When nesting Tricolored Blackbirds choose a triticale field on one of the San Joaquin Valley’s working dairy farms, 91°µÍø shows up. And this year, when one adventurous flock broke their usual pattern and settled into a blooming mustard cover crop on an Italian vegetable farm, we were there, too. Since 2014, we’ve traversed the valley to protect every breeding colony we can find, teaming up with farmers and partners to keep nests safe in the middle of busy working lands. This season, we advanced our work to protect these nomadic birds and better understand their movement patterns by tagging them with telemetry devices and adding Motus stations across the landscapes they rely on, letting us follow their journeys with greater precision and opening a whole new window into the life of this near-endemic, state-threatened species.
Together, surveyors estimated a statewide Tricolored Blackbird population of 229,000 adult birds at 170 locations. This estimate represents a 5% increase over the estimate from the 2022 statewide survey and a 58% increase over the lowest statewide survey estimate of 145,000 birds in 2014.
Next year, we’ll install 3 additional Motus stations and tag more than 100 additional Tricolored Blackbirds to help strengthen our movement study. With the RCPP support, we will continue protecting all known San Joaquin colonies while expanding our efforts to secure alternative nesting habitats. As part of our initiative to safeguard and increase suitable Tricolored nesting areas, we are partnering with the 91°µÍø Conservation Ranching (ACR) team to enhance nesting and foraging on rangelands. We are also exploring the feasibility of deploying cover cropping incentives to farmers targeted at attracting colonies away from dairy grain fields.
Funding through the with Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to continue advancing Tricolored Blackbird conservation activities in the Central Valley through 2029. The RCPP provides a conservation framework and critical funding to make the yearly colony protection program a success.
