Western Kingbird

Posted on March 6, 2025 by tspuckler

While visiting the Las Vegas Area, I came across bird from time to time. An eye-catching creature with ashy gray and lemon-yellow plumage, the Western Kingbird is a familiar summertime sight in open habitats across western North America. Characteristic of kingbird species, the Western Kingbird is very territorial.

These are fairly large members of the Flycatcher Family, with large heads and broad shoulders. They have heavy, straight bills, long wings, and a medium-length, square-tipped tail. Often found perched upright on fences and utility lines, they snag insects from the air or fly out to pick invertebrate prey off the ground.

The name “kingbird” is derived from their “take-charge” behavior. These birds aggressively defend their home turf, even against much larger birds such as hawks.

They will attack humans, livestock, and pets when they think their young are in danger. The males warn off intruders with harsh buzzes or whirring wings. Both sexes snap their bills and raise their red crowns (normally hidden) when provoked.

Western Kingbirds live in open habitats, where they perch on utility lines, fences, and trees. They prefer valleys and lowlands, including grasslands, deserts, sagebrush, agricultural fields, and open woodlands. The Western Kingbird was originally known as the Arkansas Kingbird, but scientists changed its name to acknowledge its wide range.

Occupying the western half of the United States, this bird’s breeding range has been spreading for the last century as an unplanned result of human activities.

By planting trees and installing utility poles in open areas, people have provided hunting perches and nest sites, and by clearing forests they have created open habitats suitable for foraging.

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Barred Owl

Posted on January 31, 2025 by tspuckler

This fine bird has been hanging out on the same tree for the past few Winters at Big Creek Reservation in northeast Ohio. Its call, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you-all?” is a classic sound of old forests and swamps. But it can also pass by completely unnoticed as it flies noiselessly through dense canopies or snoozes on tree limbs. Originally a bird of the east, it has spread through the Pacific Northwest and southward into California.

Barred Owls are brown to gray overall, with dark striping on the underside. Their eyes are a dark brown color and may appear intensely black in the field and, although large, they are fairly closely set. This is one of the larger species of owls. Adults measure anywhere from 16 to 25 inches in length, with a wingspan ranging from 38 to 49 inches. Barred Owls don’t migrate, and they don’t even move around very much. In one study of 158 birds that were banded and then found later, none had moved farther than 6 miles away.

Their diet consists mainly of small mammals, but this species is an opportunistic predator and is known to prey upon other small vertebrates such as birds, reptiles, and amphibians, as well as a variety of invertebrates. On the flip side, the Great Horned Owl is the most serious predatory threat to the Barred Owl. Although the two species often live in the same areas, a Barred Owl will move to another part of its territory when a Great Horned Owl is nearby.

This bird tends to raise a relatively small brood often in a tree hollow or snag. Egg laying typically begins in March and runs throughout April. The female alone incubates the eggs, doing so for about 28 days, while the male gathers food for her. Fledging occurs at about 36–39 days. Young Barred Owls can climb trees by grasping the bark with their bill and talons, flapping their wings, and walking their way up the trunk.

In always enjoy hearing this bird’s call. It is adaptable and can sometimes be heard in suburban neighborhoods. The oldest recorded Barred Owl was at least 26-1/2 years old. It was banded in North Carolina in 1993, and caught due to an injury in 2019.

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Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Posted on September 20, 2024 by tspuckler

We often get these fine birds at our feeders and flowers. In some cases they will fight over their food supply and in others, a bird may perch nearby and chase away any incoming hummingbirds while emitting mouse-like, twittering squeaks. An aerial acrobat, hummingbirds beat their wings so rapidly they can fly forward, backward, and even hover in place.

The Ruby-throated Hummingbird is mainly seen in my home state of Ohio during the warmer months of the year. It generally spends the Winter in Central America, Mexico, and Florida, and migrates to Canada and other parts of Eastern North America in the Summer to breed. It is the most common hummingbird in eastern North America.

Adult males have an iridescent ruby red throat patch; the iridescence is highly directional and appears dull black from many angles. Hummingbird legs are short with no knees, so they can only shuffle to move along a branch. These birds have one of the highest metabolic rates of any animal, with heart rates up to 1260 beats per minute, breathing rate of about 250 breaths per minute even while at rest.

Weighing less than a nickel, it is a master of flight. Beating its wings 60 to 80 times a second, this tiny sprite creates a blur of motion and a whirring, insect-like sound. They expend a great deal of energy during flight, so they need to feed almost constantly, each day consuming up to half their weight in sugar. This bird uses its long, needlelike bill to eat flower nectar, preferring red or orange tubular flowers such as Trumpet Creeper, Cardinal Flower, Spotted Jewelweed, and Beebalm. It also eats insects and occasionally drinks tree sap.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are solitary. Adults of this species are not social, other than during courtship (which lasts a few minutes). As in all hummingbird species, the female Ruby-throat provides all the care for the young, which quickly outgrow their little nest and fledge after two to three weeks.

This creature prefers habitats where there are a lot of flowers, such as fields, parks, backyards, and open clearings in forests. We enjoy and look forward to there Summertime visits each year.

