Zonotrichia albicollis (White-throated Sparrow)

 The white-throated sparrow is a new world (Emberizine) sparrow that is named for the white throat patch below it's beak. They breed in the eastern three quarters of Canada as well as in parts of north central and north eastern United States. They spend the winter in the eastern half of the U.S. or along the California coast. Their primary habitat is forests with thick undergrowth but they can also be found in bogs, fields, parks and yards, particularly during the winter.

There are two different color variations of white-throated sparrow. There is the white crowned, an example of which is the first picture, and the tan-crowned, pictured above. The males of both varieties prefer white-crowned females, however the females all prefer the tan-crowned males. It appears that the white crowned birds are more aggressive then the tan crowned. So the guys are looking for an aggressive women while the females are looking for a laid back dude. You can see in the picture above that white-crowned sparrows eat a variety of fruits and berries. They also eat a lot of the seeds from different grasses as well as insects that they find while foraging on the ground.

Zonotrichia albicollis

Zonotrichia albicollis, or the white-throated sparrow, is an emberizine sparrow that can be found in the eastern half of North America. White crowned sparrows breed in eastern Canada and the north central and north eastern United States. They winter in the eastern United States as well as parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and northern Mexico.
There are two different color morphs of the white-throated sparrow,the tan crowned white-throated sparrow and the white crowned white-throated sparrow. Unlike birds such as cardinals the color of the white-crowned sparrow does not identify whether it is male or female. There are males and females of both color phase. The reason why both color phases continue to exist is because all males tend to prefer white crowned females and all females tend to prefer tan crowned males.

T S Roberts Bird Sanctuary

This weekend I took a trip over to the T S Roberts Bird Sanctuary in south Minneapolis. The sanctuary is part of Lyndale Park and was officially designated as a bird sanctuary in 1936 by Christian Bossen, who was the superintendent of Minneapolis Parks at the time. In 1936 the park was originally called the Lyndale Park Bird Sanctuary but in 1947 the park was renamed after Thomas Sadler Roberts. Roberts was a retired physician who became a professor of Ornithology at the University of Minnesota. In 1932 Roberts published the book, "Birds of Minnesota" which was ground breaking at the time, and is still considered an important book for anyone birding in Minnesota.
The sanctuary was created primarily as habitat for migratory song birds, particularly warblers. There are trails and a boardwalk that run through a variety of different habitats, wetlands, fields, and forest, that can be used as a stop over for warblers as they migrate. Unfortunately the only warblers that I was lucky enough to see on this trip where yellow-rumped warblers and a single ovenbird. I have visited the sanctuary a couple of times in the past. While it once may have been a hot spot for migrating birds the creation of other larger parks nearby, Fort Snelling State Park, Hyland Park, Minnesota Valley NWR, and others may have decreased the number of birds that now use the sanctuary. However it is still great habitat for many of the birds that choose to nest in the area, such as sparrows, robins, and chickadee.
This years abundance of snow and rain has increased the size of the wetlands in the park. Several trails are still flooded over making detours necessary in some cases.
While the excess water may make it a bit more difficult for some visitors other visitors have taken full advantage of the new wetlands areas. Mallards and wood ducks can be found swimming in low land parts of the park that are usually dry.
The reason for my visit to the sanctuary though was the fact that there was a great horned owl pair that still had young that had not fledged. The other couple of nests that I had been watching had already fledged and were now difficult if not impossible to find. This pair of owls appeared to have nested a bit later then normal and so they still had young in the nest.
The nest was located in the back of the park very near to a trail. The location was very good for people who wanted to get a good look at the owls, or perhaps a photo or two, but it was probably not the best location for the owls. Many people know about the nest, particularly because of its location, and stop by to gawk. The owls do not seem to mind this invasion of privacy too much except for perhaps an occasional yawn of boredom for all of the strange humans below.
I don't think that the young ones will be in the nest for much longer though. They are already quite big. The squirrels nest that the parents confiscated, great horned owls do not make their own nests, is pretty small for the two big babies and mom. So soon it will be time for the young ones to leave the nest, and perhaps head off to college, or at least some nice mouse laden field around a college.

