[mou] Blue Grosbeaks in SW Minnesota

[Tom_Will@fws.gov]

I had good luck finding the pair of Blue Grosbeaks at the visitor center at
the south end of Blue Mounds State Park.  The birds were calling (chipping)
when I got out of the car in the parking area on 11 June, and within a
minute I had a quick glimpse of both the male and the female in the brush
just SE of the parking area at the crest of the bluff.

Interestingly, I also recorded Blue Grosbeaks on three of the 100 stops on
two Breeding Bird Survey routes in Rock and Nobles counties.  I heard
singing males:

-- at the intersection of CR 15 and 144th Ave
-- on 101st Street midway between its intersection with 140th Ave & 150th
Ave (CR 9) -- a first summer male
   (both above locations south of Luverne in Rock County)
-- at the intersection of 280th Street and US 59 / SR 60 southwest of
Worthington, Nobles County.

Relative to the species and numbers I did NOT record on the total of 100
3-minute BBS stops, I would hesitantly conclude that Blue Grosbeak may
perhaps be more common and more widely dispersed on the landscape than
conventional wisdom suggests.  All three of the records were from low
shrubby roadside growth or weedy fencerows in otherwise agricultural areas
-- not the typical haunt of the itinerant birder in search of specialties.

I should say that I thoroughly enjoyed running these BBS routes, and I
encourage others to get in touch with Bob Janssen to find out about
staffing routes that are currently not being run consistently in MN.  Even
in a very agricultural setting, I learned a tremendous amount about how
birds are distributed across the landscape, and how farmsteads, small
wetlands, woodlots, etc., appear to affect species occurrence.  I can't
wait to run the routes again next year!

Tom Will, Saint Paul