The Tricolored Redwing 



TO ONE in search of something utterly different I can heartily 

 recommend an hour, or a day, in a Tricolor swamp. The birds are 

 themselves, to be sure, not so different in generic appearance from their 

 more familiar and widely distributed cousins, the Redwings (Agelaius 

 phoeniceus). Indeed, one would suppose at first sight that a plumage 

 difference which is practically limited to the lesser wing-coverts, white 

 instead of buff (or buff overlaid with black, as in A. p. calif omicus) , would 

 indicate merely one of those troublesome subspecific distinctions which 

 practical field men wisely ignore. But such is far from being the case. 

 For after we have conceded the all but identity of plumage in the male 

 and the almost indistinguishable similarity of the eggs, we note with 

 real surprise that we have to do here with a bird whose song, whose 

 psychology and behavior, whose social arrangements, and presumed 

 developmental history are entirely different from those of its phoenicean 

 double, although the latter occupies closely the same general territory, 

 and oftener than not the very edges of the swamps where tricolors are 

 wont to assemble. 



Agelaius tricolor is intensely gregarious, more so perhaps than any 

 other xAmerican bird. Every major act of its life is performed in close 

 association with its fellows. Not only does it roost, or ravage grain 

 fields, or foregather for nesting, in hundreds and thousands, but the very 

 day of its nesting is agreed upon in concert. In continuous procession 

 the individuals of a colony repair to a field agreed upon in quest of building 

 material; and when the babies are clamoring the loudest for food, the 

 deploying foragers join their nearest fellows and return to the swamps 

 by platoons and volleys, rather than as individuals. The normal flock 

 movement is in itself distinctive. The birds fly silently, with not so much 

 as a rustle of wings; and they pass close to the ground, or at most at an 

 elevation of fifteen or twenty feet. Each member of the flock rises and 

 falls with each recurrent effort of the wings, quite independently of his 

 fellows; but there is no vacillation or disposition to break away. Each 

 bird is solely and ominously intent upon "getting there." 



A prosperous nesting colony of Tricolored Redwings is an enormous 

 affair. At the height of building activities it seems a perfect bedlam, 

 and the composite roar can be heard a mile away. At the same time, 

 one rather wonders at the mildness and restraint of the individual utter- 

 ance. The flock noise at its worst suggests a colony of a thousand birds, 

 whereas there are in reality tens of thousands — say thirty thousand birds 

 in a typical citadel. As one approaches the great green cover of cattails, 

 he is reminded of circus day in the olden time. Everybody else is going 

 too. Excited platoons and hurrying companies of birds sweep over the 

 ground with rapid undulating flight, and lose themselves immediately in 



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