We're all familiar with the huge flocks of blackbirds (and others) that
wander the landscape through the winter. This past week, just because I've
been spending more time observing, I've been seeing such a flock starting to
form. We have a number of breeding Red-wings around the edges of Long Lake
here, and a few days ago I started to see small groups of them forming and
moving about to feed. They seemed to consist entirely of females; I see
that Ehrlich et al. (Birder's Handbook, p. 612) note that males often form
flocks separate from females and young. The local flock has been growing,
maybe through combination of a couple of small flocks, and I've now been
able to see that while many of the birds are females, many others have a
plumage I haven't observed before, the juvenal male plumage: similar to the
streaked brown of females, but with dull orange wing patches and with orange
edges on many feathers, mostly the secondaries and scapulars. I just
checked Bent (L.H. of Blackbirds, Orioles, ..., p. 135), where an old
description by Dwight, from 1900, confirms that that's what they are. Seems
odd that I've not observed it before; I guess when you're used to seeing
Red-wings, you tend to pass them by in the marsh without looking at them all
closely. Anyway, the flocks are growing, and I do seem to be confirming a
separation of the sexes.

Burt Guttman guttmanb at evergreen.edu
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 360-456-8447
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S.E., Olympia 98503