YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD 
By THOMAS S. ROBERTS 
YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRDS, AND THEIR NEST 
Photographed by Dr. T. S. Roberts, Minneapolis, Minn. 
One invariable condition is necessary to induce it to establish a 
summer residence, and that is an abundant and permanent water-supply, 
and associated with this must be just the kind of vegetation that is suited 
to its rather particular tastes. Preference is given usually to a swamp 
or slough that is very wet and having more or less open water ; never 
meadows or marshes that are simply damp and subject to drying out. 
The tule beds of the valleys of the Rockies, the quill-reed brakes of 
the North, and the flag swamps of the South are alike acceptable. 
Wherever the Yellowhead breeds it congregates in colonies, and these 
assemblages are often of vast proportions. It is very loyal to its home- 
The National Association of Audubon Societies 
Educational Leaflet No. 57 
The Yellow-headed Blackbird is preeminently a native of the Great 
Plains, and, although in some parts of its range it invades regions not 
strictly prairie, it belongs by right to the vast treeless plains of the in- 
terior, and to the sparsely wooded areas immediately adjoining on the 
east and west. Over all this region it ranges, breeding from the extreme 
northern part of Mexico in the south to the Saskatchewan Valley. 
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