THE RED-WINGED BLACKBIRD 



By MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



tEfif il^ational ^association o( audubon S)ocieties 



EDUCATIONAL LEAFLET NO. 25 



"Among all the birds that return to us in April, which is the most strik- 

 ing and most compels attention ? " asked a bird -lover of a group of kindred 

 spirits. 



"The Fox Sparrow," said one who lived on the edge of a village where 

 sheltered wild fields stretched up hill to the woodlands. "Every morning 

 when I open my window I can hear them almost without listening." 



"The Phoebe," said another, who was the owner of a pretty home, 

 where many rambling sheds broke the way from cow-barn to pasture. 



"The Whippoorwill," answered a third, a dweller in a remote colony of 

 artists in a picturesque spot of cleared woodland, where the ground dropped 

 quickly to a stream. 



"No, the Woodcock," said her nearest neighbor, a man whose cottage 

 was upon the upper edge of these same woods, where they were margined 

 by moist meadows and soft bottomlands — a man who spent much time out- 

 of-doors at dawn and twilight studying sky effects. 



"And I think it's Red-winged Blackbirds," cried the ten -year-old son of 

 the latter; "for when I go out up back of the trout brook by the little path 

 along the alders near the squashy place where the cattails grow in summer, 

 you've just got to hear them. You can't listen to them as you do to real 

 singing birds, for they make too much noise, and when you listen for a bird 

 it's got to be still at least in the beginning. Sometimes they go it all together 

 down in the bushes out of sight, then a few will walk out up to the dry 

 Meadowlark's field with Cowbirds, or maybe it's their wives, and then one 

 or two will lift up and shoot over the marsh back again, calling out just 

 like juicy sky-rockets. Ah, they're it in April before the leaves come out." 

 And, in spite of difiference of viewpoint, the group finally acknowledged 

 that the boy was right. 



In point of coloring the Redwing is faultlessly plumed — 

 Pws^nality"^'^ glossy black with epaulets of scarlet edged with gold— the 

 uniform of a soldier, and this, coupled with the three martial 

 notes that serve him as a song, would make one expect to find in him all 

 the manly and military virtues. But aside from the superficial matter of per- 

 sonal appearance, the Redwing is lacking in many of the quaHties that 

 endear the feathered tribe to us and make us judge them, perhaps too much 

 by human standards. 



When Redwings live in colonies it is often difficult to estimate the exact 



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