Identifier: birdlore14nati (find matches)
Title: Bird-lore
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals
Subjects: Birds -- Periodicals Birds -- Conservation Periodicals
Publisher: New York, National Association of Audubon Societies
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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the Yellow-head breeds it congregates in colonies, and these assemblages areoften of vast proportions. It is very loyal to its home-site and returns yearafter year, even though the surroundings undergo great and uncongenialchanges, deserting it only with the drying up of the marsh. The Yellow-headis very closely restricted to its special nesting haunts, and as the members ofeach colony go in the spring directly to their particular rendezvous, and wanderbut a little way into the surrounding country until after the completion ofthe breeding period, they are easily overlooked if their nesting sloughs arenot numerous or their homes be not actually invaded. In the northward spring movement, the vanguard of theMigration Yellow-heads that are to breed in Canada reach the Inter- national Boundary about May i, the males preceding thefemales by a few days. In Minnesota, where the writers entire experiencewith this bird has been gained, stragglers enter the southern part of the state (250) f- 4.
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YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD Order—Passeres Family—Icterid^e Genus—Xanthoceph ALUS Species—Xanthocephalus National Association of Audubon Societies Educational Leaflet No. 57 The Yellow-Headed Blackbird 251 about Ihe middle of Ai)ril, but it is not until the very last of that month orearly in May that they become numerous. In this region they breed almost exclusively in the denseNesting growth of quill-reeds (Phragmites) that fills or encircles many of the sloughs and shallow lakes of the prairie and semi-prairieportions of the state. Occasionally spring freshets or other disturbances maydrive them to place their nests among bulrushes (Scirpus) in upland sloughsor more rarely still, in willows and bushes adjacent to open water. Nest-building is usually begun in central Minnesota about the middle of May andcontinues until well into June. The writer has found young birds near Min-neapolis hatched as early as May 28, and has watched the building of nests atHeron Lake in southwestern M

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