I was sitting on our back porch the fourth week in August, idly passing time and wondering what was in the surrounding woods. Unthinkingly, I began pishing, and was startled to immediately call in two immature American Redstarts that seemed to be traveling together.
A redstart had sung in the woods in June and July. I presumed then that he had been successful in raising a family in our rag-tag woods on the edge of Pioneer Lake this summer and here were his offspring.
Our woods would be to a redstart’s liking. They select deciduous woods, second-growth or forest edge with a well-developed shrub layer. A space between the shrubs and the canopy is ideal since it gives these dainty little birds room in which to sally, hunting insects on the wing.
Their nest is a compact cup of grass and plant fibers, lined with soft grass and hair. The birds lay three to four white or pale blue eggs, marked with brown or gray, according to T. S. Roberts in The Birds of Minnesota.
Redstarts are only here for the brief breeding season. Long-distance migrators, they will return to Central America, northern South America, or the Caribbean during the winter months when their foods, notably flying insects, are not available. In Latin America, they are known as “candelita” or “little torches” for the bright orange patches of the male.
Lovers of delicate little redstarts will be pleased to learn that its Minnesota population has actually increased significantly (.64%) in the years 1967-2015. The birds have become more common in western Minnesota, now found along the entire length of the Minnesota River reaching the western border, and in woodlots in the Red River Valley. Roberts, who did not shrink from anthropomorphism, considered the birds “blithesome and debonair” and called it the most common wood warbler in Minnesota. Indeed, he described a two-day period in 1924, May 23-24, when the migration had been held up by cold weather. “Redstarts [were] in almost unbelievable numbers, a dozen or more on the ground and flitting about among the shrubbery in almost every city lot [in Minneapolis]. The gaily colored males in such unusual numbers attracted the attention of almost everyone.”
Although I saw my pair of immatures again today, August 30th, they will soon be out of here and on their perilous journey south. Roberts pinpoints the first half of September for the migration through the southern half of the state.
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