Yellow-headed Blackbird, Xanthocephalus
xanthocephalus
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![]() The spectacular male Yellow-headed Blackbird illustrates the kinship between temperate zone blackbirds, and the tropical orioles, cousins within the icterid family. The species nests in the interior of marshes in the Great Plains and Mountain states and provinces of the US and Canada. A good spot to see them nesting is along Marble Hot Springs Road in Sierra Valley, north of Lake Tahoe in California, which passes through an extensive marsh in the center of the largest alpine meadow in North America; all the photos on this page come from this locale. |
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![]() An adult male carrying food to the nest. |
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![]() This year-old male resembles an adult female in spring, but has more extensive yellow on the head, and shows some black feathers where a female would be solid dark brown. I don't yet have a photo of an adult female; it's the males that are displaying and showing themselves in the nesting colony along Marble Hot Springs Road. |
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![]() The juvenile shows a cinnamon head where the adult would be yellow, and two prominent cinnamon-buff wingbars. |
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![]() Of the Yellow-headed Blackbird, Jaramillo and Burke in their authoritative New World Blackbirds say "Under no circumstances could one call its song beautiful" and liken the sound to that made by "the opening of a rusty gate." I always look forward to hearing this grating sound on my annual visits to Sierra Valley, as it presages a view of a nesting colony of this most beautiful of North American blackbirds. |
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