Blackbirds

I mentioned to my co-worker that I was seeing blackbirds on my way to work, and she responded "big deal, blackbirds, they're everywhere, who cares?" Brewer's blackbird is, admittedly, one of those trashy birds that is usually seen lowering property values in McDonald's parking lots, but there's something special about them for me, because they're absent in winter, and every spring they return to the same cluster of trees to nest. They're like robins,but cranky. Some of them also may be Narnia fans--they like this one particular lampost:

I see them chasing each other, but the magical moment where one pecks my head is still just a dream...

And just because, here is a video of the Brewer's Blackbird's cousins, Red-Winged Blackbirds, singing in Briones:

Blackbrfffds and Diet

One other interesting Blackbird fact I learned from Gordon Orians' Blackbirds of the Americas is that Blackbirds have a uniquely powerful beak. Most birds, somewhat like alligators, can bite fairly hard but are weak when it comes to opening their mouths. That's why Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, could hold the crocs' mouths closed with just his hands. Blackbirds are the opposite--they are great at opening their beaks, which is called "gaping." Since they're unlikely to encounter a spirited Australian who holds their mouths closed for fun, why do they have this ability? The answer is that they use their superpowers to pry open gaps in grass stems or curled leaves and pick out bugs from inside.

That's why when I saw this blackbird by the lake's edge, I was surprised to see it filling its beak with tiny yellow flowers from the burr-clover, Medicago polymorpha.

What was this bird doing? Eating the flowers? bringing them back for its young to eat? After I watched the bird, it flew across the lake and landed in a tree which definitely has a blackbird nest in it. I read about another potential explanation in a book called Wild Health by Cindy Engel. She mentions several studies which show some birds, including starlings, line their nests with fresh greenery, especially if they are re-using an old nest. The idea is that an older nest may have more parasites, and the green plants fumigate the nest for a new year of use. Do blackbirds re-use their nests? Birder's Handbook didn't say, so let's ask the blackbird:

"Mpph mmmph mmmph, mppph mppphhhh moppphh!"

Well, there you have it.

Brewer's Blackbirds singing in the dead of night. Or more acurately, chirping all the darn time.

There is a small colony of Brewer's blackbirds that nests at the Lake each year, along Lakeview avenue. Every spring, commuters on their way to BART have to pass by The Blackbird Tree and face the Wrath of the Blackbird.

Why do blackbirds attack people? "Mobbing" is an infamous behavior of many birds, including blackbirds, where they attack a predator, either individually or in groups. Thus, you might think that this behavior serves to drive the predator away, keeping the blackbird's babies safes for anothers days. However, in Blackbirds of the Americas, Gordon Orians makes a different argument. He notes that pecking people in the back of the head (or otherwise getting macho on a predator) is NOT correllated with extra success in the baby department. So why are they wasting their time? One possibility is that they are merely showing off their machismo for the benefit of any watching ladies. Another possiblity is that birds become agressive when they have a bad bit of territory (one with humans always tramping through it), and that those extra predators in the bad territory account for the lower nest success.


Why do the Brewer's blackbirds nest colonially? One answer I read about in Blackbirds of the Americas is that they like to have a lot of neighbors so that they can spy on each other and learn where the food is. If one bird sees its neighbor returning from the Kaiser building with a big fat beakful of bugs, it knows that's a good potential source to feed its own babies. Off it goes in the same direction.