Male Red-winged Blackbirds freshly molted have extensive rusty margins to
the body feathers, often obscuring the red wing patch almost entirely. They,
of course, have dark eyes.

Gene Hunn, Seattle, hunnhome at accessone.com

At 04:57 PM 1/31/98 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi All,
>Recently Brian Bell described a Rusty Blackbird that he and others observed
>at Two Rivers Wildlife Center. What caught my eye was the fact the the
>eyes(of the first bird identified as a RUBL) were black. I had a rather
>mysterious member of the blackbird family around our place in the late fall.
>Most of its feathers terminated in a peachy/brownish red fringe. The rest of
>the feathers were dark brown, definitely not black. It had black eyes. We
>couldn't find any reference that describes the eye of the RUBL, even
>juvenile as black. Everything I've found says yellow (or straw) with a black
>center.
>Is the eye of the sub-adult RUBL yellow? Black? Comments please.
>Thanks for the help.
>Gail Spitler
>Johnsons Landing, BC
>spitler at wkpowerlink.com
>
>
>