Breeding Bird Habitats

This month’s entries in Seasonal Guide to the Natural Year were entirely devoted to breeding bird habitats, except for an afterthought section that can accurately be summarized as “well, I guess there’s other stuff in nature besides birds.” Incongruously, my birding really dropped off this month. I was busy early in June, and as my schedule cleared out so did many of the spring migratory birds. Much of this month’s outdoor time was dedicated to my butterfly garden and other landscaping projects.

All of that said, I did get around to a good sturdy birding trip this past weekend. The beauty of “breeding bird habitats” as a topic to explore is that it is equivalent to “outside somewhere” in this area. There are wrens nesting on my house, starlings nesting on my neighbor’s downspout, sparrows nesting on my office, etc. So, instead of following one of the specific locations outlined in the book I chose my own adventure and headed to a popular MoCo birding spot I hadn’t yet visited: the Blue Mash Nature Trail.

Before I go on, a quick aside about that name. Apparently it comes from a local pronunciation of “Marsh” which drops the ‘r. What is this, Boston? Anyway, it turns out that this is a pretty cool place. It’s a nature trail outside of a former landill (which is still private property). I don’t know that I would choose to eat anything foraged along the trail, but it was quite stunning to witness nature’s reclamation of the area.’

I did collect a pretty good checklist of birds on this hike, including two birding milestones. I added four new species to my year and life lists. The second, the field sparrow (Spizella pusilla) was the 200th entry on my life list. This was appropriate – field sparrow seemed to be a top 5 miss for me month after month. My simple mind is always gratified when nice round numbers line up with something significant in some other way. Speaking of which, the final bird of the day, an acadian flycatcher (Empidonax virescens) was my 150th for 2017. It was also the most common June bird for this area I hadn’t nabbed yet. That honor now belongs to the yellow-billed cuckoo. Other notables for the day included a scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea), a prairie warbler (Setophaga discolor), and several blue grosbeaks (Passerina caerulea). Unfortunately I only heard the tanager, but the distinctive call left me quite confident in the ID. The blue grosbeak is rapidly becoming my favorite bird, I think. They are so stunning and the fleeting glimpses so rewarding. All in all I was able to ID dozens of birds representing 33 species, with at least as many more individuals I was unable to pin down.

Alas, I am sans photos of the birds from my trip. This seems fitting, because for me this time of year it’s everything else that’s happening in the breeding bird habitats – the reasons the birds have chosen to breed there – that is really fantastic. Trees are in full foliage. Wildflowers are in bloom and insects are in flight. Reptiles and amphibians are active. Below are photos of just a few of these encountered on my hike. click on the thumbnails to expand (if you want – don’t let me tell you what to do!)

milkweed with some bugs

close-up of red milkweed beetles

sassafras

a small oak

tiny caterpillar on black-eyed susan

common wood nymph

some kind of plant bug

painted turtle

Aside from the Blue Mash hike and the few other birding walks I’ve managed to squeeze in this month I’ve been experiencing birds in their breeding habitats just about every day. They visit my feeders, pick bugs out of my butterfly garden and worms out of my lawn, and splash in my birdbath. Their songs are everywhere. Maybe the birds really are the exciting thing about June after all.

Prior Months of Nature

January – Bald Eagles
February – Winter Beaches
March – Tundra Swans
April – Early Spring Wildflowers
May – Breeding Horseshoe Crabs