The Blackbirds

By Al Lowe
Contributor

There are a lot of black birds, but not all of them are Blackbirds. We have quite a few birds in the same family, including orioles, meadowlarks, and the bobolink. But we also have three black birds which are true Blackbirds, and can be quite confusing to the amateur birder.
Brewer's Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus). The male of this bird is black, of course, with quite a high gloss of purple and green. The female is duller, with more brown or grayish, especially on the underparts. The male bird has a yellow eye, the female a brown one. Watch those eyes - they have some importance! Both become much less colored in the fall. In the summer, they generally hang around in fairly small groups in fields, pastures and on lawns. Brewer's has a terrible voice - a sort of harsh, grating squawk. It is a western bird, rapidly spreading into the eastern provinces.
The Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carokibus) is quite hard to differentiate from the first one. This time both male and female have yellow eyes. Once again, the male is black with an iridescence of faint purple and green.
The female is similar, but duller. But here's where the name comes from. In the fall and winter, the female becomes decidedly rusty looking, mottled with various browns. This bird is most often to be found near water - marshes, pond shores, river banks and so on. It nests in small groups. Once again, its voice is terrible, usually described as being like a rusty hinge. Rusties breed right across Canada from coast to coast. To tell the males of the two species apart is quite a feat.
The third one is the Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula). This one is much larger than the other two. It also has a big, wedge-shaped tail, and the iridescence is very prominent, purple on the head part and bronze on the back. A while ago, they were thought to be two separate speices, Bronze and Purple, but now we know that they are just variations of the same one. This bird is found from Alberta east to the Atlantic. Song is a short squeak, but it goes around saying 'chack' a lot. It is quite easy to recognize.
In the fall, blackbirds of all kinds tend to flock together. In Canada, a flock of several thousand can do a lot of damage to a farmer's corn in the early part of autumn. But how about flocks of 4 or 5 million? That's the kind they get in Kentucky and Tennessee. These flocks can do terrible damage to agriculture, are always a danger to aircraft, and may present a problem in human health.
Lots of people want to eliminate several million of these birds while they are available in such large concentrations. However, examination of their food indicated that they consume immense quantities of weed seeds, and harmful insects, as well as some grain.
A lot more study will have to be done to find out how to control these birds, or if we really do want to control them. Questions in nature never seem to have a black and white answer.