Unexpected Pleasures

These are the things that make life, just that much sweeter...

Finding money in the pocket of an old pair of jeans...discovering a new shortcut to your place of work...that generic medications work just as well as the more expensive brand named ones...answering a phone call from a long lost friend...hearing an old forgotten song on the radio...finding out that dickcissels are now in your area. What...you haven't heard of a dickcissel? Well, let me tell you a few things about this colorful, social songster if you'll allow me:

1. A proud member of the subfamily Cardinalinae of the family Fringillidae - (yeah, that's Latin... )

2. A streaky brown bird 16 cm (6.5 inches) long, with a black bib on its yellow breast, looking somewhat like a miniature meadowlark.

3. Dickcissels are seedeaters.

4. They breed in weedy fields of the central US and winter in northern South America; some stray to the Atlantic coast in winter.

5. Migratory flocks of Dickcissels assemble into larger and larger flocks gradually growing into thousands of birds. Winter roosts can number in the millions of birds.

6. The male does little other than feed himself and try to attract a mate. The female builds the nest, incubates and feeds the young.

7. The global population of this bird is 22,000,000 individuals and despite threats from crop dusters and agricultural chemicals, it does not appear to meet population decline criteria that would necessitate inclusion on the IUCN Red List.

8. The current evaluation status of the Dickcissel is Least Concern.

The Menomonee River Watershed - 91 acre (Floodwater Detention Basin) area has been in transition for the past 4 years and is just now beginning to attract a new variety of birds to its richly native-plant covered expanse. While the true intention of this expansive movement of over 2 million cubic feet of earth is to provide a place where 100-year stormwater levels can languish until slowly flowing off into the river and ultimately Lake Michigan, it is proving to be the magnetic attraction birders had hoped it to be, for a myriad of migratory species.

Back to the dickcissels...I have taken a small movie and posted it below so that you can hear the very same bird I heard on July 4th, 2009 singing his morning song. Enjoy!

Sources: Brittanica, Whatbird, MMSD