BLACKBIRDS, ETC.: YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD 645 
from a distance of thirty or forty feet with a loud rattling of his wings. 
As a preliminary the head was then bent down, the feet lowered and 
the tail dropped while he flew slowly toward his mate. The wings 
were brought down with a slow swinging motion and were not closed 
at all, so that the white markings on the coverts were fully displayed, 
the whole performance being reminiscent of a similar wing display of 
the Mockingbird.” 
By May 28, nest-building was going on everywhere, the females 
doing all the work. “The nests examined were all suspended in grow¬ 
ing clumps of green tules (<Scirpus occidentalis) over water from one 
to three feet deep and were in danger of being overturned by the unequal 
rate of growth of the stems, which frequently thrust one side of the nest 
high above the other. The adults seemed to take no steps to alter 
this condition beyond constructing their baskets with deep cup-shaped 
hollows to hold the eggs in if possible” (1920a, pp. 403-404). 
In a Minnesota breeding colony studied by Dr. T. S. Roberts, 
the nests were hung two or three feet above the water and made of 
water-soaked grass blades, which, being soft and pliable, were easily 
woven, and when dry contracted and made a compact, firm, and 
securely attached basket-nest. So much experience, skill, and judgment 
were required in the selection of material and site that, out of sixty- 
two nests, twenty-eight were abandoned, almost all because of some 
fault of construction or situation (1909, pp. 371-389). 
In New Mexico during the fall migration, September, 1901, large 
mixed flocks of Cowbirds, Red-wings, and Yellow-heads often stopped 
in the cottonwoods on the Bolles Ranch, near Carlsbad, where we could 
observe them, and on the morning of the eighteenth thousands of Yellow- 
heads suddenly appeared, filling the trees and barbed wire fences, and 
making a loud clamor. After a short rest they rose to fly on, their 
white wing patches flashing out so clearly that no mistake could be 
made as to the clan one was joining. 
From Mesilla Park, Professor Merrill wrote, “The Yellow-headed 
Blackbirds are resident as a rule, but the exceptional cold in the winter 
of 1912-13 sent a good many of them farther south for a few weeks 
. . . vast numbers of them nest a short way southwest of Mesilla 
Park in a tule-filled marshy sink. From there they spread out on the 
alfalfa fields by the thousands and are entirely successful in keeping 
the grasshoppers under control. In fall they gather in huge flocks 
and fly about wherever food may be found, being perfectly at home in 
any corral or field. It is then they go out upon the mesa, feeding in 
true rotating fashion upon the seeds they may find. In spring they 
are accused of taking sowed grain. Their summer’s work makes up 
for this, however. While nothing can be more raucous than the note 
