File:Handbook of birds of the western United States including the great plains, great basin, Pacific slope, and lower Rio Grande valley (1908) (14725556896).jpg

Identifier: handbookofbir00bail (find matches)
Title: Handbook of birds of the western United States including the great plains, great basin, Pacific slope, and lower Rio Grande valley
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Bailey, Florence Merriam, 1863-1948
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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a distinguished personage. GENUS XANTHOCEPHAIiUS. 497. Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus (Bonap.). Yellow- headed Blackbird. Bill decidedly shorter than head, its depth through base less than halfthe length of the exposed culmen ; culmen straight, flattened ; sexes dif-ferent in size; wing long and pointed ; tarsus nearly one fourth as longas wing; claws large, lateral ones reaching beyond base of middle one.Adult male in summer: black except for yellow or orange of head, throat,and chest, and white patch on wings. A dult male in winter: similar, butyellow of top of head obscured by brownish tips to feathers. Adultfemale: brownish, throat and chest dull yellowish, breast mixed withwhite. Young male in first winter: similar to female, but larger and deepercolored. Male : length (skins) 8.60-10.10, wing 5.32-5.73, tail 3.66-4.27,bill .83-.99. Female: length (skins) 7.50-8.30, wing 4.33-4.64, tail 3.10-3.45, bill .77-.83. Distribution. — Western North America from British Columbia and Hud-
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YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRDS, ORIOLES, ETC. 289 son Bay, south across Mexican tablelands and east to Wisconsin, Indiana,and Texas; casually to Ontario and the eastern United States. Nest. — Fastened to tule stems or rushes 10 to 30 inches above thewater of a marsh, made of coarse marsh grasses, tules, reeds, and rushes,woven together and lined with finer grasses, ^ggs: 3 to 5, from grayishto greenish white, profusely and evenly blotched and speckled withbrowns and grays. Food. — Small seeds, such as wild rice, and, in cultivated districts, occa-sionally corn, oats, and wheat; but mainly insects, especially grasshoppersand locusts, together with their eggs and larvae. From their breeding grounds in the sloughs and tule marshes theyellow-headed blackbirds scatter out and wander over the whole ofthe western plains country, appearing in flocks with grackles, red-wings, or cowbirds in the characteristic hordes of the fall migration,or in flocks by themselves in fields and meadows

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