to see how good that the Bark Butter would be for attracting them. Just like their cousin the black-capped, the boreal chickadees went right for the Bark Butter.

The boreal chickadees only stayed for a short time, as usual, eating their fill of Bark Butter and then disappeared back into the bog. As I was waiting for them to return, the seem to return to the feeders every hour or so, gray jays began to appear and a feeding frenzy began. The jays would eat a large chunk of Bark Butter and then grab another large chunk and fly away. Gray jays, sometimes reffered to as camp robbers, are known for caching food. This helps them to survive times when food is scarce.

Despite the fact that there was several different types of suet at the feeding station, and someone had even spread some peanut butter on one of the branches the jays, chickadees and nuthatch all kept going right after the Bark Butter. When I moved to the feeding station on Arkola there was only one gray jay in the area, it was in the trees across the street from the feeders. I decided to give that lonely guy some Bark Butter and with in a minute suddenly 15 gray jays appeared. This experience has certainly sold me on Jim's Birdacious Bark Butter. I will give it a 5 stars out of 5 and definitely recommend it if you are looking to attract birds that normally eat suet or other types of protein. I know that were some happy birds up in the bog that day and a happy Ecobirder who got a lot of great pics.

Yellowstone Passerines

While we were on our Yellowstone trip we saw a lot of birds that we don't usually see around home but we did see some familiar birds also.
Chipping sparrows were fairly numerous around the park. The top picture was taken on the bank of the Madison River on a snowing Wednesday morning.
Earlier in the week we photographed a chipping sparrow in the same area only the weather was a bit better.

We also saw some white-crowned sparrows. This one was watching me from his perch on the Blacktail Deer Plateau. Although white-crowned sparrows do not usually spend a great deal of time around home they do pass through the state in the spring, on their way up to their Arctic breeding grounds, and in the fall, on their way back to the southern US and Mexico where they winter.Even though I have photographed white-crowned sparrows in Minnesota before this was the first white-crowned sparrow that I ever photographed on bison dung. EWWWWWWWW!
In Minnesota we also get red-breasted nuthatch like the one above, although the white-breasted nuthatch is much more common in Minnesota. I found this bird in the woods on the shore of the mostly frozen Lake Yellowstone.
We saw quite a few of these birds through out the park. At first I did not know what type of bird that it was. Although it did not look like any of the birds that I had seen around home it was in fact a bird that is very common in northern Minnesota in the summer and the southern part of the state in the winter.
I found out that this is a dark-eyed junco. Dark-eyed junco are a lot like red-tailed hawks, in that they have a number of variations that occur, depending on what part of the hemisphere that they live in. In Yellowstone the dark-eyed junco are of the pink-sided variety. In Minnesota we mostly see the slate-colored variety, which tend to be darker and have grey, slate, colored sides instead of pink like the ones above. There is also an Oregon variety, which looks like the slate-colored type except they have a darker head, and the white-winged variety, that look like the slate-colored type with white wing bars.

Bowdoin NWR Disply Pond

At Bowdin they also had a short walking trail that went around a small pond called the display pond. Although there were many birds on the pond I was more interested in the passerines that flitted between the trees that lined the pond.
The first birds that caught my eye were the red breasted nuthatch. I spotted 4 or 5 climbing up and down the trees.
There were also quite a few warblers around including Tennessee and yellow warblers.
The most interesting bird that I spotted was a tree swallow. Tree swallows are not really rare, we have plenty of tree sparrows around home, what made it interesting was that it was very active around a hole in the tree which I am guessing was its nest.

Tree swallows are cavity nesters. They often build their nests in holes in trees near water, as in this example, or sometimes in nesting boxes, including bluebird houses.
The nest itself is cup shaped and constructed of grasses with large feathers, from other birds usually lining the nest.
The feathers are often turned upward so that they curl around the pure white eggs.
The nest is constructed mostly by the female and typically takes 2 to 4 weeks to build. The male assists by bringing the large feathers for the top lining.
The clutch usually consists of 4 to 7 eggs which the female incubates for 13 to 16 days. Both adults help to feed the young birds which take 16-22 days to fledge.

I am not sure whether or not this pair already had a brood, were incubating eggs, or where in the process of building a nest. I did not see them bringing any material to the hole so I do not think that they were building a nest. Most likely they had eggs or young, hopefully they will survive and prosper and help increase the population of these colorful birds.

Carpenter Nature Center

On Tuesday January 15th I made a quick stop at Carpenter Nature Center between jobs to check out the feeders. I didn't have a lot of time, since I still had to get ready for my entertainment gig. There was a nice assortment of winter passerines visiting the feeders. The most exciting bird of the afternoon was the red-breasted nuthatch.
We seem to have more red-breasted nuthatches around this year then normal. There have been lots of people who have seen them at their feeders this winter but I have not been able to get many good shots of them so getting these pics made it worth skipping my nap, its a long day working 8 1/2 hours and then going out and working another 3 hours so usually I rest in between. Usually when I am out all that I find to take pictures of are the white-breasted nuthatch. There were plenty of those around too.

There were also the typical chickadees, juncos, tree sparrows, and northern cardinals.I also found a pair of house finches hanging out.Unfortunately I did not have enough time to check out the river for the harlequin duck or Barrow's goldeneye that have been hanging around. Guess that will have to wait for a future trip.

Hastings CBC

The last weekend in December I participated in two more Christmas Bird Counts. On Saturday I did the Hastings bird count and was partnered with Steve Weston. Steve is a great local birder here in the Twin Cities and has been doing the Hastings count for about 10 years or more so he really new our territory well. The weather was typical Minnesota winter weather with overcast skies, cold temps and light snow, perfect for taking bird photos LOL. The first half of our area was mostly in Spring Lake Park Preserve so we did a lot of it on foot. Since the weather was not too cooperative I did not bring my camera with while we hiked, which was prolly a good because it was pretty quiet any way. On our way out of the Schaar's Bluff area of Spring Lake Park we did spot a horned lark on the road. I got a shot but it was pretty far away and I shot it through the windshield so it is not a very good picture.In the afternoon things picked up a bit. Probably the best birding area that we found was at a feeder station in some ones yard on Pine Bend Trail. These feeders seemed to be very attractive to woodpeckers. There were around 10 downies that we counted.
There were 6 hairy woodpeckers.
We also saw at least 4 red-bellied woodpeckers, a lot of juncos, chickadees and white-breasted nuthatch and our 2 most exciting birds of the day. We saw a tufted titmouse, but it was too far away to get any shots with out entering into these people's yard, and one red-breasted nuthatch.

Even though things were a little slow for us other groups that were part of the count did well. Some of the more interesting birds that were spotted were a flock of red-winged blackbird, gray partridges, American kestrel, great horned and barred owl