Brewer’s Blackbird
Euphagus cyanocephalus
eBird provides this description of the Brewer’s Blackbird: Breeding males are glossy black with purplish head and greenish sheen on body. Nonbreeding males have pale eyebrows and staring yellow eye. Females are plain dark brown and typically have dark eyes. Forages by walking on ground. Sometimes in mixed flocks with other blackbirds at feedlots. Also, walks along parking lots, golf courses, or roadsides. Females similar to Brown-headed Cowbird, but with longer, thinner bill and longer tail than cowbird. All About Birds adds this descriptive information about the Brewer’s Blackbird: bird to be seen in the full sun, the male Brewer’s Blackbird is a glossy, almost liquid combination of black, midnight blue, and metallic green. Females are a staid brown, without the male’s bright eye or the female Red-winged Blackbird’s streaks. Common in towns and open habitats of much of the West, you’ll see these long-legged, ground-foraging birds on sidewalks and city parks as well as chuckling in flocks atop shrubs, trees, and reeds.
I saw my first Brewer’s Blackbirds while visiting Mono Lake in California. I watched a male/female pair perch and hop around the shore’s edge at the tufa towers area on the south shore of the lake. To see the blog that includes my visit to Mono Lake look here.
“Cool Facts” About the Brewer’s Blackbird From All About Birds:
- Brewer’s Blackbirds are social birds that nest in colonies of up to 100 birds. The first females to arrive choose a nest site to suit them, and later arrivals follow suit. Eggs are extremely variable in color and pattern. Some studies suggest the variability helps the eggs match the background pattern of the nest, helping to camouflage them.
- Most birds fly south for the winter, but a small number of Brewer’s Blackbirds fly west – leaving the frigid Canadian prairies for the milder coastal regions of British Columbia and Washington.
- Brewer’s Blackbirds cope well with humans and the development we bring. In the last century, they spread eastward from western Minnesota, taking advantage of agricultural fields, farmhouses, and towns. Where they overlap with the Common Grackle, the grackles take the streets and suburbs, leaving the Brewer’s Blackbirds to the fields and grasslands.
- Brewer’s Blackbirds are sometimes shot, trapped, or poisoned around agricultural fields in an attempt to protect crops. Although they do eat grains, this species’ appetite for insects makes it more of a farmer’s friend than a pest. Brewer’s Blackbirds are quick to notice new food sources and have been credited with helping to curb outbreaks of insect pests including weevils, cutworms, termites, grasshoppers, and tent caterpillars, among others.
- The oldest known Brewer’s Blackbird was a male, and over 12 years, 6 months when it was found in California.