Black birds by the side of the road

I have spent a lot of time in the car and, as a result, see lots of roadside birds.  Many of them are black.

Starlings are still with me – I have seen starlings every day of my trip and that includes Starlings hopping round near bison.

Larger than a Starling but similarly iridescent when seen really well, is the Common Grackle.  The males have characteristically shaped tails – kell-shaped in flight – and I think I have seen them every day too.

Brown-headed Cowbirds are mostly black, and you only see the brown heads of the males when up close.  These are of similar size to Starlings and often form small flocks.  They are nest parasites and are thought to have played a part in the declines of many American woodland species as forests became fragmented and access to those forests became easier for cowbirds.   They follow grazing animals to catch insects stirred up by the animal’s passage and I have now seen flocks of cowbirds under a bison’s feet.

Red-winged Blackbirdsare black too – with spectacular yellow and red shoulder patches in the males.  Andre Dhondt, at Cornell, pointed out to me that the males can hide their red wing patches when they feed in groups around bird feeders – as if to say ‘I’m not looking for a fight’.  These birds are often by the side of the road and only when they fly do I realise from the wing-patch which species is involved.

So, there are four regular black birds to keep the birder-motorist guessing right across the continent.  But a few days ago, around the 100th meridian in the South Dakota prairie-land, I noticed another black bird.  This one feeds on the roadside and is a similar size to the others, and is often with the others, but has white wing patches.  A new black bird – what can it be?

This bird always seemed to fly directly away from the road without perching conveniently ona fence to give me a better look.  At first I laboured under the misapprehension that it might be a Tri-coloured Blackbird as they have white wing patches but once I got a good look at Sibley I realised how foolish that idea was as they don’t live in South Dakota and the white patches are very different – no points for that guess.

New birds on new continents are fun – but sometimes one spends ages looking in the wrong part of the book.  Eventually I realised that these were male Lark Buntings.  The white on the end of the tail isn’t nearly as obvious as Sibley suggests and that sent me the wrong way for a while.

The 100th meridian marks something of a watershed for western/Eastern American birds and I knew that I ought to be seeing another blackbird too.  So, yesterday, in the rain, but before the flat tire, I paid more attention to black birds by the road and after a while I saw the characteristic white eye ring of the Brewer’s Blackbird.

Must get that tire fixed so that I can see what black birds the road has in store.

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