Swainson's Hawk

On Saturday, 11 August 2012, Gene Bauer and I birded at Circle Lake in Rice County, Minnesota. We were delighted to find a Swainson's Hawk circling above the east shore of the lake. The raptor then flew off towards the north. I took the top photo that clearly shows the proper field marks for an adult Swainson's Hawk: dark chest, black flight feathers, and a somewhat pointed wing silhouette.

The second photo is of a bird found in eastern South Dakota several years ago. This bird breeds primarily in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. In summer they are occasionally found along the western and southern borders of Minnesota. Swainson's Hawks are prairie birds. When breeding, although feeding their young rodents, rabbits, and reptiles, this hawk consumes almost only grasshoppers! Perhaps not coincidentally, after breeding, flocks of Swainson's Hawks begin a 10,000-kilometer migration to the Argentine pampas. Each fall, nearly a half-million individual hawks have been counted as they migrate over Mexico and Central America. Swainson's Hawk populations are declining. Radio tagging studies suggest that this decline is due to collateral pesticide poisoning in Argentina (Bechard et al. 2010).

I took this last photo near Aberdeen, South Dakota. This Swainson's Hawk is carrying a Tiger Salamander. None of my sources mentions amphibians in the lists of this hawk's prey items. Swainson's Hawks, despite their fondness for grasshoppers, must be opportunists when it comes to what they eat.

Bicolored Blackbird

While at the Monarch Grove near Pismo Beach last March, Erika and I noted that the local Red-winged Blackbirds lacked yellow under their red epaulets. These birds are a distinct race of the Red-winged Blackbird found in the Central Valley of California. They are called Bicolored Blackbirds, Agelaius phoeniceus californicus. According to Yasukawa and Searcy (1965), the loss of the yellow color in the Red-winged Blackbird may be a species-isolating mechanism to keep this race from interbreeding with the Tricolored Blackbird, which also occurs in the region.

I have long wondered about the derivation of the Red-winged Blackbird's species name, phoeniceus. Grusonwrites that the word comes from the Latin for deep red, in turn originating from the Greek for Phoenician. Apparently the Phoenicians introduced the color to Greece. Gruson continues, "the...root of the word is 'to slay,' and thus create the blood-red color."

Sachem Skipper

Grass skippers are told by the way they usually hold their wings--the forewings up and the hind wings further down. This "jet plane position" is unique to the group (Kaufman).

Species identification is more problematic. Bugguide says success depends upon your being a wizard!  Nonetheless, identification here in Minnesota is not too difficult. These photos, taken in Erika's garden in early August 2012, are Sachems. The male's black stigma visible as a black splotch on the top of the upper wing in the second photo is diagnostic among Minnesota grass skippers. Wisconsinbutterflies says that the male Sachem is unmistakable. 

Females, like that in the third photo, are dusky below, not as bright as other species. A diagnostic field mark is that black square on the lower part of the underside of the hind wing. You can see that mark in the photograph.

Sachems are found in most of the United States and Mexico. The species does not breed in the far north, but spread north, even into southern Canada, during warm summers. They do not survive most Minnesota winters, thus, every year, they have to repopulate our area. They are common in gardens, parks, lawns and roadsides, in fact in almost any open area. Adults flit about, males often chasing females, and feeding on fall flowers; the larvae feed on grasses.

Sachem is an Algonquin word for leader. Sachems, unlike chiefs, were hereditary and ruled by consensus. New York City's Tammany Hall called its local leaders Sachems. Sachem came to mean a boss (Cirrusimage.com).

Cooper's Hawk vs. Goshawk

During a recent stroll in the Carleton College Arboretum, Erika and I spied the Cooper's Hawk in the upper photo. The yellow eye and striped underparts indicate the bird is juvenal. Adults have orange eyes and underparts with reddish bars. Our hawk was really large, clearly not the much smaller Sharp-shinned Hawk. Females of both hawks are larger than their males, but there is no overlap in size between species. The breast stripes are not course. Finally, note that the outer tail feathers are clearly shorter than the middle ones. Sharp-shinned Hawks' tails are relatively square-ended.

What about a Goshawk? The photo below was taken in a residential yard in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It is also a juvenal--note the yellow eye. Goshawks are larger than Cooper's Hawks, though it is hard to tell that in two photos. The Goshawk's tail bars are very uneven--note the relatively thin the dark bars--and compare them to the more evenly spaced tail bars on the Cooper's Hawk. The best field mark for a Goshawk is the white eye stripe. The stripe on a Cooper's Hawk is buffy at best. Finally, though hard to see in these photos, the Goshawk's underparts are more buffy than those of a Cooper's Hawk.

