A somewhat rare bird sighting in North Carolina!

On April 8, 2000 Judy Murray, Will Cook and I made a trip to Morehead City, NC to see if we could find the reported Yellow-headed Blackbird. After 10 or 15 minutes of searching, I found it in a Loblolly Pine tree behind an apartment building. This immature male had been visiting a bird feeder and when I approached, it hid in the pine tree and waited me out so it could feed on what ever was so good on the ground.

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Yellow-headed Blackbirds are common birds out west. In North Carolina they are usually found only once or twice a year among huge flocks of blackbirds. So you see to get with in 8 - 10 foot of one with a camera seems pretty lucky.

While at a nursery in Newport, NC a gentleman reported to me that he once and only once found a flock of nearly 50 Yellow-headed Blackbirds nearby at a cemetery around 1970.

Camera setup was my Canon A2, 100 - 400 L IS (image stabilizer) zoom lens with Kodak E 200 film. My camera settings at 1/125th second and F8 and yes handheld.

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