RWBB

If you’re a birder or bird photographer, you know what that means. If you don’t or if these beauties don’t live where you do, it stands for Red-winged blackbird. They are a summer resident up this way and I always look forward to seeing them and hearing their unmistakable songs.

They tend to live near water and are one of the species that shows wide sexual dimorphism with the female being more camouflaged and the male much less so. He’s usually the one singing, too, although she uses alarm and communications calls. His bold trill and fluffy feathers are part of territory displays and keeping other males from intruding. Not that you’d want to mess with her either –

Until I got these photos in Lightroom, I didn’t know how colorful the facial feathers are in the females. They do vary a bit from bird to bird, but look at how yellow she is –

I think this is the same female in a different spot –

Each pair seems to be quite territorial and they don’t roam far to forage for the youngsters I could hear in every nest around the lake I was on. When each parent comes near with food, they issue communication calls and the kids call back. Mostly they’re clamoring for food, but probably the sound serves as a homing beacon, too. Here’s a busy mom looking for tasty snacks –

This might be her mate sounding that classic RWBB trill. While the males still maintain exclusive territories during nesting, they are most fierce in the mating season leading up to it. They not only fight with each other and birds of differing species, but almost any hapless animal to seem a threat, even deer. Fearlessly they attack predators looking to eat eggs or nestlings, too.

Seeing that I was in a bog, there were lots of tamarack pines and other bog foliage for them to perch in and of course it was filled with dragonflies, too. Here the hunter has become the hunted –

I don’t know that dad took that dragonfly back to his brood or if he had it as a snack for himself, but I noticed that both genders took small breaks to recharge during their frantic hunting activities. One female let me get less than 20 feet away from her while she preened in a tree. Unfortunately there were too many branches in the way, but I enjoyed watching her smooth and adjust her feathers. It seemed like a much-needed bit of self-care.

Here’s a working dad on the way back to the nest. How the heck does he get the other caterpillars in his beak after he’s wrangled one? I wonder if the notch in the beak helps with securing squirming prey. Or maybe they scoop as many at once as they can. Either way, this guy didn’t pause long and delivered his payload to hungry chicks hidden in the undergrowth.

And then returns to another tree to sound that keep away call.

No, it will sound better if I get to the tippy top!

And finally one where with a closed beak! This is barely cropped. I noticed a male hunting in the same spot from a little distance. So I glided the boat closer and eventually got it stuck on some submerged water lily rhizomes and waited. It didn’t take long before he landed in this maple not far off the bow of the kayak. Does he look tired to you?

While both genders are dedicated parents, they aren’t dedicated mates. Males will have several females nesting in their territories, sometimes over a dozen (no wonder they’re tired!), but not all the babies in those nests are necessarily sired by him. Everyone gets into the act feeding them though and they are really fun to watch.

Wisconsin is too far north to be home to them during the winter months since they are insectivores, so they migrate south when the food source dries up. Hearing one of their liquid calls is always one of my favorite signs of spring.