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Mountain bluebird

January 31, 2023

The mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) is a small migratory thrush that is found in mountainous districts of western North America. It has a light underbelly and black eyes. Adult males have thin bills and are bright turquoise-blue and somewhat lighter underneath. Adult females have duller blue wings and tail, grey breast, grey crown, throat and back. In fresh fall plumage, the female's throat and breast are tinged with red-orange which is brownish near the flank, contrasting with white tail underparts. Their call is a thin 'few' while their song is a warbled high 'chur chur'. The mountain bluebird is the state bird of Idaho and Nevada. This bird is an omnivore and it can live 6 to 10 years in the wild. It eats spiders, grasshoppers, flies and other insects, and small fruits. The mountain bluebird is a relative of the eastern and western bluebirds.

Mountain bluebird
Male
Female
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Turdidae
Genus: Sialia
Species:
S. currucoides
Binomial name
Sialia currucoides
(Bechstein, 1798)
Mountain Bluebird distribution:
  Breeding range
  Year-round range
  Wintering range
Synonyms

Erythaca (Sialia) arctica Swainson 1832[2][3]

Taxonomy

The mountain bluebird was formally described in 1798 by the German naturalist, Johann Matthäus Bechstein, and given the name Motacilla s. Sylvia currucoides.[4][5] The specific epithet combines curruca, from Carl Linnaeus's binomial name ,Motacilla curruca, for the lesser whitethroat with the Ancient Greek -oidēs meaning "resembling".[6] The mountain bluebird is now placed with the two other bluebirds in the genus Sialia that was introduced by the English naturalist William John Swainson in 1827.[7][8] The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.[8]

Description

The mountain bluebird is 15.5–18 cm (6.1–7.1 in) in length, weighs 24–37 g (0.85–1.31 oz), and has a wingspan of 11.0-14.2 in (28-36 cm).[9] It is sexually dimorphic in the color of the plumage but the sexes are similar in size. An adult male is bright turquoise-blue above and somewhat lighter blue underneath but with a white lower belly. An adult female has duller blue wings and tail, grey breast, grey crown, throat and back. In fresh fall plumage, the female's throat and breast are brownish near the flank, contrasting with white tail underparts.[10] Their call is a thin 'few'; while their song is warbled high 'chur chur'.

Distribution and habitat

Their breeding habitat is open country across western North America, including mountainous areas, as far north as Alaska. Although mountain bluebirds can be found in some states year-round, their range is expansive — they generally migrate south to Mexico in the winter and north into western Canada and even Alaska in the summer. Depending on the time of year, they may be ubiquitous in mountain environments like grasslands or landscapes of sagebrush, where trees and shrubs are fairly spread out.[11]

Behavior and ecology

Breeding

 
This species also can be a powder blue or with a gray chest.

The male can be seen singing from bare branches. The singing takes place right at dawn, just when the sun rises.

Mountain bluebirds nest in pre-existing cavities or in nest boxes. In remote areas, these birds are less affected by competition for natural nesting locations than other bluebirds. Mountain bluebirds are monogamous. After the couple decides together on an ideal nesting site, the female will typically build their nest themselves out of thin, dry material from the surrounding landscape while the male protects the area, defending against unwelcome visitors. It is true, though, that both males and females fiercely protect the nest. Once the nest is built, the female will lay an egg a day. Eggs are pale blue and unmarked, sometimes white. The clutch size is four or five eggs and she will incubate them for about two weeks. Young are naked and helpless at hatching and may have some down. The young will usually take about 21 days before they leave the nest, and it can take up to two months to raise fledglings to a stage of development at which they are able to fend and provide for themselves.[12]

Mountain bluebirds are cavity nesters and can become very partial to a nest box, especially if they have successfully raised a clutch. They may even reuse the same nest, though not always. These birds will not abandon a nest if human activity is detected close by or at the nest. Because of this, they can be easily banded while they are still in the nest. The threats of predation for those that dwell in nesting boxes are mostly from house cats, raccoons, and the parasitic blowfly, Apaulina stalia.[12]

Feeding

During the summer, the diet of Mountain bluebirds predominately consists of insects; while, in the winter months they eat mostly berries (like Juniper berries, Russian-olive berries, elderberry, etc.) and fruit seeds (such as mistletoe seeds and grapes, just to name a few).[13] These birds hover over the ground and fly down to catch insects, also flying from a perch to catch them. The first technique takes up to 8 times the energy of sitting on a perch and waiting. They may forage in flocks in winter, looking for grasshoppers. Mountain Bluebirds will come to a platform feeder with live meal worms, berries, or peanuts.

