Young Ospreys being raised in the metro area were banded recently. The work was done by personnel from Three Rivers Park District and others involved in the Twin Cities Osprey Project. Fifty nests were visited, the young birds removed briefly for banding, then returned to their nests. There are 61 known Osprey nests in the greater metropolitan area, those 50 active and occupied. All but one of the nests are on platforms erected for the birds. One pair chose to nest the old-fashioned way this year: they used a tree. Judy Voigt Englund, project coordinator, told me that it’s hoped that as our Osprey population grows more and more pairs will chose trees as nest sites. She said that the chicks raised this year in the tree nest hopefully would be more likely to choose a tree site when they mate and nest. The photos were taken at two nesting sites in western Hennepin County. Doing the climbing is Jim Mussel of the Tree Guys. The young birds are put into that box you see in the photo for the ride to the ground and back. They’re out of the nest for perhaps five minutes. While their chicks were out of the nest, the parent Ospreys flew over the work, calling loudly. They then returned to the job of seeing that each nestling gets the pound of fish it needs each day. Of the two nests we visited, one had three chicks, the other two. Both nests held one unhatched egg (see photo).    

A sure sign of the downside of summer, at least for birding, is the quiet you hear these days. Gone are most of the mating and territorial songs offered by our local nesting species. Courtship and mating are done, with the exception of a few species that nest second or even third times in a season. The House Wren in our backyard, for instance, is ready to go again, his song coming from our yard’s brushy edges on a daily basis. Eastern Bluebirds, too, are into second nestings in many instances. Other species are feeding young birds. Very soon some of them will begin meandering south, post-breeding migration not driven by the breeding imperative that governs spring. Those species that nested north of us will begin appearing in metro yards and parks.  I did find one lustily singing bird this past weekend, a Warbling Vireo that perched in some neighborhood willows and sang as if it was May. Here’s a photo of that bird.  

While working my breeding bird atlas territory this morning (Wednesday) I found this Great Egret along the shore of Lake Independence. It had just captured a sunfish large enough to fillet and fry. It maneuvered the fish in its bill for about five minutes, until the fish could be swallowed head first, dunked it once in the lake — perhaps to freshen its slipperiness — and then down it went. Progress of the fish down the bird’s long neck was easy to see, and almost painful to watch.   

A year ago I was birding in Churchill, Manitoba, listening to warblers sing, watching shorebirds court. This year six-foot snow drifts on the roads there make birding impossible. Much worse, the extremely late spring in northern Manitoba and across the eastern Arctic has made breeding impossible for many species of waterfowl, shorebirds, and songbirds. An entire class year has been lost for many species. An early return of non-breeders is predicted. You could be seeing birds returning south weeks ahead of schedule. To read about this go to a story on the Web site of the Winnipeg Free Press newspaper:

www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/big-chill-in-churchill-47992231.html

I’m finding dead Tree Swallows in the nest boxes I tend at a neighborhood golf course. I’ve got four dozen boxes, so the information I gathered by looking in six of them this afternoon isn’t necessarily definitive, but I think these cold wet days are the reason baby birds are dying. In one box were five birds near fledging size, all dead for at least two days. In a second box I found six birds perhaps a week old, not dead but barely moving when touched. Healthy birds would have been actively reacting to me as a deliverer of food. They’ll be dead by morning. Tree Swallows feed exclusively on insects they catch in the air. Cold, wet days aren’t good for that. There is one other interesting element to the swallow nests this year: they contain far more feathers than usual. You can easily distinguish a Tree Swallow nest from an Eastern Bluebird nest (both species use the boxes) by the presence of feathers in the swallow nests. Usually, there are two or three feathers, as you see in the first photo below, taken in 2005 (the nest was removed from the box for the photo). The second photo shows one of this year’s nests as seen in the box. It’s wrapped in feathers. Well-feathered nests stay warmer. Chicks in these nests grow faster and have lower frequency of parasites. None of that matters, though, if there is no food.

Here’s another breeding-bird mark for my Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas records. This Marsh Wren, busily adding cattail strands to its globe-like nest, conveniently is building about six feet off a paved road near Long Lake, west of Wayzata. This is in my atlas township quadrant. The male of this species begins construction of more than one nest, as House Wrens do. Should he find a mate, she chooses the actual nesting location, and the nest is finished, soft fibers used to line its inside. This bird spent a lot to time working inside the reed ball, so we might have the real thing here. I can only hope. The bird, more often nesting deep inside a cattail marsh, is making observation very easy.  

Binoculars make no permanent record of what you see through them, nor can you enlarge the image and examine it at leisure. Bless photography. This very cooperative Willow Flycatcher, seen Sunday in my Minnesota Breeding Bird Atlas block, was doing something I had never seen before, not that I noticed before pumping the image up with Photoshop. It was raising its crest, a sign of its displeasure with me in its space. It also was calling vigorously, so it goes into the record as a potential breeder.

The first Common Nighthawk I’ve seen this spring was sleeping on a willow-tree branch when I discovered it late last week. It could be a local nester; it could be a migrant. It breeds throughout North America with the exception of high-Arctic areas. Nighthawk might be its name, but it is most active at dawn and dusk. Spring migrants are most often seen alone. In the fall, the bird become gregarious, seen in flocks of dozens or hundreds from July into September as it moves south. Listen for its “peent” call above shopping-center parking lots this summer as it hawks insects attracted by lot lamps. It’s short bill opens to a gape to sweep insects out of the air.

A quartet of Caspian Terns has been feeding in a lake near our home for the past few days. I assume they’re migrants; a few nest as far south as Leech Lake, most in this part of the continent continuing north to Canada. Caspians, the largest of the world’s terns, found on all continents except Antarctica, plunge dive for the fish they eat. The birds I was watching usually began their dive from about 30 feet above the water. They go straight in, like rocks. They recover quickly, back on the wing in a couple of seconds. This bird came up with a large fish. It struggled to get altitude once airborne. Prey fish often are swallowed on the wing. I doubt if this one went down with one swallow. (Two photos.)

The female Hooded Merganser that nested in a box near our home was on the water this morning with 12 new chicks. The group functions as one organism: the chicks do NOT stray from mother’s side. One chick remains in the nest box. It was struggling this morning to break out of its shell, as much as 12 hours behind its siblings. We’ll check again in the morning to see if it made it.