The red-winged Blackbirds are among my favourite migratory birds. I love the water drop sound to their voice; everything about them speaks of summer.
The males always arrive a few weeks ahead of the females and in those early weeks they belly up to the birdfeeder together, sharing seed and swapping bird stories.
“You should have seen the size of the worm I caught yesterday. It must have weighed 10 grams! I tell you Charlie, the worm was as wide as my tail feather and twice as long.”
“That’s not the only tall tale I’m hearing.”
Everything changes once the females show up. Squabbles break out and there is much strutting and flexing of wings.
As a kid I was shocked to discover the females were neither black nor red winged, but a mottled brown. It bugged me that the name of the species was red-winged blackbird, and yet nothing about the name applied to the female. It seemed pretty unfair and not a little sexist. I recall writing to the Canadian Wildlife Federation demanding the name be changed to brown mottled and red wing black birds. I had recently become a card carrying member of the CWF but was obviously foggy on exactly what they were responsible for.
Life isn’t easy for the males, despite being given such preferential treatment with the monikers. I once read about a scientist who noticed a male bird with an exceptional amount of red on its wing that appeared to be the Justin Bieber of the marshland. If the females wore underwear they would have thrown it at him.
While the other males flexed their wings and sung their hearts out, the ladies only had eyes for the bird with the bold, bright, incomparable wide strip of red.
Red-winged blackbirds are not monogamous.
One male often watches over as many as 10 nesting females; in turn, when the eggs hatch it would be rare if all the chicks carried his DNA. That said, this particular male soon had a harem of 10 and then some. Furthermore, the females were so smitten it was starting to appear that every last egg would bear his progeny.
Just when things couldn’t have looked better for this king of the marsh, a terrible thing happened. The scientist intervened.
The scientist captured the bird, took a pot of black paint and painstakingly covered up some of the red on the male bird’s wing. The bird was then released and returned to the pond to strut his stuff. Not being privy to a mirror he had no idea his appearance had changed.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of the females. They took one look at him and dropped him like last week’s brown banana. What a boot in the beak that must have been.
How awful. How horrible. How . . . human. In fact, it would be easy to interpret this story through a human perspective as a life lesson. If love is based on surface qualities nothing good will ever come from it. Surface stuff is fleeting.
True happiness always comes from within. Of course, from the female bird’s perspective she was never so much part of the male’s harem as she was his employer. He was hired as a body guard and that bold strip of red landed him the job. It meant he was an easy target; an eye-catching diversion for every hawk, cat and coyote in the marsh. While he is winging his way about dodging death at every turn, the females are able to hatch out their eggs in peace.
I suppose that could be used as a life lesson as well. No matter how great things appear on the surface, you have no idea what troubles the person — or bird — is facing beneath. No one is trouble free. So don’t bother with envy; there is always one more thing you don’t know that would change your entire perspective if you did. Perhaps it was while pondering the red-winged blackbird that Philo penned the following words over 2000 years ago: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
Or perhaps the lesson might simply be when you see a scientist, fly, fly, away.
Shannon McKinnon is a humour columnist from Northern BC. You can catch up on past columns or check out her garden blog by visiting www.shannonmckinnon.com