Black and White Wild Birds

See other Black and White Bird Listings at Right

Not what you're looking for? Other birds that have black and white markings are: several Swallows, Shrikes, Nuthatches, Titmice, Flycatchers, Nighthawk, Redstart and a few Warblers.

BOBOLINK
(Dolichonyx oryzivorus) Blackbird family
AKA: REEDBIRD; MAYBIRD; SKUNK BLACKBIRD

Perhaps none of our birds have so fitted into song and story as the Bobolink.

Unlike a good child, who should "be seen and not heard," he is heard more frequently than seen. Very shy, of peering eyes, he keeps well out of sight in the meadow grass before entrancing our listening ears. The bobolink never soars like the lark, as the poets would have us believe, but generally sings on the wing, flying with a peculiar self-conscious flight horizontally thirty or forty feet above the meadow grass. He also sings perched upon the fence or tuft of grass. The Bobolink is one of the greatest poseurs among the birds.

In spring and early summer the bobolinks respond to every poet's effort to imitate their notes. "Dignified 'Robert of Lincoln' is telling his name," says one; "Spink, spank, spink," another hears him say. But best of all are Wilson Flagg's lines:

". . .Now they rise and now they fly;
They cross and turn, and in and out;
and down the middle and wheel about,
With a 'Phew, shew, Wadolincon;
listen to me Bobolincon!"

After midsummer the cares of the family have so worn upon the jollity of our dashing, rollicking friend that his song is seldom heard. The colors of the Bobolink's coat fade into a dull yellowish brown like that of his faithful mate, who has borne the greater burden of the season, for he has two complete molts each year.

The bobolinks build their nest on the ground in high grass. The eggs are of a bluish white. Their food is largely insectivorous: grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, spiders, with seeds of grass especially for variety.

In August they begin their journey southward, flying mainly by night. Arriving in the Southern States, they become the sad-colored, low-voiced rice or reed bird, feeding on the rice fields, where they descend to the ignominious fate of being dressed for the plate of the epicure.

Could there be a more tragic ending to the glorious note of the gay songster of the north?

SNOW BUNTING
(Plectrophenax nivalis) Finch family
AKA: SNOWFLAKE; SNOWBIRD; SNOW LARK

Snow Buntings (mentioned collectively, for it is impossible to think of the bird except in great flocks) are the "true spirits of the snowstorm," says Thoreau. They are animated beings that ride upon it, and have their life in it. By comparison with the climate of the arctic regions, no doubt our hardiest winter weather seems luxuriously mild to them. We associate these birds only with those wonderful midwinter days when sky, fields, and woods alike are white, and a "hard, dull bitterness of cold" drives every other bird and beast to shelter. It is said that Bobolinks often pass the night buried beneath the snow. They have been seen to dive beneath it to escape a hawk.

Whirling about in the drifting snow to catch the seeds on the tallest stalks that the wind in the open meadows uncovers, the snowflakes suggest a lot of dead leaves being blown through the all-pervading whiteness.

Beautiful soft brown, gray, and predominating black-and-white coloring distinguish the Snow Bunting bird from the slate colored Junco. They are, indeed, the only birds we have that are nearly white; and rarely, if ever, do they rise far above the ground their plumage so admirably imitates.

At the far north, travelers have mentioned the Snow Bunting's inspiriting song, but in the United States we hear only their cheerful twitter. Nansen tells of seeing an occasional snow bunting in that desolation of arctic ice where the Fram drifted so long.

ROSE-BREASTED GROSBEAK
(Habia ludoviciana) Finch family

A certain ornithologist tells with complacent pride of having shot over fifty-eight Rose-Breasted Grosbeaks in less than three weeks (during the breeding season) to learn what kind of food they had in their crops. This kind of devotion to science may have quite as much to do with the growing scarcity of this bird in some localities as the demands of the milliners, who, however, receive all of the blame for the slaughter of our beautiful songsters.

The farmers in Pennsylvania, who, with more truth than poetry, call this the potato-bug bird, are taking active measures, however, to protect the neighbor that is more useful to their crop than all the insecticides known. It also eats flies, wasps, and grubs.

Seen upon the ground, the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak is scarcely attractive with his clumsy beak overbalancing a head that protrudes with stupid-looking awkwardness; but as he rises into the trees his lovely rose-colored breast and under-wing feathers are seen, and before he has had time to repeat his delicious, rich-voiced warble you are already in love with him.

Vibrating his wings after the manner of the mocking-bird, he pours forth a marvelously sweet, clear, mellow song (with something of the quality of the oriole's, robin's, and thrush's notes), making the day on which you first hear it memorable. This is one of the few birds that sing at night. A soft, sweet, rolling warble, heard when the moon is at its full on a midsummer night, is more than likely to come from the rose-breasted grosbeak.

It is not that his quiet little sparrow-like wife has advanced notions of feminine independence that he takes his turn at sitting upon the nest, but that he is one of the most unselfish and devoted of mates. With their combined efforts they construct only a coarse, unlovely cradle in a thorn-bush or low tree near an old, overgrown pasture lot. The father may be the poorest of architects, but as he patiently sits brooding over the green, speckled eggs, his beautiful rosy breast just showing above the grassy rim, he is a succulent adornment for any bird's home.

EASTERN TOWHEE
(Pipilo erythrophthalmus) Finch family
AKA: GROUND ROBIN; TOWHEE BUNTING

The unobtrusive little Towhee is not infrequently mistaken for a robin, because of the reddish chestnut on its under parts. Careful observation, however, shows important distinctions. It is rather smaller and darker in color; its carriage and form are not those of the robin, but of the finch.

The Towhee female is smaller still, and has an olive tint in her brown back. Her eggs are inconspicuous in color, dirty white speckled with brown, and laid in a sunken nest on the ground. Dead leaves and twigs abound, and form, as the anxious mother fondly hopes, a safe hiding place for her brood. So careful concealment, however, brings peril to the fledglings, for the most cautious bird-lover may, and often does, inadvertently set his foot on the hidden nest.

The towhee derives its name from the fancied resemblance of its note to these syllables, while those naming it "towhee" hear the sound to-whick, to-whick, to-whee. Its song is rich, full, and pleasing, and given only when the bird has risen to the branches above its low foraging ground.

Eastern Towhees frequent the border of swampy places and bushy fields. It is generally seen in the underbrush, picking about among the dead leaves for its steady diet of earthworms and larvae of insects, occasionally regaling itself with a few dropping berries and fruit.

When startled, the bird rises not more than ten or twelve feet from the earth, and utters its characteristic calls. On account of this habit of flying low and grubbing among the leaves, it is sometimes called the ground robin. In the South our modest and useful little food-gatherer is often called Grasel, especially in Louisiana, where it is white-eyed, and is much esteemed, alas! by epicures.

See more:

Black and White Birds
Black-and-White Warbler
Black-Poll Warbler

Black and White WoodPeckers
Downy Woodpecker
Yellow-bellied Sapsucker
Red-Headed Woodpecker
Hairy Woodpecker

Bird Baths
Solar Bird Baths
Bird Bath Fountains

Bird Feeders
Finch Feeder
Glass Nectar Feeders

Attract Wild Birds - CONTACT - 613.332.5766

Black and White Bird