Dickcissel
This grassland bunting broadcasts its own name from Kansas weeds, fences, and bluestem each summer.
Artwork inspired by Aaron Pyle
Male dickcissels resemble miniature meadowlarks: gray head, yellow eyebrow and breast, chestnut shoulders, and a black throat patch. Their repeated dick-dick-ciss-ciss-ciss song carries over weedy pasture and restored prairie. Females are browner and quieter, nesting low in dense vegetation while males remain conspicuous above them.
Numbers can change dramatically from one Kansas summer to the next because the species follows suitable grass structure and rainfall rather than returning rigidly to one field. Search overgrown pastures and prairie edges from May through July. In late summer, flocks coalesce before a long migration to northern South America.
- Family
- Cardinals and buntings
- Best clue
- Name-saying buzzed song
- Season
- Kansas summer breeder
Quick guide
- Listen
- dick-dick-ciss-ciss-ciss
- Look
- Small meadowlark-like male atop grass
Confirm a Dickcissel in summer grassland
- Build the male’s pattern
- Look for a compact sparrowlike bird with a gray head, yellow eyebrow and breast, chestnut shoulders, and a black throat patch.
- Capture the namesake song
- Listen for the repeated dick-dick-ciss-ciss-ciss phrase from a weed stalk or fence.
- Track shifting summer habitat
- From May through July, search tall grass, weedy pasture, and restored prairie edges in Kansas.
- Keep nests concealed
- Remain outside dense nesting cover, record abundance from the edge, and delay mowing where feasible until the breeding attempt is complete.
Good to know
Winter flocks in Venezuela can number in the millions—an astonishing social phase for a bird seen singly on Kansas song posts.
Notice these
- Buzzed name-saying song
- Black male throat
- Chestnut shoulder
- Tall-grass song perch