Redwing Blackbird

My favorite bird for as long as I can remember.

Redwing Blackbird in a marsh along S. Prairie Carbon River Road

There is a small marsh—maybe as big as an acre—along the back road between the tiny town of South Prairie (population 325) and where the South Prairie Creek runs into the Carbon River. It’s a road that parallels the highway, so it has little excuse for its existence other than being the slow, quiet way to get from our house to civilization. (On the theory that a mile of highway missed is a good mile.)

It’s a very pleasant, twisty-turn, no-guardrails, full-of-blind-turns sort of road, the kind no one would even think of putting in these days.

But it’s main charm for me is the little marsh where the Redwings show up every spring. They arrive well before the marsh itself comes to life, as you can see from the numerous dried stalks of cattails from last summer. The birds come a-courtin’, and their whistles are music to the ear. The males live up to the species name, but the ladies are variegated, sort of stripped in black, and not obviously blackbirds.

Female redwing blackbird

I shot a bunch of photos, mostly in a light rain. All of them about the same settings: 300m Sony lens with 1.4X teleconverter (for 420mm focal length), at f/4, ISO 400, 1/800th of a second. Here’s one more photo from the bunch.