Nature and Birdwatching of North Carolina

Eastern Blue Bird

The bluebirds are medium-sized, mostly insectivorous or omnivorous birds in the genus Sialia of the thrush family (Turdidae). Bluebirds are one of the few thrush genera in the Americas. They have blue, or blue and red, plumage. Female birds are less brightly colored than males, although color patterns are similar and there is no noticeable difference in size between sexes.
Species:
Eastern Bluebird, Sialia sialis
Western Bluebird, Sialia mexicana
Mountain Bluebird, Sialia currucoides

Most country drives during an eastern North American summer will turn up a few Eastern Bluebirds sitting on telephone wires or perched atop a nest box, calling out in a short, wavering voice or abruptly dropping to the ground after an insect. Marvelous birds to capture in your binoculars, male Eastern Bluebirds are a brilliant royal blue on the back and head, and warm red-brown on the breast. Blue tinges in the wings and tail give the grayer females an elegant look.

Red Cardinal

Alternate name: Red Cardinal
Family: Cardinalidae, Cardinals view all from this family
Description 8-9" (20-23 cm). Male bright red with crest, black face, stout red bill. Female buff-brown tinged with red on crest, wings, and tail.
Habitat Woodland edges, thickets, brushy swamps, and gardens.
Nesting 3 or 4 pale green eggs, spotted with red-brown, in a deep cup of twigs, leaves, and plant fibers concealed in a thicket.

Voice Rich what-cheer, cheer, cheer; purty-purty-purty-purty or sweet-sweet-sweet-sweet. Also a metallic chip.
Discussion This species, named after the red robes worn by Roman Catholic cardinals, has extended its range northward into southern Canada in recent decades. Cardinals are aggressive birds that occupy territories year-round. Both sexes are accomplished songsters and may be heard at any time of year, rather than just in the spring when most other birds are singing. Seeds form a main part of the diet, although insects are eaten in the breeding season. These birds often come to feeders in winter.

American Robins

Family: Turdidae, Thrushes view all from this family
Description 9-11" (23-28 cm). Gray above, brick red below. Head and tail black in males, dull gray in females. Young birds are spotted below.
Habitat Towns, gardens, open woodlands, and agricultural land.
Nesting 3-5 blue-green eggs in a well-made cup of mud reinforced with grass and twigs, lined with softer grasses, and placed in a tree or on a ledge or windowsill. Robins usually have 2 broods a season.

Voice Song is a series of rich caroling notes, rising and falling in pitch: cheer-up, cheerily, cheer-up, cheerily.

American Robins are gray-brown birds with warm orange underparts and dark heads. In flight, a white patch on the lower belly and under the tail can be conspicuous. Compared with males, females have paler heads that contrast less with the gray back.BehaviorAmerican Robins are industrious and authoritarian birds that bound across lawns or stand erect, beak tilted upward, to survey their environs. When alighting they habitually flick their tails downward several times. In fall and winter they form large flocks and gather in trees to roost or eat berries.HabitatAmerican Robins are common across the continent in gardens, parks, yards, golf courses, fields, pastures, tundra, as well as deciduous woodlands, pine forests, shrublands, and forests regenerating after fires or logging.

The mainstay of the American Robin is earthworms. It hunts on lawns, standing stock-still with head cocked to one side as though listening for its prey but actually discovering it by sight.

Magpie Bird on the Roof

Magpie Bird on the Roof

Magpies generally nest individually but can sometimes be found in loose colonies; they are social when feeding or after the breeding season. Since the most important items in their diet seem to be insects and small rodents, they are more beneficial than destructive to agriculture. In captivity a magpie may be trained to imitate the human voice.

Estern Birds

The greates Eastern Areas of Grasslands

The greatest Eastern areas of grasslands

occur in the prairie regions of the Midwest and west. In the East, there are two types of grasslands; the agricultural grasslands, and old fields or relic grasslands. Agricultural Grasslands: These grasslands are areas where grass is mowed and used for grazing. When the grassland is cut for hay, it is called a Meadow and if the area is used for grazing, it is called a Pasture. Meadows remain green, if cut, through summer and fall and consists of grasses such as Kentucky Bluegrass, Timothy, Orchard Grass, and Foxtail Barley while pastures are a rich green color, short and contain a number of weeds. Flowers are also visible in late spring through fall in meadows. There are grassland birds everywhere in North America, but in the East, the fields attract Eastern Meadowlarks, Ring-necked Pheasants, Vesper Sparrows, Bobolinks, Red-winged Blackbirds, Grasshopper Sparrows and other sparrows. Short-eared Owls and Northern Harriers can be found hunting for food over agricultural land and they are both ground nesters in the grasslands.When mowing for hay it is a hazard to the grassland species. These areas are mowed in early summer at the peak of the breeding season which can destroy the nests, chicks and adults. Biologists have noted that this is the prime reason for the decline of Ring-necked

Pheasants and grass-nesting songbirds.

