Approximately 20 tricolored blackbirds have been reported from Payette County, Idaho. Four birds were first observed on March 26, 2023 at one location and subsequent survey efforts turned up additional birds at a second location about 5 miles away. Both male and female birds have been observed.
This is the first time the species has been documented to occur in Idaho.
The 2022 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey was conducted from April 15 to April 17, 2022.
A total of 36 county coordinators and 112 participants surveyed 894 sites in 44 counties.
The best estimate of the statewide population where multiple estimates of the same sites are averaged is 218,000, with a minimum estimate 183,000 and a maximum estimate 261,000 (all figures rounded to the nearest 1,000).
A total of 733 locations surveyed was unoccupied, and 161 locations were occupied by at least one bird.
The 2022 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey will be conducted April 15-17. This is the first statewide survey, which is usually conducted every three years, conducted since 2017 due to the pandemic and pandemic-related travel restrictions on participants.
From April 2 to April 4, 2021, 14 participants, coordinated by Drs. Anita Hayworth and Rose Cook, surveyed 87 known tricolored blackbird colony locations in 5 counties in the 2021 Tricolored Blackbird Southern California Survey. The 5 counties surveyed were Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura.
An article by Dick Erickson, Horacio de la Cueva, and Enrique Zamora-Hernandez in the journal Western Birds documents the steep decline in abundance and contraction of the range of the tricolored blackbird in the southernmost portion of its range in northern Baja California, Mexico. The authors found that fewer birds nested in fewer colonies in 2019 than at the turn of the 21st Century, with but a single colony consisting of about 150 breeding birds documented in 2019. These effects were believed due to persistent drought, rising temperatures, and agricultural intensification.
In response to the Governor of California's order to address an unprecedented threat to public health and safety, and taking into consideration the responses to a query of County Coordinators, the 2020 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey has been cancelled and will be rescheduled for next year.
The 2020 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey will be conducted over three days - April 3rd through the 5th, 2020. In case of severe weather, the Survey will occur over the weekend of April 17th through the 19th.
On August 15, 2019 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a finding that listing the tricolored blackbird under the U.S. Endangered Species Act was not warranted.
On March 18, 2019 the California Office of Administrative Law added the Tricolored Blackbird to the list of Threatened birds under the California Endangered Species Act.
An article describing the biology and conservation of tricolored blackbirds was published in the Spring, 2019 issue of Cornell University's Living Bird Magazine. The article, written by author Ben Goldfarb, highlights the unique biology of the species, the history of efforts to study it, the threats to its survival, and the work of the Tricolored Blackbird Working Group to conserve it. You can read the on-line version of the article here.
The California Fish and Game Commission voted on Thursday, April 19, 2018 to add the tricolored blackbird to the California Endangered Species Act list of Threatened animals by a unanimous 4-0 vote.
The 2017 Tricolored Blackbird Statewide Survey will be conducted over three days - April 7th through the 9th, 2017. In case of severe weather, the Survey will occur over the weekend of April 21st through the 23rd.
This story, by Capital Public Radio's Melody Stone, discusses the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's status review of the tricolored blackbird for possible listing under the California Endangered Species Act (CESA).
At its December 10, 2015 meeting, the California Fish and Game Commission (Commission) voted 3-1 to advance the Tricolored Blackbird to candidacy under the California Endangered Species Act, triggering a 12-month period during which the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a status review to inform the Commission’s subsequent decision on whether to list the species as threatened or endangered. As a candidate species, the Tricolored Blackbird receives the same legal protection afforded to an endangered or threatened species (Fish & Game Code, § 2085).
Today, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service announced a 90 day finding of a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to place the Tricolored Blackbird on the Endangered Species List.
