Juvenile House Wren Study

Who doesn't love baby birds? They're amazingly cute and very, very hungry.

Right off our stoop is a nest of House Wrens. They've been growing louder and louder for the past two weeks and started poking their heads out a few days ago. I've been hoping to get photos and today they obliged.

The parent wrens, who must be absolutely exhausted by now, are attempting to lure the baby wrens out of the house by moving farther and farther away while holding food.

The baby wrens beg and beg until the parent wren capitulates and comes to the perch to feed them.

Hopefully I'll be around when they fledge. Wishing you a wonderful baby bird season!

Not Your Usual Yard Birds

I always love migration. You just never know what's going to pop up in the yard. First, I should say that "yard" for us means roughly a half acre of grass, the rest is one acre of in-process prairie restoration and 3.5 acres of mixed hardwoods and pines. It makes for fabulous bird watching.

We had two visitors this week within 15 minutes of each other that had me running for my camera.

When I caught a glimpse of the first bird my initial thought was "Curve-billed Thrasher??? WHAT?" Trust me, there's a good explanation for why I'd pop a bird from the American Southwest into Minnesota. We've raised one in our Avian Nursery at WRC. Yep. It caught a ride on a trailer hitch for nearly 600 miles before the people found it. It's hopping a ride back to Arizona tomorrow so it's been on my mind lately. But that's a whole different story... the point of this is that the curved bill is what caught my attention through the apple tree:

Turns out it's a juvenile Yellow-billed Cuckoo. (not a Curve-billed Thrasher... go figure!)

The second cool bird was this Blue-headed Vireo:

From a front view you can get a better look at its signature "spectacles:"

While Blue-headed Vireos nest up north in the Arrowhead region of Minnesota, the Yellow-billed Cuckoos nest in my area. But I've never seen one in our yard before.

You can tell it's a juvenile by its bright yellow orbital ring. The ring will begin greying next spring. Here's a closer look at its eye:

Note the cuckoo is actually panting. We've had an extremely hot run of weather and are in the middle of drought. Both birds came down to bird baths that we have in our yard. Water is an equally important draw as bird feeders. Without water I probably never would've had these birds come so close to the house.

While the cuckoo has a long migration ahead of it (all the way down to South America) the vireo will actually stay in North and Central America for the winter.

Both birds glean insects from tree branches. A great reason to keep a pesticide-free habitat!


Check out other neat migration birds and photos from all over the world via Wild Bird Wednesday.

A Curious, and Hungry, Chestnut-sided Warbler

Our spring in Minnesota has been brutal for insectivores. Dozens of Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows have been found dead in nestboxes, having starved (or frozen?) to death during our cold, wet spring. Phoebes, which showed up more than a month ago, have been completely absent since our late snows and freezing temps. It's hard to survive when your primary food source isn't available.

In the last two weeks there have been days on end of "warbler fallouts" where they're basically littering the ground, searching for any morsel to eat. And any hint of sunshine brings the warblers out in full force, hunting for any bugs they can find. While it makes for great birding, it's sad to know that it's because they're struggling to survive.

On Sunday, we had this very curious Chestnut-sided Warbler follow us through the gardens. Can you ask for a more beautiful bird to stalk you? I think not.

He started flitting down to us as we were poking around in the wood chips searching for signs of emerging ferns and lupines. I imagine we were uncovering tasty morsels for him.

From there, he followed us to our "East Garden." As Dean looked over the plants that have emerged in that bed, the warbler flitted down right next to his feet and hopped from the garden up to a rock and back down again. It was amazing to have this gorgeous bird so close for so long.

It's been here for several days now, enjoying suet with the dozens of Yellow-rumpeds. As a special treat I picked up 1,000 mealworms on Monday for everyone. They were gone in a matter of hours much to the delight of the birds (and me who enjoyed watching them eagerly slurp them down like spaghetti noodles).

I included this photo because it shows the beautiful markings on the Chestnut-sided's back. I never realized how much yellow they have on their backs until this weekend:

After all our cold weather (there was frost on Sunday night) we hit a whopping 96 degrees today. Many of the warblers in our yard took advantage of the warm weather and moved on. I didn't see the Chestnut-sided at all today and there are only a couple dozen Yellow-rumpeds still hanging around.

Can't wait to see what the warm weather and high winds blows in overnight! Stay tuned...


Posted in conjunction with other bird aficionados through Wild Bird Wednesday. Be sure to check them all out!

Juvenile E. Kingbird Hovering

Eastern Kingbirds catch their food on the wing and often hover while chasing prey and to glean bugs. Last August, this juvenile kingbird was doing a fairly good job of capturing insects. It would hover, dip into the tall grass, soar around, hover and dip back down into the grass. After watching it for awhile I think it was doing a combination of scaring up bugs to catch, by going into the grass, as well as gleaning bugs off the vegetation.

Eastern Kingbirds

The Eastern Kingbird family down the road from my house has been a gracious subject on which to experiment with my new camera lens.

One of my favorite birds, kingbirds are gregarious and tolerant of humans. They often sit on fences along rural roadsides, easily spotted as the large dark birds with a white tail edging. Well, comparatively large when looking at other songbirds found in prairie areas.

Here in Afton, we have the Eastern Kingbird, although from time to time a grey and yellow Western Kingbird shows up at the state park.

Why are they called kingbirds? They have a crown that they lift when threatened! I've never seen one, but according to Cornell's Lab of Ornithology they're yellow or orange or red. Must be amazing to see.

While they're with us here in the States, they're insectivores, raising their young on a sole diet of insects. Then, as summer heads into fall and they gear up for their long migration, they begin consuming fruit. Once they've migrated to South America though they consume a diet mainly of fruit.

I love how fluffy these juvenile kingbirds look. They'll become much darker, nearly black, as adults. The low evening sun added to the soft, rosy glow:

note: I thought I had something on my lens when I first saw this image and couldn't figure out why it was just on this series. Turns out those weird-looking gray splotches on the bottom of the photo are what sprays of grass seed look like (the green ones, not the yellow spikes) when they get between you and your subject!