Yellow Hooded Blackbird

Yellow-hooded Blackbird

 (Chrysomus icterocephalus)

Photographed at Bird Kingdom, Niagara Canada      Feb 2012

The Yellow-hooded Blackbird is found around the Amazon River in marshes and wet grasslands. The male, as shown in the photo, is unmistakable with its yellow hood extending down to its upper chest and the rest of its body black.

The males attract females to their nests by a flight song and display where the bird parachutes down into the grasses while singing and with his wings held stiffly.

 Once a female has been attracted to his nest and is incubating, the male constructs another nest and tries to attract another female. Males can do this up to 5 times and it is always the male that builds the nest.

The male will spread his tail and ruffles his plumage while singing. This is a territorial display directed at other males.

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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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