Rusty Blackbird

First comes the bird’s quick, creaky zee; the drier chack notes around it make the contrast easy to hear.

Long-distance migrant—breeds chiefly in Canada & Alaska, winters from the Ohio River valley south to the Gulf Coast and east to the Atlantic seaboard.

Breeds in remote boreal conifer bogs, flooded tamarack/spruce forests, and tundra ponds; winters in wet bottomland hardwood swamps, beaver ponds, flooded fields, and pecan groves.

Arrives on northern breeding grounds April–May; migrates south Aug–Oct; spends Nov–Mar on wintering grounds, often in small flocks mixed with grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds.

The Rusty Blackbird is a medium–sized, swamp-loving blackbird of North America’s boreal forests. Named for the warm, rusty feather edges that cloak birds in non-breeding plumage, it breeds far to the north in quiet spruce bogs and muskeg and then migrates to the wooded wetlands of the southeastern United States for winter. Once abundant, the species has suffered one of the steepest population declines of any North American passerine—over 85 % in the last half-century—making every sighting notable.