Brooklyn Bird Watch: August 2
Rusty Blackbird. Scientific name: Euphagus carolinus
Today we are featuring Heather Wolf’s photo of a Rusty Blackbird standing in the grass of Brooklyn Bridge Park. Regretfully the Rusty Blackbird’s overall “vulnerability status” is high. If one looks at the Audubon Range map you will see that about 67 percent of the species’ Northern range has been lost. The population has plunged an estimated 85-99 percent over the past forty years. Scientists are not sure why yet. I would certainly say that with the amount of blackbirds and grackles we see on the West Coast of Central Florida, those statistics were shocking.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife even has a “Rusty Blackbird Working Group” to help study the species that was basically ignored until the mid-1990s, when it became evident they were declining dramatically. Professional bird people and scientists have nicknamed this bird “Rusties.” The Brewer’s Blackbird and Common Grackle are the most likely species to be confused with “Rusties.”
Around here in Central Florida we often see flocks of Crows and Blackbirds congregate next to each other on the overhead electric wires where they just seem to sit there for no apparent reason, and then suddenly, also for no apparent reason, they will all fly away at the same time and fill the immediate sky. And we are thankful that the Hitchcock movie “The Birds” was just that, something imagined in a movie.
The Cornell Lab says in winter male Rusty Blackbirds are recognized by their rusty feather edges, pale yellow eye and buffy eyebrow. Females are gray-brown; they also have rusty feather edges, pale eyes and a bold eyebrow, contrasting with darker feathers right around the eye. Breeding males are dark glossy black.