Backyard and Beyond

Rusty Blackbird (Euphagus carolinus). This is, or better say was, a common species, but the birds have “undergone one of the sharpest and most mystifying recent declines of any North American songbird.” Here’s more information from the Rusty Blackbird Working Group. I reported this sighting on eBird.

This male, forging on the edge of Green-Wood’s Sylvan Water, was taking advantage of the wind-blown pile-up of leaves and muck amid the rocky shore here. The closest thing to their “bottomland wooded-wetlands” habitat of choice. Most of the Water is ringed in a wall, as you can see to the left of the bird.