Red-winged Blackbird: marsh bird, spring flock, feeder problem

The short answer

• The streaky brown bird that looks like an oversized sparrow is the female. Check the bill: long, straight and sharply pointed, not the short conical wedge of a sparrow.
• Millet and cracked corn are both top-tier for this species. Cutting those two off the ground is the single most effective change when a flock takes over.
• Pressure comes in pulses. Heaviest from late February to May, a second lighter wave from July as post-breeding flocks form, then little in the north through winter.
• This is a native bird protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Management means exclusion, food choice and portion control, never harm.
• Distance to the nearest marsh, wet ditch or retention pond predicts your flock size better than anything you do at the feeder.

The male is the easiest bird in North America to name and the female is one of the most often misidentified. That gap explains most of the confusion in March, when both arrive in the same flock and only one of them looks like a blackbird.

The female is the one that fools people#

She is dark brown above, heavily streaked below, with a pale eyebrow and often a rusty or peach wash across the face and throat. People call her a giant sparrow, and at a glance that is fair.

Bill shape is the reliable one, and it is visible in a bad photo. Sparrows have a seed-crushing wedge. Blackbirds have a probe.

The male needs no key: glossy black with scarlet shoulders bordered in yellow. Worth knowing is that he can hide the red almost completely, showing only a thin buff line, when he is off territory or near a dominant bird. A black bird with no red in March is usually a young or subordinate male, not a grackle, which is longer, pale-eyed and glossed bronze or purple.

Marsh first, yard second#

This is a wetland bird that commutes. It nests in cattail marshes, wet ditches, retention ponds, flooded field margins and increasingly in dry hayfields, then travels out to feed. Your feeder is an outstation, and the distance from your yard to the nearest wet ground predicts your flock size better than anything you can buy.

Males hold territories in that wetland and several females may nest inside one male's patch, which is why you often see one male and a cluster of streaky females together. The conk-la-reeee from a ditch half a mile away is the bird that will be on your tray by nine o'clock.

What a flock does to a feeding station#

Red-wings do not fight your regulars for a feeder. They arrive as a unit and occupy it.

Arrival is late. They roost communally away from the yard, so they show up one to three hours after first light, well after the resident chickadees and cardinals have had their morning session. That timing is a tool: seed put out at dawn in a small portion is largely gone before they get there.

Flock size runs 5 to 50 in a typical suburb near water, arriving in waves rather than all at once, feeding hard for ten to twenty minutes, then leaving together.

They are strictly open-surface feeders. Platform trays, wide hopper ledges and open ground are what they use. They cannot feed from a short-perch tube and they have no interest in a nyjer feeder. Every red-wing problem is really a problem with a horizontal surface.

Dominance is by mass and numbers. At about 55 g a red-wing outweighs a chickadee by five to one, and cardinals, finches and sparrows wait it out in the shrubs. Within the flock, males displace females and juveniles constantly, with a lot of wing-spreading and shoulder display.

They clean up spillage. A yard with a thick drop layer under the hanging feeders is feeding blackbirds whether it means to or not. Raking or sweeping the drop zone weekly through the spring pulse removes a resource no feeder swap will touch.

What to put out, and what to take away#

Skip for this species: Peanuts (in shell), Nectar.

Millet and cracked corn are both top-tier here, sunflower and hearts are eaten readily, and mealworms go faster than most people expect. At the bottom, safflower and nyjer are rated 1, taken only rarely.

If you want them, and in a yard without a flock problem they are worth having, scatter a cup of cracked corn on open ground away from the hanging feeders and keep a shallow bird bath nearby: they use open water heavily.

If you want fewer, work in this order.

1. Stop cracked corn and millet entirely. These are the two 4s. Nothing else you do matters as much, and cheap seed mixes are mostly these two seeds, so change the mix as well as the scatter.
2. Remove the horizontal surfaces. Take the platform tray down for the duration of the pulse and switch the hopper for tubes with perches under 2 in. Keep the suet inside a cage.
3. Switch open seed to safflower. It thins the flock rather than removing it, because a 1 is not a 0, but combined with steps 1 and 2 it works. Expect your regulars to take two to three weeks to accept the change.
4. Portion the ground food. Put out at dawn only what your resident birds finish within an hour. A flock arriving at 9am to an empty patch, three or four days running, moves on.
5. Give it a fortnight before judging it. The birds will keep dropping in long after the food they wanted has gone, and people give up in the week before the flock does.

