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Eastern Bluebird | Sialia sialis
Roodkeelsialia | Azulejo gorjicanelo
The Eastern Bluebird is a small blue thrush of open country in eastern North America, Mexico and Central America. Bermuda has its own subspecies, but in the Caribbean it is a rare vagrant, with a handful of records from the northern Bahamas and western Cuba. Fossil remains from a sinkhole on Abaco show that the species once lived in the Bahamas.
Voice
The call is a soft, falling tew-lee or chur-wee, often given in flight. The song is a short series of soft, whistled phrases such as chee-chur-churlee.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–21 cm, compact, with a fairly large round head, a short thin black bill and long wings. The male is bright blue above; throat, breast and flanks are rusty orange, belly and undertail white. The female is greyer, with blue mainly on wings and tail, a white eye-ring and a dull orange-brown breast. Juveniles are grey-brown with white spots on back and breast and blue edges to wings and tail. It often perches upright on a wire or post and drops to the ground to catch insects.
Confusion species
Indigo Bunting Passerina cyanea and Blue Grosbeak Passerina caerulea are also blue but have a conical seed-eater's bill and no orange breast; females and young are brown without blue wings. American Robin Turdus migratorius also has an orange breast but is much larger, with grey-brown upperparts and a yellow bill.
Habitat
Open country with scattered trees: pastures, orchards, forest edges, open pine woodland, parks and golf courses. It hunts insects on the ground from a low perch and eats many berries in winter. It nests in tree cavities and nest boxes. Caribbean records have come from pine forest, gardens and open farmland.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
A vagrant to the Bahamas, with records from Grand Bahama, Abaco (Elbow Cay) and Harbour Island, and to western Cuba (including near San Diego de los Baños and in the Zapata Swamp). Outside the region it breeds from south-eastern Canada and the eastern United States through Mexico and Central America to Nicaragua, and on Bermuda. Northern birds move to the southern United States and northern Mexico in winter.
How and when to look
A record is most likely in winter in the northern Bahamas or western Cuba, after a spell of cold northerly winds. Colour and posture are distinctive for the species; photographs are useful for documentation.
Conservation status
Not globally threatened. In North America the species recovered after a steep decline in the twentieth century, helped by large-scale nest-box programmes. In the Caribbean a very rare vagrant.
Scientific name
Sialia sialis | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Motacilla Sialis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Sialia was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Sialia comes from Greek sialis, an unidentified bird mentioned by Athenaeus and Hesychius, so called from its cry. sialis is Greek sialis, an unidentified bird mentioned by Athenaeus and Hesychius, so called from its cry. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Carolina, USA.