Few eggs exceed in beauty those of the Red-winged Black-bird. The background is a pale bluish green of great delicacy, and upon this occur sharply-defined spots, blotches, marblings, traceries, and “pen-work” of dark sepia, purplish black, drab, and heliotrope purple. Or a spot of color appears to be deeply imbedded in the fine, strong texture of the shell, and carries about it an aura of diminishing color. Occasionally, the whole egg is suffused with pale brownish, or, more rarely, it is entirely unmarked.
Incubation lasts fourteen days and the young are ready to leave the nest in a little over two weeks more. They are frizzly, helpless, complaining little creatures, but if they cannot fly well they can clamber, and they cling with the grip of terrified monkeys.
Our Northwestern Red-wings are normally migratory, but they also winter with us irregularly; and this habit appears to be gaining ground as the guarantee of food becomes more certain. Numbers of them subsist in both Seattle and Tacoma in the vicinity of grain elevators, where they will have comfortable sustenance until such time as the augmented English Sparrows decree death to all native birds.
No. 21.
YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD.
A. O. U. No. 497. Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus (Bonap.).
Description.—Adult male: Head, neck all around, and breast orange yellow; lores and feathers skirting eyes and bill, black; a double white patch on folded wing formed by greater and lesser coverts, but interrupted by black of bastard wing; usually a little yellow about vent and on tibiæ; the remaining plumage black, dull or subdued, and turning brown on wing-tips and tail. Female: Dark brown; line over eye, throat, and upper breast dull yellow. Length 10.00-11.00 (254-279.4); wing 5.30-5.60 (134.6-142.2); tail 4.00-4.50 (101.6-114.3); bill .90 (22); tarsus 1.25 (31.8). Female smaller, length 8.00-9.50 (203.2-241.3).
Recognition Marks.—Robin size; yellow head and breast; white wing-patches.
Nesting.—Nest: a bulky but usually neat fabric of dried grasses, reeds or cat-tails lashed to growing ones; 5-7 inches in diameter outside by 5-8 deep; inside deeply cupped. Eggs: 3-6, grayish green spotted or clouded with reddish brown, rarely scrawled as in Agelaius; elongate ovate in shape. Av. size, 1.10 × .75 (27.9 × 19). Season: May or June; one brood.
General Range.—Western North America from Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas to the Pacific Coast, and from British Columbia and the Saskatchewan River southward to the Valley of Mexico. Accidental in Middle and Atlantic States.
Range in Washington.—Of local distribution in eastern Washington chiefly east of the Columbia River. Rare or casual west of the Cascades. Summer resident.
Authorities.—[“Yellow-headed Blackbird,” Johnson, Rep. Gov. W. T. 1884 (1885), 22.] Bendire, Life Hist. N. A. Birds, Vol. II. 1895, p. 447. Ss^r. J.
Specimens.—Prov. C. P.
Oh, well for the untried nerves that the Yellow-headed Blackbird sings by day, when the sun is shining brightly, and there are no supporting signs of a convulsion of Nature! Verily, if love affected us all in similar fashion, the world would be a merry mad-house. The Yellow-head is an extraordinary person—you are prepared for that once you catch sight of his resplendent gold-upon-black livery—but his avowal of the tender passion is a revelation of incongruity. Grasping a reed firmly in both fists, he leans forward, and, after premonitory gulps and gasps, succeeds in pressing out a wail of despairing agony which would do credit to a dying catamount. When you have recovered from the first shock, you strain the eyes in astonishment that a mere bird, and a bird in love at that, should give rise to such a cataclysmic sound. But he can do it again, and his neighbor across the way can do as well—or worse. When your nerves have somewhat recovered, modesty overcomes you, and you retire, not without a chastened sense of privilege that you have lived to hear the Yellow-head pop the question,—“and also you lived after.”
The expiring Romeo cry is quite the finest of the Xanthocephaline repertory, but there are others not devoid of interest. Ok-eh-ah-oh-oo is a musical series of startling brilliancy, comparable in a degree to the yodelling of a street urchin,—a succession of sounds of varying pitches, produced as tho by altering the oral capacity. It may be noted thus:
The last note is especially mellow and pleasing, recalling to some ears the liquid gurgle of the Bobolink, to which, of course, our bird is distinctly related.
