#dickcissels

A Dickcissel Feathursday

The Dickcissel (Spiza americana) is mainly a bird of the American Midwest. I have seen and heard them in my rambles around the Midwest, especially in Iowa, South Dakota, and Kansas, but I have never seen them here in Wisconsin. Although our state forms a part of their range, they are scarce here and have been designated by our Department of Natural Resources as a species of “Special Concern.” Ostensibly they look like sparrows or finches, but they are really members of the Cardinalidae family, and are the only extant species in the genus Spiza. Their beak shape kind of gives them away as Cardinal-like birds.

They like open fields and prairies, especially with a significant component of forbs, such as the red clover depicted in this chromolithograph. They are mostly ground-nesting birds, also depicted here, but their nests can also be found low in bushes and trees. The species is polygynous, unusual among passerines, with the male often supporting more than one mate during the breeding season. During breeding season, the males stand sentry on tall grass, shrubs, low in trees, and on fence posts singing their hearts out. Their positioning and coloration, with bright yellow chests and black bib, at initial glance from a distance has often made me think that I’ve spotted a Meadowlark, but again the beak shape is a dead give away.

This chromolithographic plate from a painting by the noted American ornithologist Robert Ridgway, the first curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution, is from our 2-volume set of Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty, by the late-19th-century director of the Milwaukee Public Museum Henry Nehrling, and published in Milwaukee by George Brumder from 1893-1896.  

View more posts from Nehrling’s Our Native Birds.

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