Dickcissel Images

Dickcissel Images, Facts, and Information:

Spiza americana

• Dickcissels are small songbirds with streaked brown upperparts, black bibs on yellow breasts in breeding males, and rusty shoulder patches. Females lack the black bib and are duller overall.
• Dickcissels are migratory and breed in weedy fields, grasslands, hayfields, and croplands across the central United States, with their core breeding range spanning the Great Plains states. They winter in northern South America, primarily in the grasslands of Venezuela, often forming enormous flocks numbering over a million birds.
• Dickcissels inhabit open areas with dense, moderately tall vegetation and deep litter during the breeding season, such as restored grasslands, fallow fields, lightly grazed pastures, and no-till crop fields with fencerows and roadsides.
• Dickcissels are primarily seedeaters, consuming grains, weed seeds, and the seeds of crops like rice, sorghum, and buckwheat. During the breeding season, they also eat insects and spiders.
• Dickcissels lay 3 to 5 eggs which hatch in 11 to 13 days. The females build the nests alone and incubate the eggs. Males are frequently polygynous, mating with multiple females within their territory.
• Dickcissels live to be around four years of age.

I hope you enjoy viewing my Dickcissel photos.