It doesn't happen every year. Since Mrs. Geotripper and I have been birdwatching, we've found this incredibly beautiful bird only 10 times since 2018. So it's always a thrill when we catch sight of one. It's the Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus).
The birds are found in wetland environments all across the western states, but they generally aren't abundant in California according to the e-bird sightings maps. In our region they are generally migrating to breeding grounds elsewhere, mainly in the high plains of the Midwest and Canada.
I've only seen the species twice in Stanislaus County. Our best luck has been a particular stretch of road on the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge in Merced County a few miles south of Turlock. There's a 2.5-mile auto tour through some of the wetlands and we've seen the birds there six times over the last six years. Given that record we decided to give it a shot last week, and we were thrilled to catch at least nine of them preening and singing among the reeds.
One of the more unique traits of the Yellow-headed Blackbird is its song. It seems kind of like a trade-off with the beauty of the bird. It's described in several ways, but the screeching of torn metal works best for me. See what you think in the video that we captured...
Spring is a great time to see many of my favorite birds, which seem to be predominately yellow: Yellow Warblers, Bullock's Orioles, Hooded Orioles, Black-headed Grosbeaks (actually more orange I guess), and the Western Kingbirds. These Yellow-headed Blackbirds were special.
Yesterday was pretty exciting as such things go. I started the morning with a discovery of Bullocks Orioles on the Tuolumne River, but Mrs. Geotripper wasn't with me, and she wanted to see some birds as well, so in the late afternoon we headed south into Merced County to have a look at the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. We hoped to repeat our February sighting of a White-tailed Kite, but other than that, I wasn't sure what to expect. The Arctic migrants have bugged out already, so we mainly expected the resident species of ducks, blackbirds and shorebirds. In the back of my mind, though, there was the hope of seeing a Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus).
We don't see these beautiful birds very often. They haven't even been reported in Stanislaus County as of yet this year, and there have been only a few in Merced County, mainly at the Merced NWR, and the main unit of the San Luis NWR. We've seen them twice previously, and in the same place: along the auto-tour of the Bear Creek Unit. I had reason to hope, and I wasn't disappointed! We passed dozens and dozens of Red-winged Blackbirds but I finally saw one that seemed bigger. It was silhouetted in the sun, but I was pretty sure I saw a flash of yellow around the head. I zoomed in and confirmed it; it was a Yellow-headed Blackbird!
We ultimately saw six or seven of them, all males. It's possible they were guarding their territories, with the females hidden on their nests, but they could also just be passing through. The birds spend the winter in Mexico and Texas and move north as far as Canada to breed.
The have a call that must be heard to be believed. If you were hoping for a lilting melody like their relatives the Red-winged Blackbirds, or say, a meadowlark, you are going to be bitterly disappointed. We tried to capture the sound but did succeed. Try to imagine the grating sound of metal on metal, like a damaged car door that doesn't shut right and scrapes the frame. You can hear it here: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Yellow-headed_Blackbird/sounds.
It's true that we were just there last week, and that I posted pictures of the Yellow-headed Blackbirds (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) only a week ago, but we went back to the Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge the next weekend, and this time the sun was out, and the birds were a little closer to the car. We got better pictures this time.
They were in the same area as before, but we saw five of them this time, but no females (yet). The females are more brown in color and have only a bit of yellow coloration around the head. They have a yellow breast.
The Bear Creek Unit is part of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge, and the short auto tour is readily available from Highway 165 (Lander Ave) south of Turlock. The route is only 2.5 miles long, but several walking trails are available.
The sunset was just spectacular as we rounded the final bend of the auto-tour. I'm a sucker the pretty ones like this.
The Bear Creek Unit of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge gets a great deal less attention than some of the other birding "hotspots" in Stanislaus and Merced Counties. According to the eBird Hotspots map, it's been visited 88 times by birders who took the time to report their sightings. They've seen 150 species at the unit. Compare that to the nearby Merced National Wildlife Refuge which has had around 2,000 reports over the years (and around 225 species). The main unit of the San Luis Refuge where the visitor center and Tule Elk compound is located has more than 800 reports, and 200+ species.
I'm pretty sure that the size of the unit has something to do with the disparity. The auto-tour at Bear Creek is only 2.5 miles long and encompasses a much smaller area. The Merced auto-tour is more than five miles long. The pools in the interior at Merced allow for more isolation for the migratory geese and cranes that might want to avoid auto traffic and human beings with cameras (or guns). I have seen few of the Snow Geese or Sandhill Cranes during my visits to Bear Creek. Indeed, it is often an afterthought to stop there at sunset after we have spent hours exploring the Merced NWR or the San Luis Unit and visitor center. But still, it has its charms, and I've seen some interesting species when we've paid a visit.
A year ago, on March 18, 2017, birders reported that Yellow-headed Blackbirds had returned to the Bear Creek Unit. I was curious, having never seen the species before, so I headed out and much to my delight, I found a few, and posted photos last year last April. I was a little disappointed with the pictures because the birds were hiding among the reeds and I couldn't get a clear open shot.
So shoot forward a year to March 18, 2018. No one this year has yet reported seeing Yellow-headed Blackbirds at the Bear Creek Unit (7 visits so far), but I couldn't help but think about them. We had spent most of the afternoon at the main Waterfowl auto-tour at San Luis (and having an adventure with a coyote), but the sun was still up, and we decided to give the Bear Creek auto-tour a whirl. There were thousands upon thousands of Red-winged Blackbirds in residence, making quite the cacophony to catch the attention of the females. As we drove near, they would take flight in a panic, but from a distance I noticed that there were a couple of blackbirds that could care less that we were coming. I realized with a start that they had yellow heads! We ultimately saw at least four of them, although there could have been plenty more down in the reeds.
Between Fresno and Stockton this year the Yellow-headed Blackbirds have only been noted at the Los Banos Unit of the San Luis NWR, the Merced NWR, and the Bear Creek Unit. I'm hoping to see more of them in the surrounding areas soon as more arrive.
This was an absolute first for me. We've been going to the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge multiple times over the last two years or so, and not once have we seen a Yellow-headed Blackbird (Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) along the way. Yesterday we saw perhaps a dozen of them. I'm pretty sure they weren't there on our previous visits, because they are really hard to miss, even from a distance.
See? Hard to miss.
It appears that these birds aren't seen all that often around here, as they are usually migrating through the area on their way to breeding grounds farther to the north in Nevada as far as southern Canada. They winter in Mexico, New Mexico, and Texas. There are a handful of breeding colonies in our Great Valley, although they were once more plentiful before 90% of the valley wetlands were plowed over.
I hope I'll have another chance to catch these beautiful birds a little more in the open. They were doing a good job of staying just behind the reeds, so that every picture had one piece or another of the bird missing. If they weren't hiding, they were flying overhead. I saw four at once on two different occasions in addition to the perching individuals, so we saw as many as a dozen of them in total.
It would be interesting if they were breeding right there at San Luis.
