{"id":136954,"date":"2023-06-02T05:57:11","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T11:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=136954"},"modified":"2023-06-02T14:48:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T20:48:09","slug":"yellow-headed-blackbird-mystery-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2023\/06\/02\/yellow-headed-blackbird-mystery-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Yellow-headed Blackbird Mystery Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, following a surprisingly unproductive visit to Bear River MBR, I stopped at a parking lot to stow my photo gear and pull my driver’s side mirror back into place before the long drive home. But a bizarre-acting male Yellow-headed Blackbird delayed those activities for quite a while.<\/p>\n

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He landed right in front of me and almost immediately laid down in the grass.<\/p>\n

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He repeatedly did the same thing after getting back up and walking to different nearby places. While he was laying in this spot he…<\/p>\n

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stood up, turned his body to a different angle and laid right back down again.<\/p>\n

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Several times he flattened his body to the ground as much as he could and rubbed his face into the dried grasses.<\/p>\n

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Here he’s doing it again, this time and several other times he appeared to be burying his bill in the ground.<\/p>\n

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He also roused a couple of times as he was walking from place to place. He didn’t appear to be looking for insects or other food.<\/p>\n

He repeated each of these activities for nearly 12 minutes before eventually flying off. At the time I thought he might be anting<\/a><\/span><\/span> but when I got home I zoomed in on dozens of my high resolution photos of him (especially when he was squatted down) looking for ants, on him or on the ground, and never spotted a single one.<\/p>\n

Other than these strange behaviors he appeared to be perfectly healthy. At times he would show appropriate alertness toward other birds in the area and when he flew off he appeared to do so normally.<\/p>\n

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The only other thought I had that might explain his behavior (other than anting) was that it might be related to the fact that he was beginning to molt. In some of my photos the bare skin on his head looked even more patchy-red, scaly and irritated than it does here. But I’m having a hard time connecting molting to these behaviors. Could the irritated skin be caused by mites or other ectoparasites?<\/p>\n

I’ve spent a lot of time around birds over the years and this combination of behaviors was a new one for me, for any species. Any thoughts about what might explain it?<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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I’ve spent a lot of time around birds over the years and this combination of behaviors was a new one for me, for any species. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136956,"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":[338,5,334,395,1421],"tags":[6932,49,6931,211,6933,1579,6930,899,898],"class_list":["post-136954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-miscellaneous","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds-blackbirds","tag-anting","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-laying-down","tag-male","tag-mites","tag-molting","tag-strange-behaviors","tag-xanthocephalus-xanthocephalus","tag-yellow-headed-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/yellow-headed-blackbird-0107-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-zCW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136954","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=136954"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137008,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136954\/revisions\/137008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}