Lazdigo Buntings

by Ned Bohman

 

We all know and love Lazuli Buntings, with their brilliant blue hue and sweet, warbler-y song.  When I hear my first Lazuli of the season, my first thought is almost always: “wait, what’s THAT warbler??” And then it hits me: of course, it’s a Laz!  But now, let’s introduce more confusion, a very close relative to our beloved Lazuli: the Indigo Bunting.  Not that this species is anything new, especially to those of us who have ever lived in the eastern United States - these guys can be THE most common songbird in some overgrown fields. They are continuing to expand their breeding range, westward and northward.  The species’ distribution during the breeding season roughly encompasses the entire eastern United States, north to very southern Canada and west to the Mississippi River, though they do hop over the river a bit, and there is a spur cutting from northeastern Nebraska southwest through Colorado; encompassing New Mexico, Arizona, southern Utah, and more recently southern Nevada. 

 

In search of the elusive Lazdigo Bunting ... Success!

Every year it seems I see more and more Indigo Buntings here, to the point where I no longer feel as confident identifying Buntings that I only hear singing and do not see.  I have now had this experience several times: I hear a Bunting song, the notes seem very paired, and relatively slow for a Laz. So naturally, I start thinking Indigo, and I spend up to an hour tracking these birds down ... and what do I find but a beautiful rosy-chested, white-wing-barred, brilliant-electric-blue-male Lazuli Bunting.  After accepting that some bunting songs just cannot be confidently identified without a visual, “unknown Bunting” has become a regular on my checklists.

 

 

courtesy of Don DesJardin

Both buntings prefer to breed in edge habitat; often in riparian areas, and prefer to nest low in shrubs.  They both eat seeds and fruits throughout the year with an increase in arthropod consumption during breeding season. They both forage from ground level up to 15 meters off the ground.  Both sing conspicuously from the tops of shrubs such as willows, and commonly produce 2 broods per season. Essentially these two species occupy very similar ecological niches and they coexist largely because they are separated by range.  There is only a small amount of overlap in both breeding and winter ranges of the species currently, but this seems to be changing. Where their breeding ranges do overlap, hybrids occur.  (Stay tuned for a future post on hybridization between these bunting species!)

This is one of the fun observations that result from birding the same locations time after time: there is always the opportunity to see and learn new things. Whether it is as simple as a new behavior for a species you are intimately familiar with, or spotting a rare vagrant during migration; whether you are confirming breeding of a secretive species, seeing a species for the first time, or seeing a new species at a particular location.  But it doesn’t just afford these opportunities to observe new things, it also allows you to track changes as they occur on the landscape over time … like our Indigo Buntings becoming more common in Nevada. I consider us lucky to be in a part of the world where both of these beautiful birds occur!

Spring has sprung!

Photo courtesy of Don DesJardin

Spring is here and now it finally feels like it! With the lingering wintery weather and crazy social conditions, it has hardly felt like it. But today it is 75 degrees and my resident Mockingbird is singing his little heart out. For now, I can forget about being cooped up at home, because my yard birds are so busy! I have been enjoying sitting outside listening to this Mockingbird’s mimicry. His song is easy to pick out because he doesn’t use any original phrases, every element of his song is taken from things he has heard in his surroundings, and he repeats these in phrases of 3, constantly changing and rotating between sounds.  It is fun to identify what he is mimicking, and then to use these clues to try to decipher the places he has been and who he has been hanging out with. He has been singing a lot of different Ruby-crowned Kinglet song phrases, plenty of California Scrub-Jay screams, and lately he has been adding phrases that I can only interpret as car alarms! I watch him as he sings from atop the ornamental Trees-of-Heaven in my backyard. But the story doesn’t end with a raucous male Mockingbird serenading my neighborhood. A second silent bird seems to be following him around.  Based on their behavior I assume this to be a female and potential suitor for my resident copy-cat. As I sit here, I hear another Northern Mockingbird begin to sing a few blocks to my west, I wonder if this silent bird I have been watching is in fact female, and if she has chosen her mate yet.

This time of year most birds are thinking about their biological reason for existence: reproduction.  If you watch and listen to the birds in your yard you can easily pick up on these cues.  You may have noticed the early mornings are a bit noisier lately, this is because male songbirds are advertising and attempting to attract mates.  They use their song to defend the territory from other males, and they also sing to attract females. If you are able to watch them for a while, you may be lucky enough to observe other behaviors associated with breeding.  

If you see a bird carrying something in its bill, pay attention to where it goes and what it does with its load. It could be carrying material with which to construct its nest. During this season of courtship males may bring their prospective mate an attractive food item to demonstrate their prowess. For example, male flycatchers will often bring their mates big showy insects like butterflies and dragonflies, presumably to impress or to demonstrate their hunting capability.  Later in the season, they will be bringing food to feed hungry females stuck on the nest incubating eggs. After this, the eggs will become nestlings that will need to be fed constantly. Being a bird parent is a busy business, and involves a lot of food-carrying!

It is now a few hours later, and while I am strolling around the block, I see a Northern Mockingbird hop into a dense hedgerow with a mouth full of dried grass stems. To the field-trained eye, this behavior is clearly associated with nest-building. This particular hedgerow is about 100 yards from my house, so I wonder if this bird is one of the pair I have been watching in my Tree-of-Heaven. Now that I have discovered the location of a nest, I can pay attention to various clues to tell me if the Mockingbirds in my yard are the same ones using my neighbor’s hedgerow. I will start to cue in on which direction the birds come and go from, I will listen for how close other Mockingbirds are, and if I am lucky I will be able to follow one from my yard to my neighbor’s. By paying attention to these little things, I am able to interpret so much about the birds that share the neighborhood with me.

You can do the same thing in your yard, if you notice a particular bird hangs around a lot, stay put and watch it for a while.  Maybe you will get the chance to see it carry some fruit from your ornamental shrub to its mate that is waiting just around the corner.  Maybe it has even decided your yard has enough resources to sustain its brood this year. By paying attention to the subtle things they are doing, you can learn a lot about them and their world. At the end of the season you may even be lucky enough to see them toting a brood of clumsy, fuzzy, fledglings around the yard!

- Ned