RED-WINGS AND CATTAILS

     Red-winged blackbirds and cattails go together like peas and carrots and peanut butter and jelly.
Red-wings mostly nest in cattail marshes, large and small, and also among tall grasses and ten-foot-tall phragmites. 
     Red-wings are striking birds.  Males are jet-black with red shoulder patches.  Black is an intimidating non-color that repulses other male red-wings from each other's nesting area.  And black helps chase away crows, hawks, mink, house cats and other kinds of predators that might consume young red-wings.  The red epaulets are displayed when the wings are raised as visual threats to other male red-wings when each male sways on top of a tall, wind-blown plant and repeatedly sings "kon-ga-reeeee" to establish his "ownership" of a patch of cattails or reeds".  Male red-wings also regularly dive-bomb and swoop ferociously at predators to scare them away from their mates' nurseries, and the young sheltering in them.
     Female red-wings are attracted to the striking colors of the males, their lusty songs, and their ability to fearlessly get rid of predators, making a marsh more safe for rearing offspring.  After several chases around the marsh, each female allows a male, or males, to mate with her.      
     Female red-wings are equally as handsome as their mates.  They are beige, with heavy, chocolate streaking that blends them into their backgrounds of cattails, reeds and grasses.  Under the covers of stealth, camouflage and the protection of their mates, female red-wings build camouflaged cradles of strips of cattails, phragmites and grass, and anchor them to tall, plant stems just inches above the normal water line of a marsh.  Water helps discourage some predation. 
    The adaptable red-wings nest in varying-sized wetlands, particularly cattail marshes.  They raise young in huge salt marshes along ocean shorelines, in tiny patches of cattails in ponds, retention basins, roadside ditches, and in every size between.  Happily, the beautiful red-wings seem to be everywhere in spring and summer.  Colonies of red-wings hatch chicks in the larger marshes, and single pairs raise young in a small cattail stand.  
One thing I miss about red-wing life history is that I don't see great flocks of them migrating north in March, as I used to.  I read, however, that farmers in the southern United States are poisoning grackles and starlings because they are eating much livestock feed in barnyards during winters.  Red-wings might be victims of that poisoning, as well.  Still, the National Audubon Society recently stated that, currently, there are between 150 to 180 million breeding red-winged blackbirds in North America, which includes southern Canada, all of the United States and parts of Mexico, all areas where they nest.  Well, I hope their populations don't drop real low because these are beautiful, interesting birds.
     Watch for red-wings in marshes, especially among cattails.  They are so handsome among those appealing, picturesque rushes with a "hot dog" on top of each stem.         
     
      

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