{"id":97562,"date":"2021-04-27T05:45:33","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T11:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=97562"},"modified":"2021-04-27T09:08:34","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:08:34","slug":"female-yellow-headed-blackbird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/27\/female-yellow-headed-blackbird\/","title":{"rendered":"Female Yellow-headed Blackbird"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four blackbird posts in a row. You may wonder if I’ve gone daft but there’s a method to my madness. I hope.<\/p>\n

Three days ago I posted photos of a male Yellow-headed Blackbird. I had no master plan in mind when on the next day I posted photos of both a male and a female Red-winged Blackbird with an explanation of how to identify females. Then yesterday, when I posted more photos of another male Yellow-headed Blackbird, blog follower Lyle Anderson made a comment that implied the obvious question.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 “I glanced through your past photos of Yellow-headed Blackbirds and couldn\u2019t find a female.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I interpret Lyle’s implied question to go something like this: “You’ve now posted photos of three of the four blackbird species\/sex combinations found in your area so why have you left out female Yellow-headed Blackbirds?”<\/p>\n

That implied question niggled at me, thus today’s post.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I’m including this photo of a displaying male Yellow-headed Blackbird for the sake of comparison to the female below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I looked through my image files and found a couple of photos of this female Yellow-headed Blackbird taken at Bear River MBR on May 11, 2015. Females are more shy than males so my photos of them are extremely limited.<\/p>\n

Females are much more muted in plumage than males. They’re mostly brown (sometimes appearing dull black) with yellow primarily on upper breast, throat and neck and a yellow eyebrow stripe. Subtle white streaking often merges yellow breast with brown abdomen. Females of this species are the only New World blackbird females with yellow on the head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Another photo of the same female taken a few seconds later when she moved to a more attractive setting. This one isn’t quite as sharp as the first one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

OK, no more photos of blackbirds on Feathered Photography, at least for a while. My job here is done. And Lyle, you rascal you, look what you instigated…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

PS – Recently I mentioned that I bought a new rain guage this spring. Yesterday that thing was finally put to good use. We had .9″ (9\/10ths”) of rain by about 5 PM and it rained some more after that. Rain was literally pouring off the roof of my camping trailer. Some areas of the valley got 1.25″ of rain and the nearby mountains got about a foot of new snow. <\/em><\/p>\n

For some of you that may not sound like a lot but in this desert, and in the current severe drought, it’s huge! <\/em>I’m anxious to check my guage again this morning after it gets a little brighter out there. Maybe we got even more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Addendum: We did. This morning it reads 1.1″.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four blackbird posts in a row. You may wonder if I’ve gone daft but there’s a method to my madness.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97564,"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":[338,334,897],"tags":[1936,49,679,5726,311,5725],"class_list":["post-97562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-birds","category-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-agelaius-phoeniceus","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-field-marks","tag-how-to-identify-female-yellow-headed-blackbirds","tag-utah-2","tag-yellow-head-blackbird"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/yellow-headed-blackbird-9752-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pnA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97562","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=97562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}