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Fun Facts
Did You Know?
Rusty blackbirds and Brewer's blackbirds share the same yellow eye, similar dark plumage, and the same mixed winter flocks, and they have been causing identification problems for as long as both species have been in North Louisiana at the same time. Sorting them is one of the more satisfying identification challenges in North Louisiana winter birding, because the two species actually differ in meaningful ways once you know what to look for, and habitat context resolves most cases before you've studied a single field mark
If This Animal Could Talk...
"Watch closely, respect my space, and let my habitat explain the rest of the story."
The rusty blackbird (Euphagus carolinus) has lost more than ninety percent of its population since the 1960s. Not ten percent. Not twenty-five. Ninety. Where ten rusty blackbirds worked a Louisiana bottomland slough in 1960, one works it now. The species has declined faster and more consistently than almost any other bird in North America, and for decades, essentially no one was paying attention.
Part of the problem is where they live. Rusty blackbirds winter in flooded bottomland forest, cold and wet and remote, accessible only by levee roads that go nowhere most birders are going, in habitat that doesn't photograph particularly well and doesn't attract the kind of attention that rare songbirds in accessible parks do. The birds moved through with the mixed blackbird flocks and got tallied as "blackbirds" or "rusty/Brewer's" or not tallied at all. The decline was happening in plain sight, in the dark, in flooded woods nobody was specifically counting.
A Few More Facts
How they hunt and forage: Feed store lots, livestock operations, dry pavement, the open impervious surfaces of human commerce. Rusty blackbirds forage by wading in shallow flooded water and flipping submerged leaf litter, which is not something the Brewer's blackbird in the parking lot next to the feed store is doing. The sequence runs: coal combustion releases mercury into the atmosphere, mercury deposits into boreal wetlands through precipitation, bacteria convert it to methylmercury, aquatic invertebrates accumulate it, rusty blackbirds eat the invertebrates, mercury accumulates in the birds at levels that can affect reproductive success.
Live birth or eggs? no
When young are born: See the detailed species sections below.
Photo Gallery
What Is the Rusty Blackbird Often Confused With?
Tensas River NWR in December has a specific quality that rewards a drive from Monroe or Rayville, which is a sentence that asks for some commitment to the word "rewards" but holds up on arrival. The landscape runs flat, the bottomland hardwood bare of leaves, the levee roads providing access to forest interiors that are otherwise inaccessible on foot. The pools under the bare tupelo gum and water oak canopy reflect the gray sky. The leaf litter on the pool bottoms shifts with the current of cold shallow water. This is where the rusty blackbird winters. Not the parking lot, not the grain field, not the managed lawn. This specific habitat, cold and wet and quiet, with the organic substrate that concentrates the aquatic invertebrates the bird depends on. The habitat and the bird are inseparable in a way that makes the habitat the species a field mark: if you are standing in cold flooded bottomland hardwood forest in December in Tensas Parish, the rusty blackbird is either present or the habitat is not currently holding birds. a no version of rusty blackbird in a dry setting.
Drag the handle left and right to compare Rusty Blackbird side by side with the species it gets mistaken for most.
Open the visual comparison tool
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Accessibility
Accessibility
The "ksh-a-lee" call is the detection tool and it is worth describing precisely for sound-first identification: three syllables, high-pitched, with a reedy synthetic quality that sits in the upper register and sounds slightly electronic rather than purely biological. The first syllable is clipped, the second rises slightly, the third drops with a quality often described as squeaky or whistled. Nothing else in a winter bottomland flock delivers this specific sound. Grackle calls are lower and harsher. Brewer's blackbird calls are drier and flatter.
The rusty blackbird's call arrives from inside flooded forest before the water is visible, carrying through bare winter canopy at close to medium range.
For visitors with limited mobility, the Tensas River NWR levee road system provides vehicle access along packed gravel surfaces adjacent to flooded bottomland forest. Windows down from a parked vehicle at any water crossing puts the interior forest soundscape within earshot without requiring entry into the terrain. The call arrives from inside the flooded forest. The habitat does not need to be entered to detect a calling bird.
Visual detection from a vehicle is possible when birds move to the forest margins or forage at the water's edge within sight of the levee road. The rusty edging on fresh fall birds in October and November is visible at close range in good light. Late-winter birds require the call for confident identification at any distance where plumage details are not resolved.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Does Rusty Blackbird live in North Louisiana?
Yes. Rusty blackbirds and Brewer's blackbirds share the same yellow eye, similar dark plumage, and the same mixed winter flocks, and they have been causing identification problems for as long as both species have been in North Louisiana at the same time. Sorting them is one of the more satisfying identification challenges in North Louisiana winter birding, because the two species actually differ in meaningful ways once you know what to look for, and habitat context resolves most cases before you've studied a single field mark.
North Louisiana falls along the spring migration corridor, and birders who visit flooded bottomland habitats in the eastern parishes during March and April contribute directly to a continent-wide monitoring effort for one of the most rapidly declining birds in North America.
How do you identify Rusty Blackbird?
Tensas River NWR in December has a specific quality that rewards a drive from Monroe or Rayville, which is a sentence that asks for some commitment to the word "rewards" but holds up on arrival. The landscape runs flat, the bottomland hardwood bare of leaves, the levee roads providing access to forest interiors that are otherwise inaccessible on foot. The pools under the bare tupelo gum and water oak canopy reflect the gray sky. The leaf litter on the pool bottoms shifts with the current of cold shallow water. This is where the rusty blackbird winters. Not the parking lot, not the grain field, not the managed lawn. This specific habitat, cold and wet and quiet, with the organic substrate that concentrates the aquatic invertebrates the bird depends on. The habitat and the bird are inseparable in a way that makes the habitat the species a field mark: if you are standing in cold flooded bottomland hardwood forest in December in Tensas Parish, the rusty blackbird is either present or the habitat is not currently holding birds. a no version of rusty blackbird in a dry setting.
What does Rusty Blackbird eat?
Feed store lots, livestock operations, dry pavement, the open impervious surfaces of human commerce. Rusty blackbirds forage by wading in shallow flooded water and flipping submerged leaf litter, which is not something the Brewer's blackbird in the parking lot next to the feed store is doing.
The sequence runs: coal combustion releases mercury into the atmosphere, mercury deposits into boreal wetlands through precipitation, bacteria convert it to methylmercury, aquatic invertebrates accumulate it, rusty blackbirds eat the invertebrates, mercury accumulates in the birds at levels that can affect reproductive success.
Is Rusty Blackbird dangerous to people?
No. This species is not dangerous to people when it is observed without handling or disturbance