When none turn up at all#

The other half of the mail on this species is people who want them and get nothing.

• No wet ground within range. The most common reason by a wide margin, and the one you cannot fix. Check the table above.
• Nothing open to land on. A yard of hanging tubes gives a red-wing nowhere to stand. Add a low tray or a ground patch.
• No millet or corn. A sunflower-only yard is a 3 for this bird rather than a 4, which is often the difference between stopping and passing over.
• You are looking in the wrong months. In the northern half of the range they are largely absent from December to February.
• They are there and you are calling them grackles. Check for the shorter tail, dark eye and shoulder patch, which even a subordinate male shows as a thin buff line.

The blackbird year#

Late February to May is the pulse. Males move north first, often weeks ahead of the females, and flocks are still loose and traveling. This is when a feeding station gets taken over, and it is also when spring feeding needs the most adjustment.

Late May to June is quiet. Birds are on territory in wetlands and feeding heavily on insects. Feeder visits drop to almost nothing.

July to September brings a second, lighter wave as post-breeding flocks form and juveniles join, often mixed with grackles, starlings and cowbirds.

October to February: northern birds move south and gather into enormous communal roosts, mixed with other blackbird species, that can number in the many thousands. In the South, feeder pressure runs steadily through the winter instead.

The species is one of the most abundant birds on the continent, which makes it easy to treat as disposable. It is a native bird doing what it evolved to do, and the object here is a feeding station the smaller birds can use for ten weeks in spring, not a yard without blackbirds in it. For mixed flocks and the wider version of the problem, see grackles and blackbirds.

Frequently asked questions#

What is the brown streaky bird that looks like a huge sparrow?

Almost certainly a female Red-winged Blackbird. She is dark brown above, heavily streaked below, with a pale eyebrow and often a rusty or peach wash on the face and throat. Two things separate her from any sparrow. Size: at roughly 40 to 50 g she is about twice the weight of a Song Sparrow. Bill: long, straight and sharply pointed, where a sparrow's bill is short, deep and conical for crushing seed. She also arrives with other blackbirds, and sparrows do not.

How do I stop Red-winged Blackbirds taking over my feeders?

Remove the surfaces and the foods they want. Stop cracked corn and millet completely, take away open platform trays and wide hopper ledges during the spring pulse, and move seed into tube feeders with short perches and caged feeders they cannot enter. Switch open seed to safflower, which they take only rarely. Cut ground scatter to what your resident birds finish inside an hour each morning. Give it two to three weeks: a flock re-checks a site for well over a week before it gives up on it.

Is it legal to get rid of Red-winged Blackbirds?

They are native birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so killing them, trapping them or destroying active nests is not something a homeowner may do. It also does not work: a yard with food in it refills from the surrounding population within days. Everything effective is exclusion and food choice, which is what this page covers, and none of it requires a permit or harms a bird.

Why do Red-winged Blackbirds show up at my feeder in March and then vanish?

Because they are moving through and pairing up. Males return to breeding marshes weeks before the females, and through late February, March and April flocks are still loose and traveling, which is when they raid feeders hardest. By late May those same birds are on territory in a wetland, feeding mostly on insects, and your yard is no longer worth the trip. Expect the pressure to end on its own around ten to twelve weeks after it starts.

Do Red-winged Blackbirds eat safflower?

Rarely. In our preference dataset they score 1 on safflower, meaning it is taken occasionally rather than sought out, and 1 on nyjer as well. That is not the absolute zero that Common Grackles and European Starlings score, so safflower thins a red-wing flock rather than eliminating it. Combine it with removing cracked corn and millet, which are both top-tier foods for this species, and the effect is much stronger.

Sources and further reading

1. Red-winged Blackbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Measurements, plumages, habitat, breeding behavior and range
2. Migratory Bird Treaty Act Protected Species US Fish and Wildlife Service Federal protection covering native blackbirds
3. Discouraging Unwanted Feeder Visitors Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Foods and feeder designs that exclude large flocking birds
4. Red-winged Blackbird National Audubon Society Guide to North American Birds Seasonal distribution, marsh habitat and roosting