Tammie Rogers
Inspired by Dogs & Nature
Surviving the Buzz
I have no idea of whether wild birds are affected by the deafening buzz of this year’s record Cicada population, but this Dickcissel seemed to do a decent job singing over the noise.
“The dickcissel is now the only species placed in the genus Spiza that was introduced in 1824 by French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte.” – Wikipedia. They are the only species in their own Genus. While the look like a larger sparrow, and have a beak a bit more like the birds that share the Cardinal genus, they have no close relatives.
This species spends the non-breeding season along western Mexico and Central America, as well as northern South America (AllAboutBirds.org). The Dickcissel commonly breeds in a handful of centrally located States in the USA, but are absent in the rest of the country during breeding season. They are most fond of the sort of environment that we have here at our farm in central Illinois (fields of prairie grasses.)
Here are some photos of Dickcissels I took yesterday when I was traveling around our property.
The bird above is a female. She lacks the black chin mark of the males.
Tammie Rogers 
Beautiful song hat rises above the Cicada, that is also bit of problem when we go birding here, starting to pick up louder
Thank you for sharing. On our property, I have found that the Cicadas are loudest in the lowest lying areas where there are the most number of trees. It get much quieter when I go out into the meadows / grass pastures. The other day my husband was in our dog training building (closer to the trees) with a client and said he thought he was hearing a vehicle outside that was idling – turned out he was hearing the Cicadas!