Relationship to humans

The mountain bluebird is the state bird of Idaho and Nevada.[14][15] More generally, the bluebird has lived in writers’ and poets’ imaginations as age-old bearers of joy and reverie.[12] The Twitter bird is based on the mountain bluebird.[16]

Conservation status

Mountain bluebirds are fairly common, but populations declined by about 26% between 1966 and 2014, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimates the global breeding population of 4.6 million, with 80% spending some part of the year in the U.S., 20% breeding in Canada, and 31% wintering in Mexico. The species rates an 8 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score. Mountain Bluebird is a U.S.-Canada Stewardship species, and is not on the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List. These bluebirds benefited from the westward spread of logging and grazing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the clearing of forest created open habitat for foraging. The subsequent waning of these industries, coupled with the deliberate suppression of wildfires, led to a dwindling of open acreage in the West and the decline of the species. More recently, as land-use practices have stabilized, so have Mountain Bluebird populations. Construction of nest boxes in suitable habitat has also provided a population boost. Populations are declining in areas where trees are too small to provide natural nesting cavities, and where forest and agricultural management practices have reduced the availability of suitable nest sites. Among birds that nest in cavities but cannot excavate them on their own, competition is high for nest sites. Mountain, Western, and more recently Eastern bluebirds compete for nest boxes where their ranges overlap. House Sparrows, European Starlings, and House Wrens also compete fiercely with bluebirds for nest cavities.[17]

Industrial noise from natural gas wells can have a negative effect on breeding mountain bluebirds. When mountain bluebirds were exposed to this noise, it caused decreased baseline corticosterone levels in adults and nestlings, increased acute (stress-induced) corticosterone levels, and reduced fitness.[18] The combined effect of decreased baseline and increased acute corticosterone may reduce the fitness of these birds by making them susceptible to inflammation and disease.[18] Another study found that when nest boxes were set up in areas near industrial noise and in quiet control areas, there was a lower occupancy of the mountain bluebird at noisy sites, presumably because the noise reduces hatching success.[19] Hatching success may be reduced in noisy areas as a result of increased distraction and increased vigilance behavior by females. Female bluebirds that leave the nest more frequently expose their eggs to fluctuations in incubation time and temperature. This increases predation risk of these eggs and reduces incubation time, resulting in fewer eggs successfully hatching.[18][19]

Similar species

See also

References

  1. ^ BirdLife International (2019). "Sialia currucoides". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2019: e.T22708556A137560639. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T22708556A137560639.en. Retrieved 12 November 2021.
  2. ^ Swainson, William John; Richardson, J. (1831). Fauna boreali-americana, or, The zoology of the northern parts of British America. Vol. Part 2. The Birds. London: J. Murray. p. 209. The title page bears the year 1831 but the volume did not appear until 1832.
  3. ^ Lepage, Denis. "Mountain Bluebird". Avibase. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  4. ^ Latham, John; Bechstein, Johann Matthäus (1798). Johann Lathams allgemeine Uebersicht der Vögel (in German). Vol. 3, Part 2. Nürnberg: A.C. Weigels and Schneiders. p. 546.
  5. ^ Mayr, Ernst; Paynter, Raymond A. Jr, eds. (1964). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 10. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 85.
  6. ^ Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 125. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  7. ^ Swainson, William John (1827). "A synopsis of the birds discovered in Mexico by W. Bullock, F.L.S. and Mr. William Bullock jun". Philosophical Magazine. New Series. 1: 364–369 [369]. doi:10.1080/14786442708674330.
  8. ^ a b Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (2020). "Thrushes". IOC World Bird List Version 10.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
  9. ^ "Mountain Bluebird Identification, All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology". www.allaboutbirds.org. Retrieved 2020-09-29.
  10. ^ Johnson, L. Scott; Dawson, Russell D. (2020). Rodewald, P.G. (ed.). "Mountain Bluebird (Sialia currucoides), version 1.0". Birds of the World. Ithaca, NY, USA: Cornell Lab of Ornithology. doi:10.2173/bow.moublu.01. Retrieved 11 September 2020.
  11. ^ Sibley, David Allen (2016). Sibley Birds West. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-307-95792-4.
  12. ^ a b c Scott, Lorne (1996). "Mountain Bluebird" (PDF). Canadian Wildlife Service: 1–4 – via OskiCat.
  13. ^ "Winter feeding habits of the mountain bluebird (Sialia currucoides) in northern New Mexico". United States Department of Energy. 2008. OSTI 964973 – via EBSCOhost.
  14. ^ "Idaho State Bird". Georgia State Bird Mountain Bluebird Sialia currucoides. Netstate.
  15. ^ . Nevada State Bird, mountain bluebird. Val-U-Corp Services, Inc. Archived from the original on 2012-02-29. Retrieved 2014-07-31.
  16. ^ "Who Made That Twitter Bird?". New York Times.
  17. ^ "Mountain Bluebird". www.allaboutbirds.org. Retrieved 2016-04-15.
  18. ^ a b c "Correction for Kleist et al., Chronic anthropogenic noise disrupts glucocorticoid signaling and has multiple effects on fitness in an avian community". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (9). 2018-02-20. doi:10.1073/pnas.1801328115. ISSN 0027-8424.
  19. ^ a b Kleist, Nathan J.; Guralnick, Robert P.; Cruz, Alexander; Francis, Clinton D. (January 2017). "Sound settlement: noise surpasses land cover in explaining breeding habitat selection of secondary cavity‐nesting birds". Ecological Applications. 27 (1): 260–273. doi:10.1002/eap.1437. ISSN 1051-0761. PMID 28052511.
  • All About Birds: Mountain Bluebird, Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Further reading

