Mountain Bluebird - Rare in Minnesota

We had seen reports of a way-out-of-its-range male Mountain Bluebird at Schaar's Bluff near Hastings, Minnesota, and were fortunate to be able to get extended good views of it Monday evening after work. What a beauty!

The overcast sky, fading light and rather diffuse color of the bird when seen from the front created some photographic challenges. At one point it flew to a perch within 15 feet of where I was standing, but with a network of high-contrast tree branches in the background, I could not get my camera to focus on the bird. The photos show here were all taken from many yards away with high zoom, and then cropped.

The normal range of the mountain bluebird is primarily the western mountain and plains states and up the western part of Canada into Alaska in the summer breeding season. Winters are spent in the southern part of that range and well south into Mexico. Normally it would not be closer to us than the western edge of the Dakotas.

For comparison, here (below) is the male eastern bluebird, which is the bluebird we normally see in this part of the country.

Spring Birding Begins! - Ducks and Geese

With temperatures heading high into the 50s today, we headed down to the Wells Lake causeway west of Faribault and saw hundreds of greater white-fronted geese as well as many common mergansers and some redheads and coots (in addition to gulls and oodles of mallards and Canada geese). The large lake has already opened up enough that all of these were hundreds of yards away and a strain to see, even through binoculars and spotting scope, so there may have been other species that we couldn't identify.

In contrast, at the Superior Drive pond in Northfield, which now has a lot of open water as well, we got some lovely views of several lesser scaup, a diving duck that is usually one of the first migrating ducks I've recorded over the past few springs (here are other posts I've written about scaup -- in the exceptionally warm spring of 2012, on March 7 the ice was almost completely out on that pond and I counted 42 scaup). Lesser scaup moving through our area are on their way to summer breeding grounds in the northern plains of Canada after wintering in the southern states, along the Gulf Coast, or maybe in Mexico.

Look at that beautiful blue beak, golden eye, and dark head shining purple in the sun.

Must Be Time for Orioles and Grosbeaks!

May 7, 2011 - First-ever visit of  rosebreasted-grosbeaks to our feeders. I wrote a blog post titled "Thought I'd Died and Gone to Heaven."
May 8, 2011 - First-ever visit of Baltimore orioles to our feeders (but they'd been seen in the trees the few days before) (Described in a blog post on May 15)
May 8, 2013 - Rosebreasted grosbeaks and Baltimore orioles show up at our feeders within 15 minutes of one another
May 7, 2014 - Orioles and rose-breasted grosbeaks show up within a few hours of each other (and hummingbirds later that day as well). First-ever visit of orchard orioles to our feeders, and we see half a dozen each (or more) of orioles and grosbeaks at our feeders and in our big tree. Wowee! Photos below.

Male Baltimore Oriole, May 7, 2014

Male Rose-breasted Grosbeak, May 7, 2014

Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak, May 7, 2014

Orchard Oriole, May 7, 2014

The grosbeaks really seem to like the gazebo-style feeder, which was new last fall. It is easy to approach and fits several at a time. I think that's why so many have stayed around these last few days.

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks

I didn't notice until looking at these photos just now that the photo below clearly shows an immature male grosbeak sitting toward the front of the gazebo roof -- he's developing his dramatic coloring but still has some of the streaks that juveniles and females share. I noted one last year, too, and wrote a little more about that then.

Rose-breasted Grosbeaks - note immature male in front

The photo below does not show a romantic interlude: Rather, two male orioles had a competitive moment over the jelly.

Male orioles get feisty with jelly on their beaks

It's been a wonderful few days. Happy spring!

Enjoying White-throated Sparrows

Before they're gone again, I must comment on the wonderfully audible presence of white-throated sparrows over the past couple of weeks. They don't stay here long as they move through to preferred breeding territory, but we love hearing and seeing them while they are here. They are often to be found foraging on our front lawn or under our hanging feeders. They're so pretty, and their song is so sweet.

White-throated Sparrow, white-striped morph

White-throated Sparrow, white-striped morph

There are two color morphs of these sparrows. The two photos above show the white-striped morph. Below is the duller, tan-striped morph. They mingle freely, seem to prefer mates of the other morph, and thus occur in equal numbers throughout their range. David Sibley has a nice discussion of their characteristics here. One excerpt: 

Comparing like sexes, White-striped birds are more aggressive, sing more, and spend less time in parental care than Tan-striped. Regardless of sex, White-striped tend to dominate Tan-striped birds in the breeding season. Mated pairs almost always include one of each morph, and because of the chromosome arrangement this pairing always produces equal numbers of Tan-striped and White-striped offspring (Falls and Kopachena, 2010).

White-throated Sparrow, tan-striped morph

I last wrote about white-throated sparrows and their song in April 2011 (when in my enthusiasm I managed to mix up a white-crowned sparrow with the white-throateds, but then set the record straight).

