{"id":4193,"date":"2013-01-31T22:29:38","date_gmt":"2013-02-01T04:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/?p=4193"},"modified":"2013-01-31T22:29:38","modified_gmt":"2013-02-01T04:29:38","slug":"whats-weird-about-rusty-blackbirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/earbirding.com\/blog\/archives\/4193","title":{"rendered":"What’s Weird About Rusty Blackbirds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rusty Blackbird, Cleveland, Ohio, 10\/9\/2011. Photo by Laura Gooch (CC-by-nc-sa).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The voice of Rusty Blackbird isn’t particularly well known.\u00a0 Perhaps because the species is uncommon and its breeding grounds rather remote, it’s never been the subject of a formal bioacoustic study.\u00a0 But Rusty Blackbirds sing quite a bit — both males and females sing, in fact.\u00a0 They sing on the breeding grounds, on migration in fall and spring, and pretty much all winter long.\u00a0 The winter flocks I encountered in the swamps of Arkansas could be heard for half a mile.<\/p>\n

Several authors have described Rusty Blackbirds as having two types of songs — one more creaking, one more gurgling — and this would make sense given that the closely related Brewer’s Blackbird has also been reported to have two different songs of more or less the same types.\u00a0 As I went through online recordings of Rusty Blackbirds, however, I came to the conclusion that I was hearing three different types of songs from the species, not two.\u00a0 Or is that two types of song and a very song-like call?<\/p>\n

Three things Rusty Blackbirds say<\/h4>\n

The gurgle-creak<\/strong> seems like a good candidate for a typical “song.”\u00a0 It starts with a complex jumble of rapid notes and ends with a high monotone whistle with a metallic quality, like the creak of a rusty hinge:<\/p>\n

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