Townsend's Warbler

Near Carlsbad we drove over to Pismo Beach where we hoped to see over 23,000 Monarch Butterflies in a tree grove at the edge of town. Unfortunately, the butterfly season is from late October to February (monarchbutterfly. org). We were there in late March, and not a single Monarch was to be seen. On the other hand, we missed the 60,000 visitors who flock the the grove in season.

We were rewarded, however, with several interesting birds. Townsend's Warblers breed in northwestern North America and winter along the Pacific Coast of the United States and in Mexico and Central America. In California, this warbler probably gleans insects from foliage and frequents bird feeders offering a variety of food items (including cheese, marshmallows, and peanut butter). Further south this bird "exploits honeydew excreted by sap-sucking insects" (Wright et al. 1998). These scale insects are often injured as the warbler feeds on the sap at the tip of insects' anal tube.

Band-winged Meadowhawk

When I photographed this Band-winged Meadowhawk during my recent Saffron-winged Meadowhawk search, I thought I captured parasitic larval water mites. These aquatic arachnids have a fascinating life cycle. The larva attach to a variety of hosts, including dragonflies, and are thereby able to disperse from pond to pond. But--what a disappointment--I appear to have captured dragonfly excrement. On the other hand, how many people have actually seen dragonfly excrement? You can say you saw it on this blog!

House Finch

Although most male House Finches are brick red, pale yellow and bright orange ones occasionally appear at local feeders. This yellow variant was at the The Flower Fields of Carlsbad, California, when Erika and I visited last March. Yellow color is the result of beta-carotene, while red is produced by echinenone. More yellow birds are noted in areas where natural foods are low in echinenone or when ornamental plants have high levels of beta-carotene (Project Feeder Watch).

Yellow-bellied Flycatcher

Yesterday, 3 August 2012, I banded my first fall migrant--this Yellow-bellied Flycatcher. I knew that this flycatcher is an early migrant--it breeds in close-by northeastern Minnesota--and is a common breeding bird across Canadian forests. Most migrate from mid-August through early September. I was surprised to read in Janssen (Birds in Minnesota) that the earliest migration dates in southern Minnesota are throughout July. One reason for this early migration is that Yellow-bellied Flycatchers have one of the shortest breeding seasons of any neotropical migrant in the North Woods--often less than 70 days (Gross and Lowther 2011). This flycatcher winters in Central America. See also my previous posts concerning this species (8 September 2011 and 24 August 2010).

Horned Lark

After reading about The Flower Fields of Carlsbad, California, Erika and I visited as we drove along the Coast Highway. Although we were somewhat disappointed to discover a monoculture of giant Ranunculus, we enjoyed our stop. I did manage to see a couple of interesting birds. The first were a few Horned Larks that allowed close approach.

In Europe and Asia, this species is found from the arctic to North Africa; in the Americas, it is found from the arctic through Mexico, with an outlying population in Columbia. Horned Larks are extremely variable across this huge range. Twenty-one subspecies have been described from the New World. (See how different a Minnesota bird's eye stripe color is compared to this California bird.) Color tends to match local soil color. Western races tend to be smaller and paler than northeastern ones. Migratory races have longer wings than sedentary subspecies. Desert birds tend to have longer legs than those from cooler areas. Where their ranges meet, most of these races interbreed. Perhaps signifying New and Old World races are separate species, Siberian and North American races overlap but do not interbreed in the Aleutians (Beason 1995).

Saffron-winged Meadowhawk

Over the past two years, I sent my Odonata expert Scott King numerous photos, always asking, "Is this a Saffron-winged Meadowhawk?" Scott invariably replied, "No" and explained why my photo was not a Saffron-wing.  If nothing else, I slowly assembled a search image for this dragonfly. Also, when Scott discovered a substantial emergence of this odonate, he e-mailed me the location at the Lake Byllesby Regional Park in nearby Dakota County (30 July 2012).

Despite a tremendous emergence of Band-tailed Meadowhawks (1000s), I photographed this pair of Saffron-winged Meadowhawks precisely to where Scott directed me.  Band and Saffron-winged Meadowhawks are really quite different. Saffrons (male above, female below) lack the wing bands of the Band-taied Meadowhawks. A good identifying mark is the gold leading edges to the wings, although this mark become less evident in older individuals and is somewhat dependent on the angle of the sun.

This species is widespread and usually fairly common across southern Canada south to the northern and central United States. They favor open wetlands where they usually remain fairly low in vegetation or flying low over water (Paulson).