Yellow-headed blackbird has great Northern adventure, winds up in Ulukhaktok | 24CA News

Pamela Ogina could not consider her eyes.

Far from its marshy house in southern Canada, a yellow-headed blackbird squatted on a railing close to her house in Ulukhaktok, N.W.T.

Ogina is used to seeing little white and brown birds fluttering round her neighborhood, which is much above the treeline on Victoria Island. Crows and seagulls flap round repeatedly. But this vibrant customer was one thing she’d by no means seen earlier than.

“I was wondering, ‘What kind of bird can fly all the way up here?'” Ogina recalled.

“It must have been thinking, ‘Wow, cool — what’s up here?'” 

The hen needed to cross a stretch of the Arctic ocean to get there — to not point out winging about 1,500 kilometres out of its approach.

Reid Hildebrandt, an avid bird-watcher in Yellowknife, stated he was shocked to see a photograph of the hen. They usually nest within the Prairies, he stated, although one or two make their strategy to extra southern elements of the N.W.T. annually.

The yellow-headed blackbird tends to “push the boundaries” of its territory, he famous, as marshes cycle between being extra dry or extra moist relying on the 12 months.

“Often, they’ll land in the cattail marshes and start singing their god-awful song for a few days, and then they’ll move on,” he stated.

“This is definitely the furthest north one of these birds has ever been seen.”

It’s unlikely the hen will make the return journey, although, he added. In unfamiliar terrain, it is extra prone to develop into a meal for a extra native critter.

“That wayward bird is probably going to aid the nesting efforts of some other predator,” Hildebrandt stated.

It’s the primary and final time Ogina has seen a yellow-headed blackbird in Ulukhaktok — she hasn’t seen this one since that singular sighting final week — however she stated she’s been seeing different unusual birds visiting the neighborhood as springs get hotter.

“It’s kind of melting faster,” she stated. “And we’re probably going to get unusual stuff up here now.”