Red-winged Blackbird

Have you ever meet a Red-winged Blackbird that LIKED YOU?
Red-winged Blackbirds have a reputation for being aggressive... towards PEOPLE.

They will get in your face and raise a racket. It's all a warning to let you know, you're in the wrong place.

Particularly aggressive ones will attack the top of your head and even draw blood, if you stray too close.

A female Red-winged Blackbird rests on a reed. She favors a cattail marsh to build a nest. Woven of plant material near the waterline it's lined with mud.

Her mate's territory may be shared with 5-15 other females if space permits. There is a lot of polygyny* in Red-winged Blackbird society.

It seems for all the bluff and bluster the males project, the females also get around. Genetic tests of offspring in a known territory have shown one-quarter to one-half come from different males.

Zoology a pattern of mating in which a male animal has more than one female mate.

With all this time and energy paid to protection, the Red-winged Blackbirds are surprisingly easy to observe.

They don't fly away.

To the contrary they'll come to you.

And they are not ALWAYS angry.

Sometimes they're calmly reflective.

Allan


(click any picture to enlarge)

Credits:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds
The Sibley's Guide to Birds