Date: 5/3/26 12:45 pm From: Dee Dee via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Unusual Backyard Migrant: Red-Winged Blackbird
Coming late to the party, contributing my experience with red-winged blackbirds (RWBB) in our mixed small-to-medium lot-sizes suburban neighborhood. Interesting hear what others experience in the broader region.
My setting and backstory: Our lot is approximately one-third acre, a block inland from Puget Sound (the Sound) shoreline. Approximately 0.2 miles away is a small, creek-fed wetland, just onshore from the Sound, bordered by a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees. Been here 15 years and always had a birdbath, suet feeder and up to two sunflower-chip plus dried mealworms seed feeders. Several heavily-bearing native evergreen huckleberry bushes and 9 assorted blueberry bushes which 8 years ago were given over to the critters and birds, when we also gave up on our extensive organic veggie garden. Instead, we then planted several rows of seed-bearing sunflowers for about 4 years…unfortunately age and cost of watering restricts such the last few years.
In first years, I sometimes heard RWBB but distant, down by the wetland, but no regular visitors. After a few years, saw them at times in the yard, mostly on the feeders during hard, snowy winters, or infrequently, males vocalizing on nearby utility lines. When the sunflower garden was in seed, we no surprise, frequently saw them in larger numbers, and year-round coming to the feeders even if no sunflowers in seed. Don’t recall ever seeing more than about 10 at one time, but their frequency finally forced me to add bird-size-control cages to seed feeders to keep within seed budget. They still can glean spillage with the other ground feeders, or go to the suet. Since adding the restrictive feeder cages, we still see them on occasion, year-round, just not in as great of numbers. I don’t have the knowledge to speculate on which are locals and which are migrants, but we see both male and female, though the majority are males, especially first-year. I love to hear and see these beautiful birds and am grateful that they persist in our local environment and occasional visits to my yard.
