A Midday Break for 28 Rusty Blackbirds

A flock of around two or three hundred Common Grackles and other blackbirds has been a regular feature in the yards and trees in our neighborhood almost every day this November. I don’t always see the flock, but almost always can hear them sometime during the day. Among them there have been at least a few Rusty Blackbirds now and then, and on one memorable morning toward the end of the month, twenty-eight Rusty Blackbirds perched in the bare branches of a pecan tree along the edge of a yard. I think it’s the largest number of Rusty Blackbirds I’ve ever seen together, and one of the easiest to see well and clearly.

It was late in the morning on a warm, cloudy day. I could hear the loud, harsh calls of Grackles in one of the areas where they most often can be found, and as I crested a hill, I could see the silhouettes of many blackbirds in the bare-limbed trees in several yards.

They were moving in waves, a few at a time, through the trees. But in this one tree several blackbirds perched and showed no signs of leaving, even when I got very close and stopped almost directly below them. This was unusual. I counted twenty-eight birds – and all were Rusty Blackbirds, considerably smaller than Grackles, with thin pointed bills. About half were male and half female. The males looked all-black, with pale eyes, but in some I could see the rusty tinge, especially on the edges of the wings. The females were in their elegant mixed shades of brown, rust, fawn and gray, with crowns that looked reddish-chestnut, a wide buff stripe over the eye, and a smoky-dark patch and streak through the eye.

Because populations of Rusty Blackbirds have declined so dramatically and there is concern for their future, it always feels special to see them, so I stayed and watched them for at least 15 minutes, maybe more. Most were facing in the same direction, and many were preening. They made low, intimate chuck calls. All in all, it looked and sounded like a quiet midday break.

Although they had seemed to be associated with the larger flock of blackbirds, they did not move with the others but stayed in this tree, and after several minutes, all the other blackbirds had moved on and disappeared. Against a deeply quiet background then, I could hear the high, thin calls of several Cedar Waxwings in a tree across the street. An Eastern Bluebird sang some blurry notes. A Red-bellied Woodpecker and then a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker both flew into the same tree with the Rusty Blackbirds, on lower branches. A Northern Flicker’s kleer and a Downy Woodpecker’s peenk came from nearby, like sharp punctuations in the quiet. Dozens of Chipping Sparrows moved around in the grass and dead leaves in the yards.

Though I seldom get such a beautiful view of them, I finally decided it was time to leave them alone and walked on, leaving the Rusty Blackbirds still sitting in this tree, still preening and chucking softly to each other.

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