Eastern Forktail

On 7 May, I encountered this damselfly on a path along the Minnesota River Valley National Wildlife Refuge’s Bass Ponds. In the field, I identified it as an Eastern Forktail, one of the most abundant forktails in most of its range. Back home, I was less sure.  With its chestnut thoracic stripe and pale, emerald tail, I could not find anything quite like it in my guides. My ode guru, Scott King, confirmed my initial identification—this young female is acquiring the blue pruinosity of an adult. I have posted an entry showing photos of both young and old individuals.

Damselflies sure can be frustrating to identify. You can have males, young females, old females, and andromorphs—females that look like males. How is a fellow supposed to remember all that?

Long-billed Curlew

In Rockport, Texas, last March, a lone Long-billed Curlew bathed among the Laughing Gulls (see last post). When bathing, this large shorebird lowers itself into the water until the breast is wet. Then it dips head into the water and quivers its wings, like in the upper photo. Then the bird stands, shakes, and preens, like in the lower photo (Dugger and Dugger 2002).

Laughing Gull

After leaving Dallas, Erika and I spent two days in Rockport, Texas—a favorite destination because of easy access to birds. Thousands of Laughing Gulls breed in the Rockport City Park. Whooping Cranes can be seen at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and usually at locations even nearer to Rockport. And, as this was as far south as we intended to travel this year in Texas, who knows? Perhaps we would encounter our first living dragonflies of the year. (You may recall the dead one in the grackle’s mouth reported in a recent posting).

I have posted photos of these gulls from a previous trip. Conditions were much wetter this year—heavy rain fell during our first night, and we saw many bathing birds. Laughing Gulls bathe often, in both fresh and salt water. For up to 20 minutes, the gull dips its head under water, and then raises the head quickly to pour water over its back. The gull flops its wings, like the one in my photo, while dunking its head in and out of the water. Afterwards it preens, often up to another 20 minutes (Burger 1996). 

Red-headed Woodpecker

Erika and I usually find Red-headed Woodpeckers at the Nerstrand Big Woods State Park, as we did last Tuesday. Numbers, however, vary from year to year, and we do not list this species on every visit. Populations are apparently dependent on the abundance of the local acorn crop, which also varies annually. The woodpeckers collect and store acorns during the fall.

Birders have long been aware of Red-headed Woodpecker population fluctuations. The destruction of American Beech forests and the disappearance of the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper (upon which the woodpeckers fed in the Midwest), both events nearly brought Red-headed Woodpeckers to extinction.  Populations rebounded, however, with the extinction of the American Chestnut and the dead trees left by Dutch Elm Disease—both plagues leaving plenty of dead trees in which the woodpecker could breed. As these tree carcasses are cleaned out, woodpecker populations are again falling. A tendency to be hit by cars and unsuccessful competition for nest sites with starlings have not aided woodpecker recovery (Frei et al 2015). In many states and provinces, Red-headed Woodpeckers are listed as Threatened Species; Eckert considers these woodpeckers to be uncommon in Minnesota.

Great-tailed Grackle

Judging from the account by Johnson and Peer (2001), Great-tailed Grackles are opportunistic feeders. They consume a wide variety of arthropods, grain, and even snakes, lizards, frogs, and rodents. Not mentioned are dragonflies, which I am fairly certain is what the female grackle in my photograph is consuming! Imagine my frustration last March, after three days of searching for odonates near Dallas, to find my first Texas dragonfly, species unidentified and grackle bait. 

You may notice that many of the photographs from our trip are in portrait, rather than landscape, format. This formatting is what BirdsEye requests for their collection of bird photos. I was happy to oblige, although sometimes if I encountered a rare bird or dragonfly, I found it hard to remember which way to hold my camera.

Cooper’s Hawk

As I have written previously, Cooper’s Hawks are recovering raptors. Because of people shooting them and due to pesticide contamination, these birds’ numbers declined during the 1900s. Many populations have now recovered, and they are found in forestland and even in urban forested areas. Cooper’s Hawks consume medium-sized birds and mammals (Curtis et al. 2006).

