A New Departure for the Redwing 



By HOWARD H. CLEAVES. Staten Island. N. Y. 



With photographs by the author 



W' ^ I ^HE Red-winged Blackbird is gen- 



fe I erally associated with wet, marshy 



I places. His three-syllable note, or 



f - . song, we expect to hear from the tree-tops 



on the border of some cat-tail swamp, 

 along some creek, or at the edge of a 

 pond. 



The nest is easily located, being placed 

 sometimes in a tussock of grass near the 

 margin of the water, or out in an open 

 stretch of marsh-land in the short grasses. 

 More often it is suspended from the 

 FEMALE REDWING BLACKBIRD upright stems of the highwater-shrubs or 



HOVERING , „ , , 



the tall marsh grasses. The two latter 

 nests differ from the others. They are woven on the outside with plant fibers, and 

 fastened to their supports in a manner which makes them resemble, in a degree, 

 the nest of the Baltimore Oriole. Generally they are placed several feet from 

 the ground. The former nests are invariably placed very close to the ground, or 

 water, being only a few inches up the stems of the grasses to which they are 

 attached, and in no wise do they resemble a pendent nest. They are constructed 

 throughout of grasses of various sizes. 



But the Redwing is changing the nest-building customs of his race. He is 

 completely shifting the scenes of his domestic life. That is, he is doing so in a 

 certain section of Staten Island. 



Last summer, w^hile photographing Bobolinks, I had occasion to do a great 

 deal of walking back and forth through a daisy field, in search of nests. Red- 

 winged Blackbirds seemed numerous about the place, and would first alight on the 

 tree-tops at the edge of a wood, and then fly excitedly out over the field and hover 

 just above my head. I must have been too much absorbed in my Bobolinks at 

 first to take note of the Redwings, for not until a female of the latter species had 

 actually been flushed from her nest did it occur to me that these birds might do 

 such an unheard-of thing as to build in an upland hay-field, within a few rods 

 of the nests of the Bobohnk and Meadowlark. But here was unquestionable 

 proof. Father Redwing sat in a tree-top, scolding; the mother hovered excitedly 

 over my head; and just in front of me, supported by a cluster of daisy stems, was 

 the nest. The set of eggs was incomplete, but the eggs were unmistakable. The 

 nest-site had changed, but the eggs were scrawled with the same short-hand mark- 

 ings that adorn all Redwings' eggs. The nest was of the type found in the short 

 salt-meadow grass, and was onl\- four inches from the ground. 



(60) 



