Learn what a yellow-headed blackbird looks like and where to find this bird. Also discover facts about their sounds, nests, diet and more.
What’s That Black Bird With a Yellow Head?
Published on Jun. 26, 2025
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How to Identify a Yellow-headed Blackbird
The most distinguishing characteristic of a male yellow-headed blackbird is its bright yellow head and chest, hence its name. “It’s also bigger than a red-winged blackbird,” says Paige Anspach, Conservation Technician at Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary in Gibbon, Nebraska. “What’s more, when a red-wing flies, you can see red patches on its wings. When a yellow-head flies, it has white patches on its wings.”
This portly, large-headed bird is 8 to 10 inches long with a 16 to 17-inch wingspan and a cone-shaped, pointed bill. The slightly smaller females and juveniles are brown instead of black with dull yellow heads. Immature males have a touch of white at the bend of their wings. Females don’t.
Range and Habitat
If your feeders are filled with sunflower seeds, yellow-headed blackbirds might pay you a visit. More likely, you’ll spot this eye-catching bird perched on the edge of a pond, belting out a host of sounds that are anything but a song.
During the spring and summer, yellow-headed blackbirds can be found throughout the midwestern and western United States and Canada. They nest in freshwater wetlands, but forage in prairielands and croplands. During the winter, they migrate to similar habitat in the southwestern United States and throughout northern Mexico. The females fly further south than the males.
Yelllow-headed blackbirds and red-winged blackbirds often forage together in large flocks, though the larger yellow-heads are dominant when it comes to claiming territory in a marsh.
During the winter, huge mixed flocks of both types of blackbirds seem to flow over farmlands. Birds in the front pause to grab seeds off the ground, then leapfrog back to the front in a continually advancing wave.
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Yellow-headed Blackbird Nesting Habits
“Males are polyamorous,” says Paige. “One male might have five to eight mates, which depends on the size of his territory. He has to defend it against other blackbirds, both yellow and red.”
According to Paige, a male has no fidelity to the females he woos each year, but he might help the first female he mates with raise her young. It’s up to the females to gather floating vegetation, which they weave into a 6-inch cup supported by four to five stems, usually in stands of reeds, cattails, bulrushes, or wild rice. As the nest vegetation dries, it binds to the upright stems.
Each female lays up to five blotchy, gray-green eggs, which she incubates for about two weeks. Born eyes closed and covered in thin, tawny down, the chicks fledge two weeks after hatching. Then they hang out in the reeds for another week, until they can fly. The nest typically hangs over the water. As a result, active hatchlings sometimes fall into the water and have to swim back to the vegetation that supports their nest.
Learn how to identify a common grackle.
Diet: What Foods Do Yellow-headed Blackbirds Eat?
While breeding, yellow-headed blackbirds feed on insects on the surface of the water near their nests. The rest of the year, they eat upland and field-based insects, grains, and weed seeds, plucking food from the ground, probing into the soil, and turning over small stones with their bills. When they find a good spot, they stay for several days in a row before moving on.
“Their diet changes, depending on available resources,” says Paige. “They forage on the ground, but in the air, they’ll follow farm machinery to eat the grubs and insects that get turned up. They’ve learned to use humans to their advantage.”
What Sounds Do Yellow-headed Blackbirds Make?
Despite their bright yellow head, these blackbirds can be tough to see among the reeds, but the males usually perch up in the open when they attempt to sing. They are sometimes described as having the worst song of any North American bird, a harsh, buzzing, scraping sound. Males and females also have a variety of clucking and chattering notes.
Bird sounds courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
About the Expert
Paige Anspach has a degree in biology with a concentration in ecology and organismal biology from the University of Toledo. In addition to her study of yellow-headed blackbirds, she has worked on bird surveys, as a guide on the Platte River during sandhill crane migration, and as a bird-banding “scribe” (recorder).