Minnesota Valley NWR Warbler Walk

On Saturday evening the rain finally stopped, the clouds began to break up and the sun made a rare appearance. Even though it was already almost dinner time I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and headed over to the Minnesota Valley NWR. I was hoping to have a chance to photograph some warblers. We have been seeing yellow-rumped warblers for over a week but reports were starting to come in about other warblers in the area.

Taking pictures of warblers can be very tricky, because of their small size and constant movement. Fortunately the trees here have not yet begun to leaf out which makes it a bit easier to find and photograph them, but as you can see in this picture of an orange-crowned warbler the trees will be spreading their new leaves soon.

One of the more rare warblers that I spotted was this black-throated green warbler. He was searching a pine tree for insects when I came down the path. I did have to turn up the ISO to get a picture in the low light, which is why it is not the best picture, but I was just happy to see one this year.

This Nashville warbler was high up in the tree tops. It did not seem very concerned about the strange guy with the big camera below it. It may have just come in that night, warblers typically migrate at night then spend the day foraging for food, and was hungry for a long flight.

The best shots that I got were of a black and white warbler. I have taken black and white warbler pictures in the past but they usually do not turn out very good. This time the bird was pretty close, traveling up a tree trunk the same way that a woodpecker or nuthatch would, and in good light which helped me to get my best black and white photos to date.

There were also other birds around. Down at the ponds there were several types of ducks. Along the shore great egrets and a solitary sandpiper were wading through the water in search of dinner and rustling through the leaves I found a lot of white-throated sparrows.

White-throated Sparrow

One of the advantages of living where I do is that I am in close proximity to the Mississippi River. Each spring and fall we get to see a variety of different birds as the travel along the Mississippi flyway during migration. The white-throated sparrow is one of the birds that we see during migration.

The white-throated sparrow spends its summers up on breeding territories in the forests of Canada, northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin and winters in southeastern United States. They are a ground forager that ca often be seen fluttering through the scrub and brush looking for seeds, berries and insects. The yellow patch above the eye is a good field mark to look for when identifying the white-throated sparrow because no other sparrows in this area have that type of marking.

White-throated Sparrow

Wordless Wednesday: White-throated and White-crowned Sparrow

Birding in Fort Snelling State Park

Today we begin the trip home. I always get sad to leave here and go back to the real world, but we have a lot of great pictures. This is probably our most productive trip to Yellowstone. We saw almost everything that there was to see. We had 3 wolf sightings this year, which was great because we have never seen wolves in the park before. We got some pics of a prairie falcon, which was a life bird for me. We also got some good badger shots and golden eagle shots. We had seen both in the park on past trips but we were able to get better pics this time. Yesterdays weather actually cleared up quite a bit, despite what the weather people forecasted, and we were fortunate to see an elk calf that had been born only 30 minutes before we photographed it. We also got a lot of great bird pics including mountain bluebird, raven, white-crowned sparrow, common merganser, buffelhead, Barrow's goldeneye, eared grebe, kestrel, grouse and a few more.

We did not get back until late yesterday and we are trying to leave soon so I did not have time to get any more Yellowstone pics ready, but I do have some more passerines that I photographed at Fort Snelling State Park on May 12th.

song sparrow
white-throated sparrow
gray catbird
yellow-rumped warbler Myrtle variety

blackburnian warbler

I will have a lot of pics to share when I get home but I may not be able to post for the next couple of days while we are driving. If I am not able to post I hope that everyone has a happy Memorial Day.

Nature Abounds at Dodge Nature Center

I did find some other wildlife, beside the green darner dragonfly which I posted yesterday, at Dodge Nature Center on April 21st.
The painted turtles were out sunning themselves on the rocks and logs in the ponds, at least until the sky clouded up.
Song sparrows were out singing, as they have been for several weeks now.
One species that has recently returned and that I have been seeing a lot of are white-throated sparrows.
The young muskrats were out with the adults that afternoon. I did not get a very good look at them. They were good at keeping hidden in the reeds. When they did have to travel across an open space they darted very quickly, they were so fast that it was impossible to catch more then a quick glance let alone get a pick. The best look that I got was what you see above. I may not have been able to see them but it was easy to tell where they were because they were very vocal, squeaking and rustling through the dried reeds.

