---

Many birds have an interesting story line and are written about ad-infinitum, but with an estimated population size of 180,000,000 and range spanning almost all of inhabited North America our native Redwing Blackbird has interested a minority of researchers, but not so the naturalists:

This is the sound we longed for, dreamed about, looked forward to in the darkest days of winter. Rising and subsiding, becoming a storm of mingled voices, then ebbing away, it comes from the treetops along the brook. It is an excited sound, a festive, holiday sound. Like the torrents of spring, it is a rushing, liquid sound that here antedates the spring. It is the great chorus of the first of the homecoming flocks of the redwings. Edwin Way Teale from A Walk Through the Year.

Redwings are a member of the Icteridae family, which includes Cowbirds, Orioles, Grackles, Meadowlarks and Bobolinks, to name some. Unlike many songbird species, the Redwing population seems to holding its own. Population estimates in the 1970s are not much different from todays estimates.

Below: Male Redwing Blackbird on perch. Photo - ADJ82 CC-BY-SA 4.0

Some notes on Redwings:
They all sing. The females are one of the few female songbirds to do so. The sexual displays of the mature males red epaulets are what give the common name, while juveniles have more subdued orangey colors and females may have some light wing color.

The males return in spring, 2 to 3 weeks before the females, staking out their territory in the cattail marshes and their own perching branch, consuming their days, flying out regularly to inspect the boundaries of their domain. When marshes are too crowded, upland sites are chosen. Aggressors within the territory are swiftly dealt with. Bill-tilting (upward raised head) is a display used by both male and females in aggressive encounters defending territory. And territory they do have. By the time the females arrive, territory boundaries have been fought over and adjusted, particularly in marshes, until there is no unclaimed space and then each male has to wait for an approaching female - the sex that is particularly choosy.

Redwings are not monogamous. The returning female may find a new mate just as easily as finding last year’s mate. Some have 2 broods per season, even 3 have been noted, and broods with different mates is not unusual. Polygyny occurs because there are more breeding females than males. First year redwing males usually do not breed whereas first year females can.

The female builds the nest, a soft-lined pouch attached to a cattail, or if in the upland, to a shrub stem or a sturdy weed. During courtship males go through a symbolic nest building ritual but never actually do anything. Nests are never reused. Hatched young remain in the nest of nine to eleven days, then off around the marsh, then in two weeks off the uplands where they flock together with the females. Males, now bachelors, form their own groups.

The birds recognize their neighbors. Flight across neighboring territories to reach uplands is tolerated, but strangers are warded off. Certain other bird species are given minor tolerance but Grackles and Marsh Wrens are vigorously pursued.

Molting occurs in August and September prior to migration. Young ones do a complete molt. Now comes serious flocking time, and with the decline of insects in the fall, Redwings engage in serious crop foraging, such that crop damage was so extensive in the 1800’s that shooting parties were common and as far back as colonial times control measures were taken. It was a difficult assignment to convince a crop owner that the insects the birds removed during the growing season, was compensation for any fall damage.

During migration to the southern states of the SE U.S., the Mississippi Flyway is the flyway most heavily used by Redwings. In the reverse of spring, the males leave a few weeks before the females and the juveniles. Then the marshes and uplands of the northern states are quiet once again.

A good research book on Redwings was published by Smithsonian in 1984 titled Redwings by Robert Nero.