14 T-H-E*A‘U DD UzB ON |B Uda Lhe 
The Family Icteridae* 
By ANNA C. AMES 
2. Yellow-headed Blackbird: The Yellow-headed Blackbird looks as 
though he had dipped all of his head, neck, and chest in a keg of bright 
yellow paint. Otherwise he is black except for the patches of white on his 
wings. Indeed he is striking in a beauty that he neither is able to hide nor 
wishes to hide. His mate 1s also unusual in appearance, for though she is 
largely grayish brown with a yellow throat, cheeks, and superciliary line, 
her dark breast is streaked with distinct white lines. She is smaller than 
the male bird. The young are like the female but have the head dark 
brown. The year-old male in its first breeding plumage is brown with a 
yellow face, throat and bib. 
Some consider the Yellow-headed Blackbird the Beau Brummell of black- 
birds. Certainly the yellow-heads are always decidedly noticeable, whether 
one sees them in migration as I have done in Nebraska in a flock of from 
forty to sixty male birds settling on a flat piece of ground to feed, or 
merely observes a few birds from a passing car. 
This bird is one that seems to be extending its territory northward. 
Certainly I was greatly surprised one summer to observe a flock of a dozen 
ov more close to the hotel where I was staying on the north shore of Lake 
Superior. I was told by an old resident that they had never before been 
seen there. They assuredly add color to any landscape. These birds breed 
from western Canada south to northern Mexico and east to Wisconsin and 
Indiana; they winter in the southwestern United States to Louisiana and 
south to southern Mexico. 
The Yellow-headed Blackbirds are pre-eminently birds of the Great 
Plains, where they are a conspicuous feature of swamps and sloughs. 
I have observed them. particularly in the Dakotas, in Iowa, and in Nebraska. 
Wherever they breed they congregate in large numbers sometimes composed 
of thousands of birds, as different colonies often breed in close proximity to 
one another. They are very loyal to their home-site, returning year after 
year. Even though the surroundings may have undergone great and 
uncongenial changes, the birds leave only with the drying up of the marsh. 
They are very closely restricted to their breeding haunts, though they 
forage far afield from them, visiting corncribs, grainfields, barnyards, and 
hog pastures. In this habit they resemble the Cowbird more than they do 
the red-wing. 
In most of his ways, however, the yellow-head resembles the red-wing, 
hanging his nest in the reeds of the marshes, gathering in large flocks after 
the nesting season, moving to the uplands to feed on grain and weed seed, 
and returning at evening to the roosting places in the marshes. 
The typical yellow-head’s nest is woven of rushes around upright 
canes, and is a large, firm, inverted-cone-shaped, basket-like affair. It is 
*This study by Mrs. Ames, begun in the June issue, will be continued in 
succeeding numbers until the entire family has been described. 
