On a barely cool, cloudy, gray afternoon, with brown leaves thick on the ground and some still in the trees, the neighborhood seemed unusually quiet, even for this time of year. A few small birds were foraging in the faded grass of yards \u2013 Chipping Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, House Finch, an Eastern Bluebird here and there. In the trees, I heard a Red-bellied Woodpecker, Downy Woodpecker, White-breasted Nuthatch, Brown-headed Nuthatch, Carolina Wren, and a few Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice, but not as many as usual.<\/p>\n
A Northern Flicker hitched its way backwards down the trunk of an oak, quiet except for the scratching sound of its claws on the bark. A little further on, one solitary blackbird sat in the top of a bare-limbed pecan tree, calling churk<\/em> over and over. Each time it called, it flicked its tail. Though my view in the gray light wasn\u2019t good, I could see the shape of a medium-size blackbird with a slender bill, pale yellow eyes and a faint rusty color on the nape and back \u2013 a Rusty Blackbird. It appeared to be completely alone, no other blackbirds around that I could see or hear \u2013 though there may have been many not far away. A fairly large flock of Common Grackles, Rusty Blackbirds and Red-winged Blackbirds is frequently around.<\/p>\n On other occasions, I have noticed the flicking of a Rusty Blackbird\u2019s tail as it calls. This is not often mentioned or highlighted in field guides, but in the species account for Rusty Blackbird in Birds of North America Online<\/em> I found this note: \u201cCall notes are accompanied by rapid down and up flicking of the tail.\u201d*<\/p>\n I don\u2019t know that this is a dependable identification tip for a Rusty Blackbird \u2013 other birds do this, too. But it was interesting to me, to confirm that it is a characteristic behavior.<\/p>\n * Michael L. Avery. 1995. Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus), The Birds of North America Online<\/em> (A. Poole, Ed.) Ithaca: Cornell Lab of Ornithology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a barely cool, cloudy, gray afternoon, with brown leaves thick on the ground and some still in the trees, the neighborhood seemed unusually quiet, even for this time of year. A few small birds were foraging in the faded grass of yards \u2013 Chipping Sparrows, Yellow-rumped Warblers, House Finch, an Eastern Bluebird here and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1503,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/birdingnotes.sigridsanders.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}