pygame surface.blits when using area argument

I am trying to use surface.blits with the area parameter to improve the performance of my code. When I use the area parameter for blits, I run into the following error:

SystemError: <'method 'blits' of 'pygame.Surface' objects> returned a result with an error set.

If I remove the area parameter, blits work as I would expect. Any ideas on what I could be doing wrong? Attached below is an example code my use case and error.

import sys
import random

import pygame
pygame.init()

tilemap = pygame.image.load('pattern.jpg')

tilesize = 64
size = 4
w, h = size*64, size*64
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((w, h))

while True:
    screen.fill((0, 0, 0))
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            sys.exit()

    blit_list = []
    for i in range(size):
        for j in range(size):
            xi, yi = random.randint(0, size), random.randint(0, size)
            blit_args = (tilemap, (i*tilesize, j*tilesize),
                        (xi*tilesize, yi*tilesize, tilesize, tilesize))

            # calling screen.blit here works correctly
            screen.blit(*blit_args)

            blit_list.append(blit_args)


    # instead of using multiple blit calls above, calling screen.blits here fails
    # remove the area argument (3rd arg) from each blit_arg tuple works
    # screen.blits(blit_list)

    pygame.display.flip()

    # wait a second
    pygame.time.wait(1000)

Here is the image I used (https://www.behance.net/gallery/19447645/Summer-patterns):

from pygame surface.blits when using area argument