  • Herlugson, Christopher J. (1981). "Nest site selection in mountain bluebirds" (PDF). Condor. 83 (3): 252–255. doi:10.2307/1367317. JSTOR 1367317.
  • Ridgway, Robert (1907). "Sialia arctica Swainson: Mountain Bluebird". The Birds of North and Middle America. Bulletin of the United States National Museum. Volume 50, Part 4. Washington. pp. 156–159.

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Sialia currucoides (category)
 
Wikispecies has information related to Sialia currucoides.
  • Mountain Bluebird Information and Awareness
  • "Mountain bluebird media". Internet Bird Collection.
  • Mountain bluebird photo gallery at VIREO (Drexel University)

January 31, 2023
mountain, bluebird, mountain, bluebird, sialia, currucoides, small, migratory, thrush, that, found, mountainous, districts, western, north, america, light, underbelly, black, eyes, adult, males, have, thin, bills, bright, turquoise, blue, somewhat, lighter, un. The mountain bluebird Sialia currucoides is a small migratory thrush that is found in mountainous districts of western North America It has a light underbelly and black eyes Adult males have thin bills and are bright turquoise blue and somewhat lighter underneath Adult females have duller blue wings and tail grey breast grey crown throat and back In fresh fall plumage the female s throat and breast are tinged with red orange which is brownish near the flank contrasting with white tail underparts Their call is a thin few while their song is a warbled high chur chur The mountain bluebird is the state bird of Idaho and Nevada This bird is an omnivore and it can live 6 to 10 years in the wild It eats spiders grasshoppers flies and other insects and small fruits The mountain bluebird is a relative of the eastern and western bluebirds Mountain bluebirdMaleFemaleConservation statusLeast Concern IUCN 3 1 1 Scientific classificationKingdom AnimaliaPhylum ChordataClass AvesOrder PasseriformesFamily TurdidaeGenus SialiaSpecies S currucoidesBinomial nameSialia currucoides Bechstein 1798 Mountain Bluebird distribution Breeding range Year round range Wintering rangeSynonymsErythaca Sialia arctica Swainson 1832 2 3 Contents 1 Taxonomy 2 Description 3 Distribution and habitat 4 Behavior and ecology 4 1 Breeding 4 2 Feeding 5 Relationship to humans 6 Conservation status 7 Similar species 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksTaxonomy EditThe mountain bluebird was formally described in 1798 by the German naturalist Johann Matthaus Bechstein and given the name Motacilla s Sylvia currucoides 4 5 The specific epithet combines curruca from Carl Linnaeus s binomial name Motacilla curruca for the lesser whitethroat with the Ancient Greek oides meaning resembling 6 The mountain bluebird is now placed with the two other bluebirds in the genus Sialia that was introduced by the English naturalist William John Swainson in 1827 7 8 The species is monotypic no subspecies are recognised 8 Description EditThe mountain bluebird is 15 5 18 cm 6 1 7 1 in in length weighs 24 37 g 0 85 1 31 oz and has a wingspan of 11 0 14 2 in 28 36 cm 9 It is sexually dimorphic in the color of the plumage but the sexes are similar in size An adult male is bright turquoise blue above and somewhat lighter blue underneath but with a white lower belly An adult female has duller blue wings and tail grey breast grey crown throat and back In fresh fall plumage the female s throat and breast are brownish near the flank contrasting with white tail underparts 10 Their call is a thin few while their song is warbled high chur chur Distribution and habitat EditTheir breeding habitat is open country across western North America including mountainous areas as far north as Alaska Although mountain bluebirds can be found in some states year round their range is expansive they generally migrate south to Mexico in the winter and north into western Canada and even Alaska in the summer Depending on the time of year they may be ubiquitous in mountain environments like grasslands or landscapes of sagebrush where trees and shrubs are fairly spread out 11 Behavior and ecology EditBreeding Edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed November 2020 Learn how and when to remove this template message This species also can be a powder blue or with a gray chest The male can be seen singing from bare branches The singing takes place right at dawn just when the sun rises Mountain bluebirds nest in pre existing cavities or in nest boxes In remote areas these birds are