Pasqueflowers

Over the course of several springs, I have seen my fellow Northfielder Rob Hardy mention his delight in and expeditions in search of pasqueflowers, but until around this time last year, I had never seen them. It's a native plant, Anemone patens, also sometimes known as prairie crocus, windflower, and prairie smoke. I'm charmed to learn that it is South Dakota's state flower. It's one of the earliest flowers to bloom in the spring, appearing in low clumps here and there in dry or sandy soils. It's native to much of the north central and northwest United States.

Dave and I saw these pretty specimens last Saturday at a prairie remnant located a few miles northeast of Northfield.

I'm always interested in names and their origins. Pasque is an old word for Easter or Passover (think paschal lamb), which is a natural association because of the plant's blooming time, but apparently this was an adaptation of the earlier name for the European version of this flower, originally called passeflower, from passefleur, simply meaning pass/surpass + flower in Old French. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pasqueflower).

You can read more about pasqueflowers in Minnesota on the Minnesota Wildflowers and Minnesota Seasons websites.

Pelicans and Wing-spreading Posture

This morning there were several groups of American white pelicans resting on or near sandbars near the west end of Lake Byllesby, near Randolph, Minn. They were far enough out that we needed the spotting scope or a strong camera zoom to really see what was going on.

What appeared at first glance to be one large bird (above) turned out to be two (below).

An American white pelican's enormous wings, with a span of  roughly 8 to 9 feet, are one of the most beautiful sights in birddom. A couple of the birds today were holding their wings outspread in the behavior we've also seen in vultures and cormorants. It may be done to dry feathers; it may be to absorb warmth (thermoregulation); or perhaps other reasons. See, e.g., https://www.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/Spread-Wing_Postures.html. Whatever the reason, we saw a nice demonstration of it today. This is a gorgeous display of the black tips on the otherwise white wings of an American white pelican.

There is a good overview of American white pelicans and both their historical and recent presence in Minnesota, where it is a "species of special concern," here.

Ring-necked Duck vs. Scaup

In a recent post I showed a rather indistinct photo of what we concluded was a ring-necked duck (or two). Here is a better shot I got yesterday that provides a nice comparison between the ring-necked duck and a scaup, which appear quite similar at a glance, with dark heads, breasts, and tails, lighter flanks, and bluish/grayish bills.

The duck in the foreground is the ring-necked duck. According to Sibley (Field Guide to Eastern Birds, 2003), the black back and the white "spur" on the side (just behind the base of the neck) are distinctive, as is the white outline on the bill. As I mentioned in the earlier post, the sharp angle to the head is also diagnostic. As Sibley puts it, this duck is "best identified by tall head with sharp peak on rear crown." (The white marking on the bill also tempts one to call this a "ring-billed" duck -- a good sign that actually it is a ring-necked duck. Go figure.)

The duck to the rear is a scaup. It lacks the field marks of the ring-necked duck that I noted above, and has white flanks and a gray back, in contrast to the ring-necked duck's gray flanks and black back. The greater and lesser scaup are very similar. I'm guessing this is a lesser scaup, based on the fairly tall head, which is the main way of distinguishing it from the greater scaup, which has a larger, more rounded head. However, from this angle it's difficult to say for sure. The lesser scaup is also the more likely species to be found here, as they winter all across the southern tier of the U.S. as well as on the coasts, while the greater scaup is said to prefer salt water and winters mainly on the coasts, as well as some smaller inland areas in the south, from eastern Texas through Arkansas. See the comparative range maps: lesser scaup vs. greater scaup. This is also borne out in Minnesota eBird records for the two: lesser scaup vs. greater scaup.

Today we saw our first northern shovelers of the season (boldly colored ducks with enormous bills), and a belted kingfisher. I am keeping a 2014 bird list (also available from the page links at the top of the blog). We've often kept records of what we've seen, but this is the first time in a while we've started a numbered list early in the season, and I'm hoping to keep it going throughout the year. We're up to 34 species so far, and with spring migration really getting started, that should keep going up pretty steadily.

Happy birding!

More Hooded Mergansers

I can't get enough of these diving ducks. They are so striking-looking, yet somehow comical in the intensity of the yellow eye, the sharpness of the bill, and the startling, quasi-alien appearance of their crests, which they can raise and lower.

Below is a cluster of hoodies from the larger group of 30-40 that has been hanging around on the Superior Drive pond. Note a mallard taking off at left. (Click on the photo to see it much larger.)

The Ducks are Here

On Sunday morning the pond south of Superior Drive in Northfield was still largely ice-covered. Later that day and the next, the temperatures reached well into the 50s, and at some point the ice went out. We heard reports of swans there on Tuesday and headed over there after work. No swans were to be seen, but there were 14 common mergansers, two dozen hooded mergansers (plus another four on the north pond), some short-necked Canada geese, a few mallards and a gull. There was also another pair of ducks we couldn't quite be sure of through the binoculars, but after the fact, based on my photos, we were able to be fairly sure they were ring-necked ducks.

Male Common Merganser - so handsome; larger than a Mallard

Female Common Merganser

Hooded Mergansers

Probably these are Ring-necked Ducks (note sharp slope of head)

This is one of my favorite times in the birding year, enjoying the great variety of migrating ducks that appear as soon as the ponds open up. 

