HomeBack The Howland Picture Pages: Yellow-headed Blackbird

Page by Royce
Last update: $Date: 2004/03/01 23:22:35 $ (UTC)

The Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) is a particularly striking Blackbird. Seeing a male perched up on a reed, there is no doubt exactly what you are looking at. These marshland inhabitants are not as common nor broad in range as their somewhat smaller cousin the Red-winged Blackbird, but are still fairly easy to encounter in southern Alberta. While I have described the voicing of the Red-winged Blackbird on its web page as "raucous", my Thayer birding software's entry on the Yellow-headed Blackbird is much more blunt -- "Arguably one of the worst sounding 'songs' of the avian world!"

Resources where you can find out more:

Here is a shot of a Yellow-headed Blackbird, taken near Bruce Lake, Alberta on July 12, 2003. We were out on a prairie drive, checking out numerous locations in the Irricana area, when we spotted this bird apparently by itself amongst a group of Red-winged Blackbirds.

This shot was taken with my digiscoping setup, the third configuration, at a distance of about 75m. (Compare to the digiscoped shot below, which used a previous equipment combination, and was taken at not much greater a distance.)

EXIF 2.2 photo info:

 

  • 320 x 416 true color
  • Exposure time: 1/156.10
  • F-stop: 6.5
  • ISO speed: 100
  • Focal length: 17.7000 (plus Pentax PF-80EDA scope & William Optics DCL-28 eyepiece)
  • Exposure mode: Auto
  • White balance: Auto
  • Exposure bias: 0.0000
  • Metering mode: Pattern
  • Exposure program: Aperture priority
  • Gain control: None
  • Contrast: Normal
  • Saturation: High
  • Sharpness: Hard
  • Camera make: NIKON
  • Camera model: E4500

I captured this Yellow-headed Blackbird at a prairie wetland location in north-east Calgary one Saturday morning (May 31, 2003). My main purpose at this site was to find a Fulvous Whistling-Duck, at which goal I was successful. While there I found a number of other wetland species including this Blackbird and a number of Red-winged Blackbirds.

This shot was taken with a digiscoping rig (the second configuration) at a distance of probably around 90m.

EXIF 2.2 photo info:

 

  • 320 x 464 true color
  • Exposure time: 1/219.60
  • F-stop: 3.9
  • ISO speed: 100
  • Focal length: 21.0000 (plus Pentax PF-80EDA scope & ScopeTronix MaxView 40 eyepiece)
  • Exposure mode: Auto
  • White balance: Auto
  • Exposure bias: 0.0000
  • Metering mode: Center Weighted
  • Exposure program: Normal
  • Gain control: None
  • Contrast: Normal
  • Saturation: High
  • Sharpness: Hard
  • Camera make: NIKON
  • Camera model: E5700

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