The recent discussions of Tricolored Blackbirds near Soap
Lake led us to re-read our notes from when we saw them for
the first time a couple of years ago in Oregon. We didn't
know this was a known site and were very excited to discover
them. Thought some of you might be interested in our
observations:

Trip to John Day Fossil Beds, April 4-7, 1996

We found a colony of Tricolored blackbirds just outside the
Painted Hills unit of John Day Fossil Beds National
Monument. To get to the spot, drive into the Painted Hills
section. After going a ways, turn right and go past the
Painted Cove trail. Continue past signs that say something
like "no turn around ahead." The road shortly comes to a
lake with cattails along the edges and "no trespassing"
signs. Continue until you almost leave the lake and just
before crossing a cattleguard and more signs about private
property. We parked along the road, watching from our van
as a "blind." The first thing that aroused our attention
was the dense concentration of blackbirds in one area of
cattails and their calls. They definitely didn't sound like
the clear, pleasant calls of red-wings, but more like the
course, grating calls of yellow-headed blackbirds. We had
never seen tricolored blackbirds before, and didn't realize
they could be so far north. We had looked for them
previously on a trip to California, with no luck. In
cattails at the edge of the tricolored colony we could see
red-winged blackbirds that had established territories, but
they were spread out like you would expect. In general
there was quite a din or noise coming from the tricolored
colony, so we couldn't really isolate an individual's call,
like you can with red-wings and yellow-headeds. Many of the
tricoloreds would drop down into the cattails and disappear.
Thus, we couldn't begin to count the number of birds, but
there were probably 50, which we could see when groups would
fly out to feed. Often individuals would fly straight up
high and catch bugs, then dive straight back down and disapp
ear again in cattails. These birds were black with red and
white epaulets.

Lee & Karen Rentz
Shelton, WA
leerentz at ix.netcom.com