Red-winged Blackbird

My Species Description

One of the most common and familiar birds in North America, a medium-sized passerine bird found in wetlands and agricultural fields across the continent and known for its unmistakable "conk-a-ree" calls careening out of what seems like every wet spot around during some parts of the year.

Males are deep black all over with bright red shoulder epaulets typically lined in bright yellow, though the yellow can sometimes be hard to see or appear closer to white. Females are often one of the trickiest bird IDs around: streaky brown-and-white birds otherwise the same shape as the males, but to the uninitiated (and sometimes the experienced), can look like a fancy New-world Sparrow you've never seen before at first. That they're usually hanging out pretty close to the males is a good giveaway.

In winter, they will congregate by the tens and hundreds of thousands to forage seed in agricultural fields as they migrate South.

My Species Story

The Red-winged Blackbird was one of the first birds I ever knew by name. In fact, until I really got into birding in the winter of 2017/18, it was one of probably less than 10 species that I knew by name. I imagine I share that with quite a few people!

We would see so many of them in the fields along the highways on the way to my grandparents' house near Natchitoches growing up, and those bright red epaulets caught my eye just like they do for so many. Their wonderfully raucous call is a signal of summertime and a clue that there is water and probably a little bit of a marshy spot nearby.

On a birding trip to coastal Louisiana with my mom in the late Winter of 2021, we watched a river of Red-winged Blackbirds go by us for over an hour, flocks of at least hundred rolling by every minute. We conservatively estimated it at 70,000 individuals.

Writing this now in the depths of Winter in Oregon, it's making me look forward to their return, as their first calls are a surefire sign of Spring around here.

Last updated January 1, 2025