Tricolored Blackbird Portal

By Carrie Peyton Dahlberg
cpeytondahlberg@sacbee.com

The Central Valley fixture could be on path to extinction

For tricolor blackbirds that swoop and gather in Central Valley fields, the past breeding season turned unexpectedly into a nearly silent summer.

By the tens of thousands, the birds courted, built nests and waited – then abandoned nests en masse as females failed to produce eggs.

Robert Meese, a UC Davis researcher who tracks the trademark California bird with its blaze of red and white on the wings, hopes biologists are seeing just a temporary setback, fueled by dry weather that depleted a vital supply of insects.

"If this is the beginning of a trend rather than a one-time event we might really be in trouble with the tricolor," said Meese. "The bird is making its last stand, and it's making its last stand primarily in the Central Valley."

By Alex Breitler
Record Staff Writer

The tricolored blackbird, once so numerous that its flocks were described as darkening the sky, never quite won protection on the federal endangered species list.

But an agreement announced last week by conservationists, farmers and the government might help reverse the songbird's overall decline.

Habitat conservation, research, monitoring and public education are all part of the 15-year plan for the blackbird, which nests primarily in dairy silage fields. During the harvest, eggs and hatchlings are killed.

Some conservationists say the bird once numbered in the millions, declining to 154,000 by 2000.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported a population of 260,000 in 2005.

"This is a real landmark agreement," said Garrison Frost, a spokesman with Audubon California, one of the participants in the plan.

Host: Stephanie Martin

There was a time when millions of tri-colored blackbirds flew the California skies. The red and white patches on the male’s wings set them apart from more mundane blackbirds. In the last fifty years their population has plummeted to fewer than three-hundred thousand. Now, an unlikely coalition is working to save the species. Its members include farmers, environmentalists and government wildlife agencies.

More Info:

Photo Slideshow: See photos of the tri-colored blackbird and those working to save them.

Presented by: Audubon California