Spring and Ice at River Bend

On this nicest weekend day we've seen in months, with highs close to 60 F., Dave and I headed down to River bend Nature Center for a walk. Our first destination was the waterfall that's just off the west side of the main drive, which I understand is fairly dry much of the year, but is cascading most attractively during the spring melt. Actually, even the main drive itself has a lot of water flowing over it in spots. River Bend is a wonderfully wet place right now, as a severe winter's worth of snow melts and brings the land back to life.

After enjoying the waterfall, we headed down towards the river, which the waterfall's stream feeds into. On the way down, we saw four cedar waxwings in the tops of several nearby trees. I could barely tell what I was seeing as I took this photo (which has been cropped but is otherwise unedited), so I was pleased at how clearly it came out.

From a bench at this point, we looked down upon the river, which at River Bend is the Straight River, not the Cannon. We could see two young ladies playing around, and eventually we realized they were walking on and around huge slabs of broken-up ice that had come off the river.

We were soon to encounter many of these ourselves as we walked the Trout Lily trail around the east tip of the big bend in the river that gives the nature center its name.

There's my foot for size reference. These blocks were thick -- some of them as high as my knee.

I've seen ice breaking up in the Cannon River before, but never big slabs that had beached themselves like these. I was fascinated to see ice crystals seemingly calving off the big blocks like icebergs off glaciers. The crystals, or ice shards, ran vertically through the ice, rather than being in horizontal layers.

So on this lovely warm day, our focus ended up being on ice -- the paradox of a Minnesota spring.

Late Winter Catch-up

It's been a brutal winter, and here it is the fourth week of March and we're still getting snow and well-below-normal temperatures. Here are a few of the photos I've taken from inside my house recently. The squirrels have been showing great gymnastic ability. The deep snow makes the squirrel baffles less effective, but I don't begrudge them the sustenance. They still work pretty hard for it.

I love it when the light hits the red spot on the back of a male downy or hairy woodpecker's head. This is a downy on our suet log -- note the tiny, pencil-point beak. So cute.

I like this final shot of a female cardinal, which shows how they turn seeds into an up-and-down orientation to crack the shells. And I rarely get this nice a few of a bird's eye. As always, click on the photo for a larger view.

Spring is getting here, even though it doesn't feel very springy. Recent phenology notes:

• We started seeing a robin on our (snow-covered) lawn about two weeks ago. A few nights ago, friends on social media were reporting large flocks of them in treetops and on the ground. Some robins do stay year-round, but they suddenly seem to be more prominent.
• Red-winged blackbirds were trilling in the trees by the Cannon River yesterday.
• My friend Mary of the My Northern Garden blog reported seeing a great blue heron in flight near the wetlands off the east end of Jefferson Parkway.
• A few days ago I saw a crow on Woodley Street with nesting material in its beak
• Birder Dave Bartkey of Faribault reported an osprey flying overhead, north of Faribault, which he said was by far his earliest date for this species.

There is hope! Hang in there. 

Oriole with Maple Flowers

Female Baltimore Oriole

A gorgeous female Baltimore oriole amid light green maple flowers against a brilliant blue sky. Irresistible!

This is a phenology post as well as a bird post. Here it is May 12, and the large maple in front of our house is only just flowering, before leafing out.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak - Immature Male

Late Thursday afternoon a male rose-breasted grosbeak was feeding from a caged feeder designed to exclude larger birds such as itself. It was quite successful in reaching its head through the cage to retrieve spilled sunflower chips from the bottom.

After I took the photos and did some research, I realized that this is an immature male in its first breeding season. When in full breeding plumage, a mature male's head will be fully black, the rose color will deepen, and the brownish streaks will disappear, leaving the bird with its stunning black, white and rose-red coloring.

What a beautiful bird.

On this date in 2011, I posted a photo of a male and female (shown below) on one of our other feeders. You can see how the immature male in the photos above is like a blend of the female and the mature male shown below.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak pair (2011)

The Colorful Birds of Spring

I saw my first Baltimore oriole and first rose-breasted grosbeak of the season yesterday, within about 15 minutes of each other. I'd put the oriole feeder up in the snow late last week, and just put the hummingbird feeder out yesterday. I haven't spotted any hummingbirds yet. The grosbeak was trying to eat from our caged feeder that only allows small birds inside, and was probably finding that quite frustrating.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak (2011)

I didn't see any rose-breasted grosbeaks at the feeders last year, but in 2011 they appeared at the feeders on May 7. Rose-breasted grosbeaks winter in southern Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and northern South America. Read more about them at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds site.

Baltimore orioles have appeared in early May the last couple of years. Here's a photo from last year. I've written more about orioles here. They winter in much the same areas as the grosbeaks, plus Florida.

Baltimore Oriole (2012)

Within half an hour last evening I saw birds of brilliant orange, rose, red and blue -- an oriole, a rose-breasted grosbeak, a cardinal and a blue jay. No goldfinches, though. I remarked on this sudden richness of colorful birds in May two years ago, saying I felt like Dorothy stepping into the technicolor world of Oz.