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Black-headed Grosbeak

Posted on March 8, 2024 by tspuckler

While hiking on Mount Charleston, Nevada (near Las Vegas), I spotted a bird which I have never seen before. In western North America the sweet song of the Black-headed Grosbeak caroling down from the treetops sounds like a tipsy American Robin welcoming Spring. The flashy black, white, and cinnamon males and the less flamboyant females sing from perches in desert thickets, mountain forests, and suburbs.

This bird eats pine and other seeds, berries, insects, spiders and fruit. During the Summer, it mostly eats spiders and insects, switching to seeds and berries in the Fall and Winter. At feeders they effortlessly shuck sunflower seeds with their heavy bills.

The Black-headed Grosbeak is one of the few birds, along with the Black-backed Oriole, that can safely eat the poisonous Monarch Butterfly. This species consumes many Monarchs, perhaps over one million per year in the overwintering colonies in Mexico. They eat them in roughly 8-day cycles, apparently to give themselves time to eliminate the butterfly’s toxins.

This bird prefers to live in deciduous and mixed wooded areas. It likes to be in areas with large trees and thick bushes, such as patches of broadleaved trees and shrubs within conifer forests, including streamside corridors, river bottoms and suburban areas.

The Black-headed Grosbeak’s scientific name is well-suited. Its species name, melanocephalus, means “black-headed.” And its genus name, Pheucticus, refers either to the Greek pheuticus for “shy” or phycticus meaning “painted with cosmetics,” fitting for a showy bird that forages in dense foliage.

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House Wren

Posted on August 11, 2023 by tspuckler

We’ve had at least one of these birds visiting last year and again this year. I put up a birdhouse specifically for it. The male sits on or near the birdhouse, puts twigs in it and frequently calls in efforts to attract a female. A familiar backyard bird, the House Wren was named long ago for its tendency to nest around human homes or in birdhouses.

The House Wren has one of the largest ranges of any songbird in the New World. It breeds from Canada through the West Indies and Central America, and southward to the southernmost point of South America.

Very active and inquisitive, bouncing about with its short tail held up in the air, pausing to sing a rich song, the House Wren adds a lively spark to gardens and city parks despite its lack of bright colors. These birds feed on a wide variety of insects, including beetles, true bugs, grasshoppers, crickets, caterpillars, moths, flies, and many others. They also eat spiders, millipedes, and snails.

House Wrens nest inside tree holes and nest boxes. As the season progresses their nests can become infested with mites and other parasites that feed on the wren nestlings. Perhaps to fight this problem, wrens often add spider egg sacs into the materials they build their nests from. In lab studies, once the spiders hatched, they helped the birds by devouring the nest parasites.

Weighing less than two quarters, House Wrens are feisty and pugnacious animals, considering their tiny size. They are known to occasionally destroy the eggs of other birds nesting in their territory by puncturing their eggshells.

House Wrens range far and wide, spending summers over a large part of the United States and wintering anywhere from Florida to the southern tip of South America. Only a few stay here in cold months, as they are replaced by the aptly named Winter Wren visiting from the mountains.

The House Wren is a plain looking songbird, but its bubbling songs, nonstop activity and willingness to live near people make a pleasure to observe.

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Purple Martin

Posted on July 7, 2023 by tspuckler

I was able to observe several of these remarkable birds while visiting Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in northwest Ohio. They are the largest swallow in North America. Despite their name, Purple Martins are not truly purple. The dark blackish-blue feathers have an iridescent sheen caused by light refraction, giving them a bright blue to navy blue or deep purple appearance. Females are not as shiny with some gray on the head and chest.

Purple Martins are considered synanthropic, meaning they have developed an association with humans over time and benefit from living in close proximity to them. Native Americans hung up empty gourds for these birds before Europeans arrived in North America. Purple Martins in eastern North America now nest almost exclusively in birdhouses, but those in the West use mostly natural cavities.

This birds is insectivores, primarily feed by hawking, a strategy of catching insects in the air during flight. A colony of these birds may catch and eat several hundred beetles, horseflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies, and wasps each day. Purple Martins not only get all their food in flight, they also get all their water that way too. They skim the surface of a pond and scoop up water with their lower bill.

Purple Martins suffered a severe population crash in the 20th century widely linked to the release and spread of European Starlings in North America. European Starlings and House Sparrows compete with these birds for nest cavities. Where Purple Martins once gathered in the thousands, by the 1980s they had all but disappeared. The Purple Martin Conservation Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of Purple Martins.

These birds are long-distance migrants, wintering in the Amazon Basin along waterways and wetlands. Graceful in flight, musical in its pre-dawn singing, the Purple Martin is one of our most popular, well-liked birds.

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California Quail

Posted on April 28, 2023 by tspuckler

I often see this cool bird while out and about looking for reptiles in California.

The California Quail is a small ground-dwelling bird with a curving crest or plume, made of six feathers, that droops forward; the plume is larger in males than in females. It is a handsome, soccer ball-sized bird with a rich gray breast and intricately scaled underparts.