A trip to Necedah NWR instead of Cape May

I had thought about going to the Cape May Autumn Convention this weekend but I decided against it. First off this would prolly be the last nice weekend at home and I was not sure I wanted to give that up and spend half my time flying and driving and in lectures at a convention. Second is the whole feral cat issue, Laura Erickson had a great post about the issue, which made it some what of a moral dilemma. So I decided that I would take some field trips around home instead. As it turns out it was a good call because, from what I have read, the weather at Cape May for most of the weekend was pretty bad, meanwhile here at home we had a gorgeous fall weekend.

Since the weather forecast for the weekend was looking so good I talked Michelle into going on a road trip to Necedah NWR in Wisconsin on Saturday. Necedah is popular for birders and naturalists particularly for the whooping crane project and the endangered karner blue butterfly. I had wanted to visit Necedah earlier in the year, when the karner blues were around, however with everything else I did this year I did not get a chance. I figured that the karners would be gone at this time of the year but I was still hoping to see a whooper. We saw whoopers down in Aransas NWR in Texas a couple of years ago but they were very far away and it was impossible to get even a mediocre photo. The Necedah website lists weekly numbers of waterfowl and cranes and the previous week they had listed 31 whoopers in the park so even though it would be a long shot I knew that it might be possible.

I let Michelle sleep in, the least that I could do since I was dragging her around the country side again, so we arrived at Necedah at around 11:00 am. This was our first visit to Necedah so we were not sure where the best place would be to spot wildlife so we just picked a road and began to drive. The road took us through a wooded area with a lot of dead and downed trees. It was not long before we spotted an immature red-headed woodpecker.
Juvenile red-heads have gray heads and black bars on white secondaries. As they progress from juvenile to immature status you can begin to see some red on the head.
Red-headed woodpeckers live in the eastern half of the US and south eastern Canada. They migrate from the northern parts of their range and spend the winter typically in Texas. When we visited we saw that there were still quite a few red-heads, both immature and adults, that had not left yet.

There were also quite a few adult red-headed woodpeckers. Red-heads are the most omnivorous of the woodpeckers. They will burrow into trees to get bugs or catch them in the air or on the ground. They will also eat seeds, berries, nuts, fruit, bird eggs, hatchlings or mice.Red heads are one of the few woodpeckers that are known to store food and the only type that will sometimes cover it up with bark. They hide seeds and nuts in cracks in wood, as shown above, and will even store live grasshoppers by wedging them into a tight crevice where they can't escape.Recent data shows that the numbers of red-heads is declining. This is most likely due to habitat loss and people clearing out dead trees. Red-heads need these dead trees for nesting so it is important that we leave some areas in their natural states. Necedah NWR had plenty of dead trees so it was perfect habitat for red-heads. After a while the ecosystem transitioned from old and dying deciduous woodlands to prairie. There was a short hiking trail so I decided to stop and get a bit of exercise. The trail was supposed to go through some wetlands and there was even a short boardwalk but things were pretty dry so there was very little water in sight and not many birds either. I did spot a white-throated sparrow in the brush.I got back to the car and we continued north. We kept looking for the pools and lakes that, according to the last weeks numbers on the website, held thousands of ducks, but all we found were hunters getting ready for the season. Finally we came to two large pools. We did see some ducks, geese, and swans but most where on the opposite side of the pools, which was to far away to get any pics. There was, however, a lesser yellowlegs on the shore on one side of the road that was not too far away.On the other side of the road a lone great blue heron caught himself some lunch. After the pools we continued to the trail where you can see the karner blue butterflies during the summer. They are found in this habitat because of the wild lupine that grows there is the only known food for their caterpillar state. Even though I did not think that there would be any karners left I decided to walk the trail anyway, after all I did see a monarch and a sulfur flying around.

I did not find any karners, all of the lupine was already dead, but I did find a ruby meadowhawk.On the way out of the park we spotted a red-tailed hawk.He decided that he did not like the look of our car, not sure what problem he had with Honda, so he took off and began to circle higher on the thermals. We never did get to see a whooper but I am definitely planning to go back next summer, prolly in early June. Hopefully on that trip I will get some shots of the Karner butterflies and maybe some pictures of juvenile red-headed woodpeckers.