northeast-flora-and-fauna

Yesterday I showed a pair of male Bobolinks I met this past June. Today I'll go back a few years to show a picture of a female Bobolink. I believe the relatively dark feathering on the top of the head, the line behind the eye, and the lines on the wings are dark enough for this to represent a breeding plumage female. If the coloring in these spots was lighter, I'd be more inclined to think this to be either a male or female with non-breeding plumage (which this time of year would probably mean a juvenile born earlier in the season). Because we see Bobolinks primarily during breeding season, it's generally very easy for us to distinguish males from females. If we lived in South America though, both genders would look like a lighter version of my picture, and I'm not even sure people can distinguish the males from the females. Since female Bobolinks are polyandrous , her nestlings could have different fathers, and may actually get help feeding them from more than 1 male ...

Here are a couple interesting-looking birds I encountered last month: Bobolinks . These are males in their breeding plumage; their non-breeding plumage looks awfully similar to female plumage, which is far less eye-catching. The buttery-yellow on the head and the patches of white elsewhere contrast sharply with their black plumage, making these guys extremely easy to identify. These birds like fields/meadows/pastures. They'll sometimes be seen above the vegetation line eating seeds off of plants, but they'll also hit the ground to forage for insects living within the vegetation. Bobolinks are kind of the swingers of the New World blackbird family , having polygynous males and polyandrous females. This means Bobolink nestlings might be as closely related to the "nest next door" as they are to the ones they were raised with. As a species, Bobolinks have no really close relatives, and are the only species in their genus. Bobolinks are also impressive migrators, spendin...