less affected by competition for natural nesting locations than other bluebirds Mountain bluebirds are monogamous After the couple decides together on an ideal nesting site the female will typically build their nest themselves out of thin dry material from the surrounding landscape while the male protects the area defending against unwelcome visitors It is true though that both males and females fiercely protect the nest Once the nest is built the female will lay an egg a day Eggs are pale blue and unmarked sometimes white The clutch size is four or five eggs and she will incubate them for about two weeks Young are naked and helpless at hatching and may have some down The young will usually take about 21 days before they leave the nest and it can take up to two months to raise fledglings to a stage of development at which they are able to fend and provide for themselves 12 Mountain bluebirds are cavity nesters and can become very partial to a nest box especially if they have successfully raised a clutch They may even reuse the same nest though not always These birds will not abandon a nest if human activity is detected close by or at the nest Because of this they can be easily banded while they are still in the nest The threats of predation for those that dwell in nesting boxes are mostly from house cats raccoons and the parasitic blowfly Apaulina stalia 12 Feeding Edit This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed October 2018 Learn how and when to remove this template message During the summer the diet of Mountain bluebirds predominately consists of insects while in the winter months they eat mostly berries like Juniper berries Russian olive berries elderberry etc and fruit seeds such as mistletoe seeds and grapes just to name a few 13 These birds hover over the ground and fly down to catch insects also flying from a perch to catch them The first technique takes up to 8 times the energy of sitting on a perch and waiting They may forage in flocks in winter looking for grasshoppers Mountain Bluebirds will come to a platform feeder with live meal worms berries or peanuts Relationship to humans EditThe mountain bluebird is the state bird of Idaho and Nevada 14 15 More generally the bluebird has lived in writers and poets imaginations as age old bearers of joy and reverie 12 The Twitter bird is based on the mountain bluebird 16 Conservation status EditMountain bluebirds are fairly common but populations declined by about 26 between 1966 and 2014 according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey Partners in Flight estimates the global breeding population of 4 6 million with 80 spending some part of the year in the U S 20 breeding in Canada and 31 wintering in Mexico The species rates an 8 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score Mountain Bluebird is a U S Canada Stewardship species and is not on the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List These bluebirds benefited from the westward spread of logging and grazing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the clearing of forest created open habitat for foraging The subsequent waning of these industries coupled with the deliberate suppression of wildfires led to a dwindling of open acreage in the West and the decline of the species More recently as land use practices have stabilized so have Mountain Bluebird populations Construction of nest boxes in suitable habitat has also provided a population boost Populations are declining in areas where trees are too small to provide natural nesting cavities and where forest and agricultural management practices have reduced the availability of suitable nest sites Among birds that nest in cavities but cannot excavate them on their own competition is high for nest sites Mountain Western and more recently Eastern bluebirds compete for nest boxes where their ranges overlap House Sparrows European Starlings and House Wrens also compete fiercely with bluebirds for nest cavities 17 Industrial noise from natural gas wells can have a negative effect on breeding mountain bluebirds When mountain bluebirds were exposed to this noise it caused decreased baseline corticosterone levels in adults and nestlings increased acute stress induced corticosterone levels and reduced fitness 18 The combined effect of decreased baseline and increased acute corticosterone may reduce the fitness of these birds by making them susceptible to inflammation and disease 18 Another study found that when nest boxes were set up