{"id":12866,"date":"2013-03-01T06:20:34","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T13:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=12866"},"modified":"2013-03-01T06:20:34","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T13:20:34","slug":"displaying-yellow-headed-blackbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/01\/displaying-yellow-headed-blackbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Displaying Yellow-headed Blackbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the month of March everyone – for me a psychological barrier between the depths of winter and the promise of spring.\u00a0 It’s supposed to be almost 50 degrees today and that has me thinking of spring\u00a0birds, warmer temperatures, liquid water and some actual greens in the landscape.<\/p>\n

By the Ides of March (only two weeks from now) male Yellow-headed Blackbirds will begin arriving in Utah\u00a0and the females a week or two later.\u00a0 Almost immediately the males will begin their raucous calling as they compete for territories and later for females.<\/p>\n

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This male was defending breeding territory in May.\u00a0 Males display two primary types of song spreads – the Symmetrical Song Spread and the Asymmetrical Song Spread.\u00a0\u00a0Each song spread is accompanied\u00a0 by a distinct song type.\u00a0 Here’s a link<\/strong><\/span><\/a> to one of them.<\/p>\n

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In this sequence of images the male is displaying the Symmetrical Sound Spread where the bird spreads its wings to expose the white patches and\u00a0the tail is lowered and spread.\u00a0 During this display he localizes\u00a0with the song called the\u00a0Accenting Song.<\/p>\n

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Once a display begins it almost seems like the bird loses voluntary control of its actions and the display must be completed before it regains control (my unscientific observation).<\/p>\n

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During part of this display the head is directed upward at 30-45 degrees.<\/p>\n

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This behavior is often difficult for the bird to complete without losing its balance on the typically spindly perches they prefer.\u00a0 The whole thing is quite entertaining to watch.<\/p>\n

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In this last shot in the series\u00a0the display is just about complete.<\/p>\n

The Symmetrical Song Spread is usually performed in response to other males flying over their territory or at the arrival of a new female.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Welcome to the month of March everyone – for me a psychological barrier between the depths of winter and the promise of spring.\u00a0 It’s supposed to be almost 50 degrees today and that has me thinking of spring\u00a0birds, warmer temperatures, liquid water and some actual greens in the landscape. By the Ides of March (only two weeks from now) male Yellow-headed Blackbirds will begin arriving in Utah\u00a0and the females a week or two later.\u00a0 Almost immediately the males will begin their raucous calling as they compete for territories and later for females.   This male was defending breeding territory in May.\u00a0 Males display two primary types of song spreads – the Symmetrical Song Spread and the Asymmetrical Song Spread.\u00a0\u00a0Each song spread is accompanied\u00a0 by a distinct song type.\u00a0 Here’s a link to one of them.     In this sequence of images the male is displaying the Symmetrical Sound Spread where the bird spreads its wings to expose the white patches and\u00a0the tail is lowered and spread.\u00a0 During this display he localizes\u00a0with the song called the\u00a0Accenting Song.     Once a display begins it almost seems like the bird loses voluntary control of its actions and the display must be completed before it regains control (my unscientific observation).     During part of this display the head is directed upward at 30-45 degrees.     This behavior is often difficult for the bird to complete without losing its balance on the typically spindly perches they prefer.\u00a0 The whole thing is quite entertaining to watch.  …<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,395,897],"tags":[1299,680,1298,211,289,901,311,1297,898],"class_list":["post-12866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-accenting-song","tag-display","tag-ides-of-march","tag-male","tag-song","tag-symmetrical-song-spread","tag-utah-2","tag-xantho","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-3lw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}