This raptor was described in 1826 by Charles Bonaparte and named for William Coopers, a New York ornithologist. Cooper was the father of James Cooper, after whom the Cooper Ornithological Society is named.

We banded this male Cooper’s Hawk on 27 April. Ominously, in mid-April 2015, amidst an outbreak of avian flu among domestic turkey and chicken flocks, the first wild bird in Minnesota confirmed to carry the disease was a Cooper’s Hawk. Hopefully warmer weather will cause the flu to decline and won’t greatly adversely affect our wild birds.

Killdeer

Last Saturday, Erika and I visited a plant nursery in nearby Carver County. The large, dirt parking lot was a madhouse of frenzied gardeners. As we searched for a spot to park, I noticed a Killdeer running along the shoulder of the lot, and giving a classic Killdeer broken wing act. While Erika explored the nursery, I returned to the investigate the bird.

I quickly discovered the Killdeer brooding four eggs (the typical number for this species). The nest, called a scrape (since there is not much to it), was only a couple of feet from the parked cars. The Killdeer showed no fear, and even threatened me if I got too close. Both male and female Killdeer build their scape and often build more than one, much in the fashion of House Wrens that build dummy nests.  Both Killdeer sexes incubate the eggs.

Initially the scrape is a bare depression in the ground. As the season progresses, however, Killdeer  add “rocks, bits of shell, weed stems, or other material” (Jackson and Jackson 2000). These authors report that the birds often collect white objects (shells, crayfish parts, cigarette filters, gravel, plastic, plaster) or build their scrape on white ground. One nest even contained bits of human bones. Apparently the Killdeer try to create a mottled background so that their eggs are better camouflaged. By the end of incubation, the amount of white material can be substantial—nests with over 1500 pebbles have been reported, and the scrape is sometimes raised two or three centimeters (Jackson and Jackson 2000).

Turkey Vulture

While we were near Dallas, we visited Lewisville Lake. A couple of Turkey Vultures fed on the shore. I thought one had an extraordinary collar, but it was not until I worked on the photo that I realized this was actually a radio transmitter. Notice the arial running down the vulture’s back.

A quick and cursory Internet search resulted in finding a vulture-radio-tagging program by the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. I have no guarantee that this vulture is one of theirs. But, nevertheless, two still-living vultures banded in Saskatchewan, Canada, migrated over the Dallas area on their way to southern Central America and Venezuela. Both migrations skirted the Gulf of Mexico, and cruised along the Mexican coast through eastern Texas. Perhaps this bird is a Canadian returning home.

Broad-winged Hawk

John Holden and I discovered this small hawk in Rice County last Wednesday. The bird is perched on one leg. The odd-looking, yellow projection sticking out of the hawk’s belly is part of the bird’s right leg. I don’t think the leg is broken. Rather what you see is one of the toes, with the claw either missing or folded back in under the belly feathers.  Hawks and other birds often perch on one foot. See, for example, a photo of a Red-tailed Hawk that I posted in 2011. I am planning a future post on this behavior in the near future.

Broad-winged Hawks are common, albeit secretive, breeders across southeastern Canada and most of the eastern United States. They are, however, often abundant during migration, when flocks of hundreds can be seen as they make their way north in the spring or south in the fall. They winter from southern Mexico south into northern South America, even as far as Peru and Bolivia. Curiously a few also winter in southern-most Florida.

Brown-headed Cowbird

Brown-headed Cowbirds are brood parasites—they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. At one time, cowbirds were only found in short-grass prairies. They followed buffalo and ate insects kicked up by the mammals.

With Western conquest of North America, forests were felled and forest and prairie were converted to farming and suburbia. Cowbirds moved into these areas, where they parasitized new species unadapted to coping with cowbird eggs in their nests. Many of these new host populations have declined as a result. Cowbirds can lay up to 40 eggs in a single season (Lowther 1993).

Erika and I photographed this male cowbird in a Dallas, Texas, suburb during our travels last March.