Cokoos Birds

Common Cockoo (Cuculus Canorus)
PHYSICAL

CHARACTERISTICS
12.6–13 in (32–33 cm), 0.23 lb (115 g).

Males dark gray above, tail blackish brown, spotted and tipped with white, unevenly barred black.

Gray to white underparts, eye ring yellow, iris brown to orange, bill black. Females similar, although rufous on upper breast; females of canorus subspecies occur in a rufous (hepatic) morph

DISTRIBUTION
Europe and Asia, from Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to Siberia, Kamchatka, and Japan. Winters in southern Africa and southern Asia.
HABITAT
Forests and woodlands, open wooded areas, steppes, meadows, and reedbeds.
BEHAVIOR
Males sing a loud "cuck-oo" in spring, silent in winter. Migratory in northern part of the distribution range.
FEEDING ECOLOGY AND DIET
Mainly caterpillars, and other insects such as dragonflies, crickets, beetles. Prey on eggs and nestlings of songbirds.

Carolina Wren Bird

Carolina Wreng Bird

Typically 14 cm long (6-7 in) and about 20 g in weight, it is a fairly large wren; among the United States species it is second largest after the Cactus Wren. The upperparts are rufous brown, and the underparts a strong orange-buff, usually unmarked but faintly barred on the flanks in the southwest of the range. The head has a striking pure white supercilium (eyebrow) and a whitish throat. The race albinucha is duller brown above and has additional white streaking on the head.
It is easiest to confuse with the Bewick's Wren, a fairly close relative[2], which differs in being smaller but with a longer tail, grayer-brown above and whiter below. The Carolina and White-browed Wrens differ from the House Wren in being larger, with a decidedly longer bill and hind toe; their culmen has a notch behind the tip
[edit] Song and calls
The Carolina Wren is noted for its loud song, popularly rendered as "teakettle-teakettle-teakettle". This song is rather atypical among wrens, which tend to sing songs which are similar to other wrens' songs. A given bird will typically sing several different songs. Only the male birds sing their loud song. The songs vary regionally, with birds in northern areas singing more slowly than those in southern areas.
The Carolina Wren also has a series of calls, including a rapid series of descending notes in a similar timbre to its song, functioning as an alarm call, and a very harsh and loud scolding call made to threaten intruders.

Birds of North Carolina -Green Proyect with kids

Cardinal

Woodspeaker

Get kids involved in Pennies

for the Planet!
Looking for a meaningful Earth Day project for children? Click here to find out how children can get involved in starting their own projects to benefit conservation.

Stink, Bite, Hide, Fight!

How Animals Defend Themselves
Animals of all kinds defend themselves against predators using an array of adaptations such as quills, camouflage, and other physical attributes as well as behaviors such as hiding and playing dead. Predators, in turn, have strategies for foiling their prey’s defenses. This ongoing drama plays out in habitats worldwide.

On The Go! Animals That Migrate
Across North America, the progression of seasons is marked by the travels of migratory animals. These amazing journeys are taken by an equally amazing variety of species, ranging from tiny hummingbirds to mighty gray whales.

Why Animals Build
All kinds of animals are amazing builders. They construct nests, shelters, and traps of all sorts, shapes, and sizes from wood, mud, spit, silk, and other materials. No matter the creature, the materials, or the structure, all animals build for the same reason-to better survive.

New Birds Watcher Future

New Birds Watcher Future

Open Yours Eyes

Charlotte Natural Museum - Mourning Dove

Charlotte Natural Museum

Carolina Raptor Center Carolina Raptor Center supports environmental conservation and safeguards community health by treating injured and orphaned raptors. At the head of the food web, raptors are leading scientific indicators of a healthy environment. Carolina Raptor Center offers a pleasant afternoon or morning walk along its nature trail. Enjoy over twenty species of raptors - hawks, owls, eagles, falcons, and vultures. Learn how these birds have adapted special characteristics to occupy a particular environmental niche and how they serve as indicators of our community's health.

