Life and Wildlife along the Little Buffalo River

We went to King’s River Falls Nature area near Boston, AR. last Friday March 30th early in the morning. First of all, there were some pretty large fires along AR Highway 16 (part of the 11 fires that the Forest Service set intentionally (Prescribed Burns) to rid the forest floor of fuel and prevent a larger more destructive fire and enhance the understory for more beneficial species of plants for wildlife.

After a 20 minute ride north of AR 16, we reached Mitchell Creek near the junction of the Kings River. The Kings headwaters are near Boston AR. It was noticeable that the area was about 10 days behind in the “green up” of spring than Parthenon in Newton County to the east. Those are some very high and cold mountain tops in Madison County. The Nature Area has a parking area for 4-6 cars and a well marked trail…

Everything is late this spring; flowering trees, wildflowers, general green up, etc. The Eastern Bluebirds got a late start paring up and attracting each other and they are just now working diligently on nest construction. They usually work on this early in the day but it has been in the low 20s each morning. It was 45F by 9:30 this morning and they began working.

They worked non-stopped for an hour. The female leaving the box to gather grass and pine needles. The male accompanies her in flight but does no nest building himself; after she places the grass in the box, he flies down to check out the progress. He often stands on the nest box while she is inside.

The following photos taken today show about 3 nest building trips. They were taken with a Canon 50D with a Canon EF400 f/5.6 Lens at 1/2000th of a second in…