I'm lucky to have taken this one. Seriously. Dickcissels are not particularly rare, and I love having them back. But they're tiny, really, no bigger than a parakeet, and the endless noise they make seems almost akin. To call what they do "singing" is a stretch. It's something of a bleat, nothing at all like the robins, the other serious residents of our prairie backyard.
Yes, you're right--their goofy name derives from the great noise they put up ceaselessly . "Dick-cissel-cissel-cissel." Something like that.
This one is a female, although calling gender with regards to birds may be as perilous these days as it is with human beings. The male has a golden chest and a rather regal crest. They look like miniature meadowlarks, which, by the way, we've never seen out back. The likelihood of picking up their song increases as you drive west.
But most every year we've lived out here we've been blessed by a pair of dickcissels. They're so little that it's impossible to believe they winter in South America. I'm not making that up. Bird lovers in the know claim that dickcissels pick up stakes mid-August to begin their trek, arriving in South America sometime late September or October. I'm serious. Can't help wonder where they carry their passports.
When I say I'm lucky to have taken this picture, I mean these little mites wear camo gear that makes them hard to spot even though they're gutsy little chirpers who don't spook fast. You've got to get up relatively close before they take wing, and ours at least seem rarely to leave our outback.
When they're filling a prairie landscape with that distinctive noise, the best place to look is generally their choice of hangouts: high places. Last night this young lady staked out some territory high atop one of the quaking aspens just east of the deck, making all kinds of noise despite the fact that I was right there, poking around with a camera. Took me five minutes to find her, but then she wasn't not a dime's worth bigger than the crowd of aspen leaves all around. There she was, riding the top branches, distinguished only by her movement.
Just like that, she left, but kept on singing. I walked out back after her, following all that scratchy noise. Took me some time, but I spotted her again at the farthest end of the acreage. She was riding a spiny weed whose name I don't know--again, barely visible.
I dream of an occasional bobolink out back, but I think I need more ground to attract them. Once upon a time I saw a couple along the Big Sioux in a broad stretch of prairie at Blood Run. A bobolink would be a beauty of a blessing. So would a meadowlark.
But having this little lady and her beau around for a chunk of summer is its own rich reward. Come late spring, I look forward to their showing up, as they must after yet another endless pilgrimage. They're the only South Americans I've got in the backyard as far as I know. The fact is, I've even grown to like their ratchet-y song. They're a tiny bird with a big song and a tongue-twisting name: dickcissel.
Maybe today I'll see if I can get a shot of her royal beau.
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