in areas near industrial noise and in quiet control areas there was a lower occupancy of the mountain bluebird at noisy sites presumably because the noise reduces hatching success 19 Hatching success may be reduced in noisy areas as a result of increased distraction and increased vigilance behavior by females Female bluebirds that leave the nest more frequently expose their eggs to fluctuations in incubation time and temperature This increases predation risk of these eggs and reduces incubation time resulting in fewer eggs successfully hatching 18 19 Similar species EditWestern bluebird Sialia mexicana Eastern bluebird Sialia sialis See also EditBluebird of happinessReferences Edit BirdLife International 2019 Sialia currucoides IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019 e T22708556A137560639 doi 10 2305 IUCN UK 2019 3 RLTS T22708556A137560639 en Retrieved 12 November 2021 Swainson William John Richardson J 1831 Fauna boreali americana or The zoology of the northern parts of British America Vol Part 2 The Birds London J Murray p 209 The title page bears the year 1831 but the volume did not appear until 1832 Lepage Denis Mountain Bluebird Avibase Retrieved 11 September 2020 Latham John Bechstein Johann Matthaus 1798 Johann Lathams allgemeine Uebersicht der Vogel in German Vol 3 Part 2 Nurnberg A C Weigels and Schneiders p 546 Mayr Ernst Paynter Raymond A Jr eds 1964 Check List of Birds of the World Vol 10 Cambridge Massachusetts Museum of Comparative Zoology p 85 Jobling James A 2010 The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names London Christopher Helm p 125 ISBN 978 1 4081 2501 4 Swainson William John 1827 A synopsis of the birds discovered in Mexico by W Bullock F L S and Mr William Bullock jun Philosophical Magazine New Series 1 364 369 369 doi 10 1080 14786442708674330 a b Gill Frank Donsker David Rasmussen Pamela eds 2020 Thrushes IOC World Bird List Version 10 2 International Ornithologists Union Retrieved 10 September 2020 Mountain Bluebird Identification All About Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology www allaboutbirds org Retrieved 2020 09 29 Johnson L Scott Dawson Russell D 2020 Rodewald P G ed Mountain Bluebird Sialia currucoides version 1 0 Birds of the World Ithaca NY USA Cornell Lab of Ornithology doi 10 2173 bow moublu 01 Retrieved 11 September 2020 Sibley David Allen 2016 Sibley Birds West New York NY Alfred A Knopf p 344 ISBN 978 0 307 95792 4 a b c Scott Lorne 1996 Mountain Bluebird PDF Canadian Wildlife Service 1 4 via OskiCat Winter feeding habits of the mountain bluebird Sialia currucoides in northern New Mexico United States Department of Energy 2008 OSTI 964973 via EBSCOhost Idaho State Bird Georgia State Bird Mountain Bluebird Sialia currucoides Netstate Nevada State Bird Nevada State Bird mountain bluebird Val U Corp Services Inc Archived from the original on 2012 02 29 Retrieved 2014 07 31 Who Made That Twitter Bird New York Times Mountain Bluebird www allaboutbirds org Retrieved 2016 04 15 a b c Correction for Kleist et al Chronic anthropogenic noise disrupts glucocorticoid signaling and has multiple effects on fitness in an avian community Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115 9 2018 02 20 doi 10 1073 pnas 1801328115 ISSN 0027 8424 a b Kleist Nathan J Guralnick Robert P Cruz Alexander Francis Clinton D January 2017 Sound settlement noise surpasses land cover in explaining breeding habitat selection of secondary cavity nesting birds Ecological Applications 27 1 260 273 doi 10 1002 eap 1437 ISSN 1051 0761 PMID 28052511 All About Birds Mountain Bluebird Cornell Lab of OrnithologyFurther reading EditHerlugson Christopher J 1981 Nest site selection in mountain bluebirds PDF Condor 83 3 252 255 doi 10 2307 1367317 JSTOR 1367317 Ridgway Robert 1907 Sialia arctica Swainson Mountain Bluebird The Birds of North and Middle America Bulletin of the United States National Museum Volume 50 Part 4 Washington pp 156 159 External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sialia currucoides category Wikispecies has information related to Sialia currucoides Mountain Bluebird Information and Awareness North American Bluebird Society Mountain bluebird media Internet Bird Collection Mountain bluebird photo gallery at VIREO Drexel University Portals Birds Animals Biology Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mountain bluebird amp oldid 1131273658, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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