Red Winged Blackbird

Red-winged Blackbird

(Agelaius phoeniceus)

Photographed at

Etobicoke Creek, Toronto, Canada   Apr 2006

The male Red-Winged Blackbird is a glossy black with red shoulder patches which are tipped with a buff-yellow. The female is dark brown above, heavily streaked below and sometimes has a red tinge on the wing coverts or a pinkish wash on the chin and throat.

Female

Red-winged blackbirds feed on insects, small fruits, seeds, waste grain and small aquatic life. Often regarded as pests because they consume grain in cultivated fields, the farmer benefits because of the blackbird’s consumption of harmful insects. A typical nest of the red-winged blackbird is a well-made cup of marsh grass or reeds which is attached to growing marsh vegetation or in a bush in a marsh; it contains 3-5 pale blue eggs, spotted and scrawled with dark brown and purple.

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