Blackbird
a well known member of a large bird family. It is related to the oriole, bobolink, and meadow-lark. The red-winged blackbird with scarlet shoulders and his rusty, buffy, modest wife build nests in the sedges, reeds, and rushes a foot or two above the water throughout the swamps of Eastern North America from the Gulf to Manitoba. Eggs, three to five, pale blue, streaked or spotted with dark purple. The spring concert of newly arrived blackbirds rivals that of the bullfrog. The Kong Ki reee, conqueree conqueree, of a male balancing dexterously midway up an old reed or sitting on a willow is a cheerful trill of rich music. "The redwing flutes his O Ka lee," says Emerson. The assaults of the blackbird on green corn, and a propensity not unlike that of the snipe to drill a hole at the base of sprouting corn for the sake of the seed, have not endeared him to the farmer. These birds gather in large flocks prior to their migration southward for the winter. The yellow-headed blackbird nests in extensive bodies of reeds from Illinois to Manitoba and westward. The rusty blackbird ranges farther north. The purple grackle, or crow blackbird, breeds in the Mississippi Valley and eastward. The blackbirds of Europe and Africa do not belong to the same family as ours. They are thrushes. The "wild whistling blackbird," named by Burns in his sorrow, belongs to a British family of thrushes.
