Saturday, March 7, 2015

Red-winged Blackbird

One of the signs of spring I enjoy most is the song of the Red-winged Blackbird. It may be territorial but to me it sounds like a love song. Maybe it's both. Yesterday morning near Esquimalt Lagoon I wandered into a group singing contest. About twenty males (one is pictured above) flitted around in the nearby blackberry brambles, all emitting piercing lovelorn warbles. There were lots of females around too and their disapproving chut chut chuts were like a counterpoint to the males' songs. It is sometimes claimed that Red-winged Blackbirds are the most numerous North American bird, numbering as many as 250 million pairs in good years. Head out to your nearest swamp or cattail marsh and you'll surely find some.
at

4 comments:

  1. The Furry GnomeMarch 7, 2015 at 5:02 AM

    They'll be one of our first birds of spring too, but they're certainly not here yet!

    ReplyDelete
  2. William KendallMarch 7, 2015 at 9:23 AM

    Great capture of this one. I haven't seen them here yet, but they'll be around, and for a few weeks they'll be extremely territorial.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JoJoMarch 7, 2015 at 10:29 AM

    I love it! Mouth wide open! We have a lot of them too and they are quite noisy in spring. Starting to hear them a bit more now.

    ReplyDelete
  4. StephanieMarch 7, 2015 at 7:47 PM

    Beautiful shot!

    ReplyDelete

Greetings!
I hope you will leave a comment and visit these pages again. Should you wish to contact me directly you can use the email address in the rightmost column of each blog page.Due to increasing amounts of spam comments (it's up to about 200 per day now) I have decided to limit comments from anonymous visitors.