NorthernWings: Rusty Blackbirds

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Rusty Blackbirds

Today six Rusty Blackbirds were observed and digiscoped on Old Connecticut River Road in Springfield, Vermont. These were in a flock of 10+ Red-winged Blackbirds and four Common Grackles.

Rusty Blackbird is a North American species of high conservation concern. Since the 1960s its population has declined 85 to 99%. Causes of this trend are unknown at this time, but the scientific community suspects global climate change and habitat degradation/loss. The 2014 Rusty Blackbird Spring Migration Blitz is a citizen science effort to engage birders in seeking out "rusties" and to submit their observations on-line. Check out the link for details.

Male Rusty Blackbird in late basic/early alternate plumage.

Male Rusty Blackbird (left) and Red-winged Blackbird (right).

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"Birding, after all, is just a game. Going beyond that is what is important." ~Roger Tory Peterson

"May the relationship between man and nature not be driven by greed, to manipulate and exploit, but may the devine harmony between beings and creation be conserved in the logic of respect and care." ~Pope Francis, Vatican City, April 22, 2015.

"In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand; we will understand only what we have been taught." ~Baba Doum, Senegalese Ecologist

"The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant: What good is it?" ~ Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac (1949)

"Life...[is] never a question of accumulating material things, nor in the struggle for reputation, but in the widening and deepening of perception, increasing the sensitivity of the faculties, of an awareness of the world in which one lives." ~Louis Lamour: Flint (1960)

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children." ~John James Audubon