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D & D Wildlife Photography
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The male Yellow-headed Blackbird is best identified by the bright yellow hood and black body with a white shoulder patch showing in both perched and flying positions. The female's coloring is more subdued. She can be best identified by her duller-yellow supercilium, throat, and breast. The rest of her body is grayish-brown, and she has white streaks extending down her breast. Juveniles are similar in appearance to the females. Both male and female have sharply pointed black bills.Insects are the favorite food of the Yellow-headed Blackbird. It also forages on the ground to eat seeds, spiders, grass, and forb seeds. This blackbird can be seen foraging in fields, meadows, ranches, agricultural areas, and farms.
The Yellow-headed Blackbird is found in freshwater marshes during the summer. They particularly like to live amongst cattails, tule, and bulrush. During migration and over the winter months, the Yellow-headed Blackbird is found in open, cultivated lands, in fields, and in pastures.
Nest is of water-soaked reeds and grasses lined with a softer material, placed in vegetation up to seven feet above water. Lays three to five eggs, pale greenish-grey with dark marks.
Length: 9 1/2 inches
Habitat: Summers in marshes, winters in grain fields.
Voice: Song is short, choked notes, interspersed with a long buzz; call is a low "krrt".
Other Behavior: Yellow-headed Blackbirds are strongly territorial during the breeding season. They prefer nesting in marshes above water two to four feet deep. Their nests are usually clumped in a different part of the marsh from the Red-Winged Blackbird who prefer nesting over shallower water. Marsh Wrens occasionally destroy Yellow-headed Blackbird nests, so the territorial male excludes them from their nesting areas. .
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