Tricolored Blackbird

Tricolored Blackbird
Vanden Road, Vacaville, California, USA
April 2019
Member of the Blackbird Family
§A Merl of Blackbirds§
★North America's Most Colonial Landbird★ (see below to find out what that means)

~true bird fact~ To encourage their fledglings to leave the nest, parents will arrive with food, but then, instead of feeding the babies, immediately fly off again. This encourages the young to follow. Good parenting? Bad parenting? Sound off in the comments.

Sings badly, but enthusiastically
Can say something off the cuff that just sounds like a well known quote
Pays attention to keeping their white patch looking really white. If it were mine it would probably have a stain on it in seconds. How do they do it?



How Endangered Are They? Classified as 'Threatened' by the IUCN (that's the middle one). There's a lot of disagreement on how many of these nice birds there are now, but everyone seems to agree they're in quite a lot of danger. In my research, I saw numbers between 145,000 and 300,00, depending what year and who was estimating, and everyone seems to think numbers are still declining pretty precipitously. A significant loss, regardless, for a bird that used to number in the millions. Why so endangered? Well, like many birds that have been wiped out (think Passenger Pigeons), they are colonial breeders- meaning that their breeding colonies are relatively few, but in extremely high numbers. Descriptions exist of million-bird flocks. This kind of breeding helped protect colonies from predation. However, now that the marshy habitat they breed in is so regularly lost to development, there are few places that can support such great numbers of birds. The group I observed was probably less than a hundred. Many of the few places that would support them are farm land, which get harvested regularly, leading to massive causalities. Combine this with their small range (they are basically only in California's central valley), and you have a recipe for disaster. Still, many people are trying to save them. They're a 'priority bird' for the Audubon society, and they have their own webpage and conservation program over at UC Davis. Let's all cross our fingers that we can get it together for the Tricolored Blackbirds

For comparison purposes, this is a Red-winged Blackbird, a close relative. They flock together with Tricoloreds and sometimes these guys even have yellow epaulets to make you even more confused. You're looking for bright white. Also, their call is much different.