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Bobolink | Dolichonyx oryzivorus
Bobolink | Tordo arrocero
The Bobolink is a small blackbird of North American hayfields that makes one of the longest migrations of any songbird: from Canada and the northern United States to the grasslands of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina. Much of the population passes in autumn over the western Greater Antilles before crossing the Caribbean Sea. In Jamaica it used to be known as the butterbird, because it grew fat in the rice fields; elsewhere it is also called ricebird.
Voice
The call, mainly in flight, is a clear, metallic pink, by which passing flocks can be identified even at night. The bubbling, tinkling song of the male is heard only occasionally in the region, mainly in spring.
Recording: Christian Kerihuel — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm, compact, with a short conical bill and pointed tail feathers. The breeding male is the only North American songbird that is black below and largely pale above: black with a creamy-yellow nape, white scapulars and a white rump. In the region nearly all birds are in non-breeding or juvenile plumage: yellowish buff with a dark crown and pale central stripe, a dark eye-stripe, a blackish-streaked back and fine streaks on the flanks. The bill is then pinkish horn. Males in spring may be in transitional plumage.
Confusion species
Dickcissel Spiza americana has a thicker grey bill, a yellow supercilium, a rufous shoulder and a grey nape. Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis and Grasshopper Sparrow Ammodramus savannarum are smaller, with shorter tails and lack the warm yellowish-buff plumage. Female Brown-headed Cowbird Molothrus ater and Shiny Cowbird Molothrus bonariensis are plain grey-brown without head stripes.
Habitat
Rice fields, grassland, rough pasture, freshwater marshes with grasses and sedges, and the edges of grain and sorghum fields. It travels in flocks, sometimes of hundreds of birds, and in autumn feeds mainly on seeds, including rice, which does not endear it to rice-growing islands.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
A passage migrant through the whole region, most numerous in the west: Cuba, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, also San Andrés, Puerto Rico, the ABC Islands and Trinidad and Tobago. Scarce to rare in the Lesser Antilles and little reported from Hispaniola. It breeds in southern Canada and the northern United States and winters in southern South America.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In September and October in the rice fields and wet grasslands of Cuba and Jamaica, and along the grassy edges of airfields in the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. Flocks overhead give themselves away with their pink calls; birds that land soon vanish into tall grass.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. The breeding population has declined steeply since the 1960s through early mowing and the loss of hayfields; in the wintering areas birds are controlled as rice pests. In the Caribbean the species was once trapped on a large scale for food.
Scientific name
Dolichonyx oryzivorus | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fringilla oryzivora; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Dolichonyx was introduced in 1827 by Swainson. Dolichonyx is Greek, from dolikhos 'long' and onux 'claw', after the long hind claw. oryzivorus is Latin, from oryza 'rice' and -vorus '-eating', as migrating flocks once fed en masse in rice fields. The specimen the first description was based on came from South Carolina.