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Winter Record of Red-Winged Blackbirds at Grand Canyon, Arizona

Authors
Harold C. Bryant
Journal
Condor
Volume
47
Issue
5 (September-October)
Year
1945
Pages
219
Section
From Field and Study
Online Text

Winter Record of ‘Red-winged Blackbirds at Grand Canyon, Arizona.-At about five o’clock on the afternoon of December 13, 1943, I discovered a blackbird feeding on the straw mulch in my back yard, an area free of snow. The twitching tail was a quick reminder that the bird was not a Brewer Blackbird and soon the orange-red epaulet showed. Then a streaked female was found feeding with the male. These birds were watched for about fifteen minutes when a Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter striatus) suddenly dropped out of the pine tree above them and struck and started to carry off tbe male bird. Pounding on the window frightened the hawk enough so that it dropped the bird. The next day the female fed all day but no male put in an appearance. Again on December 15 the female was seen for a short time and then no more.

Both Redwings seemed very hungry and worked hard culling grain from the straw. This record is the first for the South Rim of the Grand Canyon and merits special attention because of the presence of both sexes at 7000 feet in a pifion-juniper association in the middle of winter. The only other record for Grand Canyon National Park is based on a female taken on September 15, 1928, at the North Rim Checking Station, where attractive meadows are present.-HAROLD C. BRYANT, Grand Camyon, Arizona, July 26, 1945.’ 

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