One time I mentioned feeling privileged to see a few red-winged blackbirds and some fool I know online had to brag they see bazillions of them all the time.  Thanks, fucko.  But as I reflect from where I am now, yeah, I have seen a fairly large amount of red-winged blackbirds.

Red-winged blackbirds are icterids – New World blackbirds with no relationship to your Turdus merula, which itself is a lot more similar to the bullshit we call a robin here.  Never mind all that.  They are very black, close to starling sized but more slim, pointy beaked.  In the adults in breeding plumage, the only color on them is a red (or in some populations red and white) bar on each wing.

They might have some kind of migration patterns, but they are also present all year long in a lot of their range.  Here you can definitely see them any time of year.  But in spring they get a lot more noticeable because of their song, which is loud, carries well, and sounds a little like a coach whistle.

RWBBs are birds of wetlands, so much so that I’ve never seen them far from a watering hole of some kind.  I’m pretty sure they eat little frogs and tadpoles and such.  Maybe dragonfly nymphs?  But the thing about water, cat tails, reeds, etc. is that you can find a sliver of that kind of biome at the side of the road all over the place.  Anywhere with a ditch, there can be water and the things that water sustains – even if they are polluted and pathetic.

That is to say, the first place I can sorta recall seeing one is right next to a highway, in the cattails next to the on-ramp.  And the place I’ve seen them the most?  The managed “wetland” lot behind the 7-11 at the intersection of 1st Ave South and 308th Street in Federal Way.  They show up like clockwork, singing their song every spring.  Very nice.

I’ve seen them near roads from here to Kansas, heard their song carry over the parking lots of hotels and even the big mall in downtown Federal Way.  Where’s the water?  Again, there’s fenced-off pond maintained by the city, pretty close at hand.  I’ve never seen the blackbird at the mall – just heard it – and it could have been from as far away as that pond.

During a birdwatching trip with my brother in Kansas, we went to a field environment in early spring and saw a bunch of them in a mix of breeding colors and drab streaky whatever.  Life stages?  Were the streaky ones all juveniles?  I dunno.  I’ve also seen them in the mix with Brewer’s blackbirds, starlings, and crows, at the Carpinito Brothers’ pumpkin patch in that farmlandish North Auburn / South Kent area.

And lastly, most recently, I finally saw them in genuinely large numbers.  I’m sure some joker will shit in my comments about how they’d see millions of them, so me only seeing hundreds is pathetic loser shit and cause for ecological despair, but I thought it was cool to see.  It was a blustery overcast randomly raining day and there were birds flocking in trees and on the mowed lawns near the alternative high school (where the delinquents and pregnant girls go).

I was getting dirtyanki (teriyaki usa style made by South Asians) at Happy Express and I couldn’t tell what those birds were.  Given the flock size and the “radio static” sound they were making, I assumed they were starlings.  Starlings would look nearly black under those skies.  But I busted out the birdy app and no, it was all blackbirds.  And as I listened closer, I could pick out elements I recognized from their more recognizable calls.

It makes me feel good.  Looking the other direction a big murder of crows were playing on the lawn and rooftop of a mossy old house, shafts of sunlight breaking through the clouds at random to sparkle the wet grass.  Another crow on my side of the street was demonstrating tool use to probe the grass at the edge of the parking lot.  That weather could not bother me at all.

–