Bobolink Bird

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NORTH AMERICAN SAIJIKI

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Bobolink

***** Location: North America
***** Season: Various, see below
***** Category: Animal

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Explanation

Bobolink
Dolichonyx oryzivorus



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quote
The Bobolink, Dolichonyx oryzivorus, is a small New World blackbird and the only member of genus Dolichonyx.

Their breeding habitats are open grassy fields, especially hay fields, across North America. In high-quality habitats, males are often polygynous. Females lay 5 to 6 eggs in a cup-shaped nest, which is always situated on the ground and is usually well-hidden in dense vegetation. Both parents feed the young.

Bobolinks breed from Montana to Nova Scotia and southward to the latitude of the Ohio Valley. In grain-growing states, bobolink families gather in large flocks at harvest time. After feeding on ripened grain, they migrate at night and reappear in the rice fields of the South, where they consume large quantities of the crop. Here they are known as ricebirds or reed-birds. They then resume their southward migration, chiefly by way of Florida, and pass the winter south of the Amazon River.
Bobolinks are still collected as food in Jamaica, where they are called butter birds, commentary on how fat they are as they pass through on migration.
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bobolink, ricebird, reedbird
kigo for autumn

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In a songbird hall of fame, the Bobolink would be noted for one of the longest migrations in the western hemisphere—a round trip of approximately 20,000 km (12,400 miles). Bobolinks nest in hayfields and meadows across the northern United States and southern Canada during the northern summer months of May through early July.
They migrate to the vast grasslands of southwestern Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina to spend the austral spring and summer months of November through March. Relatively small numbers may winter along the coast of Peru and Chile."

Bobolinks nest on the ground in slight depressions formed at the base of a clump of grass. The nests consist of course grasses and weed stems lined with finer grasses. Three to seven eggs are usually laid per nest. An intriguing aspect of Bobolink nesting behavior is that sometimes more than two adults will feed the young at a single nest.
After a nine week nesting season, Bobolinks typically congregate in marshes where they will undergo their post-nuptial molt before heading southward in late August.......
Upon reaching South America in October, the majority of Bobolinks will spend the next two months making their way to southwestern Brazil, Paraguay and northern Argentina.
Their song has been vividly described as "a bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat of the bird like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, and outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and as "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp."
source : nationalzoo.si.edu


bobolink mating, bobolink nesting
kigo for summer


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Worldwide use

Japan

komekoidori コメクイドリ



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Things found on the way


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HAIKU

bobolink
flying between tufts
of high grass

bob
Happy Haiku, May 2009


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Related words

***** WKD BIRD SAIJIKI

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