I’ve added several bird species to my lifetime birding list in the last couple of weeks. I’ve been trying to spot a Dickcissel for several years now, and this year they have descended on the area in large numbers.
My friend and I went to Horicon Marsh two weeks ago, and as we drove into the auto tour area, a large, sparrow-like bird landed on a nearby sign. It had giant insect in its beak. I was going to write it off as a Song Sparrow, but then I saw that flash of yellow and I noticed how thick the beak was. I had my suspicions.
We drove to the parking lot for the hiking trails and when we got out of the car I could hear several birds singing a song I’d never heard before. My friend had her phone along, so I asked her to pull up a Dickcissel song. Yup, that was it!
They are very loud, happy singers, but it took us forever to find one. Many of them were hidden in the tall grass, but we waited patiently, and eventually one of the birds appeared at the top of a small shrub in the middle of the field. He was singing his fool head off.
Dickcissels breed in grasslands, and they vary their breeding territory from year to year. People have been spotting them all over southern and central Wisconsin, so I was hoping it would only be a matter of time before I found one. Instead I got to see and hear an entire field full of them!