Its stiffly accented “Chi-ca-go” call is a common sound of brushy areas of California and the Northwest. They are often seen strutting across clearings, nodding their heads at each step. If disturbed, they may burst into fast low flight on whirring wings.

This is a highly sociable bird that often gathers in small flocks known as “coveys.” One of their daily communal activities is a dust bath. A group of quail will select an area where the ground has been newly turned or is soft, and using their underbellies, will burrow downward into the soil one to two inches.

They then wriggle about in the indentations they have created, flapping their wings and ruffling their feathers, causing dust to rise in the air. They seem to prefer sunny places in which to create these dust baths. I’ve witnessed this activity while on Mount Hamilton.

Thsi bird’s main habitats are broken chaparral, woodland edges, coastal scrub, parks and farms. As an adaptation to living in arid environments, California Quails can often get by without water, acquiring their moisture from insects and succulent vegetation. During periods of sustained heat they must find drinking water to survive.

California Quail nests can contain as many as 28 eggs. These large clutches may be the result of females laying eggs in nests other than their own, a behavior known as “egg-dumping.” The chicks leave the nest shortly after birth. They make their first attempts at flight when they are about 10 days old and stay on the ground for about a month before roosting in trees with the rest of the flock.

The California Quail is the state bird of California.

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Black-throated Sparrow

Posted on February 17, 2023 by tspuckler

It seemed that wherever I went in the Mojave Desert, these sharp looking birds were present. Part of what made them easy to notice is that they tend to travel in small groups; their frequent high, bell-like calls made me aware of their presence.

Found throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico in arid upland habitats, the Black-throated Sparrow breeds as far north as Washington State. It prefers a habitat of desert hillsides and scrub, canyons and washes – but it is quite adaptable.

Its striking face pattern of neat gray bordered by two strong white stripes and a black triangular throat patch make it easy to identify. Juveniles lack the adult’s black throat and have faint streaking above and below. I have often observed them hopping on the ground, pecking for seeds and insects and making short, low flights between shrubs.

They have the habit of perching in trees and shrubs while giving quiet calls. The Black-throated Sparrow establishes and defends a large territory during nest construction and egg laying season, though once incubation begins, their territory size shrinks and males becomes less responsive to intruders.

The oldest recorded Black-throated Sparrow was a female that was least 6 years old when she was recaptured and re-released during banding operations in Arizona. This is a handsome bird that adds its good looks and interesting song to the desert landscape of the American southwest.

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Red-breasted Nuthatch

Posted on January 13, 2023 by tspuckler

This is a sharp looking little bird that I occasionally see while visiting Brecksville Reservation; it also sometimes attends our birdfeeders. Around here it is not as common as the White-breasted Nuthatch.

The Red-breasted Nuthatch is a blue-gray bird with a strongly patterned head. It has a black cap and stripe through the eye broken up by a white stripe over the eye. The underparts are rich rusty-cinnamon in color and more pale in females than in males.

This bird lives mainly in coniferous forests of Spruce, Fir, Pine, Hemlock, Larch and Western Red Cedar. It has a nationwide distribution that extends well into Canada. Eastern populations use more deciduous woods, including Aspen, Birch, Poplar, Oak, Maple and Basswood.

Like all nuthatches, the Red-breasted Nuthatch is an acrobatic species, hitching itself up and down tree trunks and branches to look for food. It goes headfirst when climbing down. It can “walk” on the underside of branches.

Its diet changes depending on the season. In the Summer, it eats mostly insects, occasionally even flycatching, while in the Winter, it switches to conifer seeds. At feeders it will take sunflower seeds, peanut butter and suet.

The Red-breasted Nuthatch often wedges food pieces in bark crevices in order to break them up with the bill (as opposed to holding the food in their feet, like the Black-capped Chickadee does).

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American Crow

Posted on August 5, 2022 by tspuckler

This is a bird that we’ve been seeing with increasing frequency in our neighborhood. On trash day they are often waiting to tear open trash bags left by the street in search of food.

This is a sign of the bird’s intelligence. Neighborhoods provide a food source now only from garbage, but roadkills and lawns with worms and grubs are also food sources for this omnivorous bird.

They are common sights in treetops, fields, and roadsides and in habitats ranging from open woods and empty beaches to town centers.

The American Crow’s flight style is unique – a patient, methodical flapping that is rarely broken up with glides. These birds congregate in large numbers (of a few hundred up to two million) in Winter to sleep in communal roosts.

Found throughout the United States, this is probably our most easily recognized bird. From beak to tail, an American crow measures 16–20 inches, almost half of which is tail.

Crows have been noted for their brain power. Researchers have found that crows are not only playful and mischievous, but also smart. They use tools to solve complex problems and have the same brain-weight-to-body ratio as humans.

Flocks of crows are called “murders.” They typically make a loud “caw-caw” noise, particularly when disturbed or alarmed, but they are skilled mimics and can make vocalizations that sound like laughing, crying or a dog whining.

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Category Archives: Birds

Western Kingbird

Barred Owl

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Black-headed Grosbeak

House Wren

Purple Martin

California Quail

Black-throated Sparrow

Red-breasted Nuthatch

American Crow