Carolina Raptor Center6000 Sample RoadP.O. Box 16443Huntersville, NC 28297704-875-6521 phone

Mourning Doves

Color Pattern
Mourning Doves often match their open-country surroundings. They’re delicate brown to buffy-tan overall, with black spots on the wings and black-bordered white tips to the tail feathers.
Behavior
Mourning Doves fly fast on powerful wingbeats, sometimes making sudden ascents, descents, and dodges, their pointed tails stretching behind them.
Habitat
You can see Mourning Doves nearly anywhere except the deep woods. Look for them in fields or patches of bare ground, or on overhead perches like telephone wires.

Bluebird

Behavior
Eastern Bluebirds perch erect on wires, posts, and low branches in open country, scanning the ground for prey. They feed by dropping to the ground onto insects or, in fall and winter, by perching on fruiting trees to gulp down berries. Bluebirds commonly use nest boxes as well as old woodpecker holes.
Habitat
Eastern Bluebirds live in meadows and openings surrounded by trees that offer suitable nest holes. With the proliferation of nest boxes and bluebird trails, bluebirds are now a common sight along roads, field edges, golf courses, and other open areas
Food:
Insects caught on the ground are a bluebird’s main food for much of the year. Major prey include caterpillars, beetles crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders. In fall and winter, bluebirds eat large amounts of fruit including mistletoe, sumac, blueberries, black cherry, tupelo, currants, wild holly, dogwood berries, hackberries, honeysuckle, bay, pokeweed, and juniper berries. Rarely, Eastern Bluebirds have been recorded eating salamanders, shrews, snakes, lizards, and tree frogs.

Range Resident in eastern United States and southern Canada (locally) south to Gulf Coast, and from southern California, Arizona, and southern Texas southward.
Cardinals are aggressive birds that occupy territories year-round. Both sexes are accomplished songsters and may be heard at any time of year, rather than just in the spring when most other birds are singing. Seeds form a main part of the diet, although insects are eaten in the breeding season. These birds often come to feeders in winter

The Cocoos

The cuckoos are a family, Cuculidae, of near passerine birds. The order Cuculiformes, in addition to the cuckoos, also includes the turacos (family Musophagidae, sometimes treated as a separate order, Musophagiformes). Some zoologists and taxonomists have also included the unique Hoatzin in the Cuculiformes, but its taxonomy remains in dispute. The cuckoo family, in addition to those species named as such, also includes the roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separated as distinct families, the Centropodidae and Crotophagidae respectively.
The cuckoos are generally medium sized slender birds. The majority are arboreal, with a sizeable minority that are terrestrial. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, with the majority of species being tropical. The temperate species are migratory. The cuckoos feed on insects, insect larvae and a variety of other animals, as well as fruit. Many species are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species, but the majority of species raise their own young.

Charlotte Area - Mecklenburg County - historic information

The area that is now Charlotte was first settled in 1755 when Thomas Polk (uncle of United States President James K. Polk), who was traveling with Thomas Spratt and his family, stopped and built his house of residence at the intersection of two Native American trading paths between the Yadkin and Catawba rivers.[7] One of the paths ran north-south and was part of the Great Wagon Road; the second path ran east-west along what is now modern-day Trade Street. In the early part of the 18th century, the Great Wagon Road led settlers of Scots-Irish and German descent from Pennsylvania into the Carolina foothills. Within the first decades following Polk's settling, the area grew to become the community of "Charlotte Town," which officially incorporated as a town in 1768.

Mourning Doves

A graceful, slender-tailed, small-headed dove that’s common across the continent. Mourning Doves perch on telephone wires and forage for seeds on the ground; their flight is fast and bullet straight. Their soft, drawn-out calls sound like laments. When taking off, their wings make a sharp whistling or whinnying. Mourning Doves are the most frequently hunted species in North America

Size & Shape
Plump-bodied and long-tailed, with short legs, small bill, and a head that looks particularly small in comparison to the body. The long, pointed tail is unique among North American doves.