From the files of Donald R. Kirk…
Part 3. Red–winged Blackbird
I turn back to the trail and walk along the border of the cattail marsh community. Soon, the liquid, gurgling song of a male red–winged blackbird is heard over the soft sounds of the marsh. While not nearly as melodic as the fox sparrow’s music, a red–winged blackbird’s singing is nevertheless very pleasing here among the cattails.
I can see the bird not far from me, perched near the top of a cattail stem. Male red–wing blackbirds, with their bright red shoulder parches, are very handsome. They are highly territorial, driving off other male blackbirds trying to establish their own territory.
I find a comfortable seat on the damp grass in the shade of an aspen. With binoculars I finally spot a blackbird nest, twelve or fourteen inches above the water, through the myriad cattail leaves that sway gently in the breeze. No bird is on the nest, but I can’t see well enough to tell if there are any eggs or young birds. Male red–winged blackbirds have it easy raising a family. The female builds the nest entirely by herself, lays three to four eggs, incubates them by herself for eleven to twelve days until they hatch. During the ten to fourteen days the young birds remain in the nest, Mama does most of the work feeding the young. These birds like to nest over water, and the fact that the young can swim when only five days old is a good survival advantage.
The bulky nest is woven of grasses, rushes, sedges and other plant material, lined with fine grasses, and is here attached to adjacent cattail stems and leaves. A female appears, bearing a beak–full of insects, and lands on a cattail stem above the nest. With the binoculars I try to see what she is doing, but waving cattail leaves and stems are in the way. From what I can make out I am sure that she is feeding nestlings.
Soon the female takes off over the cattails, no doubt going for more insects. Almost immediately she reappears, much too soon to have caught anything. What’s more, she does not have insects in her beak but a bundle of nest material. Meanwhile, the male, still singing energetically, pays no attention to her although she is only a few yards away. Suspecting the truth, with binoculars I watch the female fly down into the thicket of cattails. This time I can see much better and this bird is building a nest. That handsome male has two wives. Red–winged blackbird males have two mates more often than just one. Sometimes they even collect three.
Sitting in the grass with my back against an aspen tree, I listen to the sounds of wind. The music of the breeze in the nearby pine and fir forest has a drowsy quality, whereas the euphony of gentle wind and aspen leaves is wakeful. The scientific name of the aspen, Populus tremuloides, nicely describes the trembling of the leaves in the wind…to be continued.