Rusty Blackbird: A Good Eater?

I’ve loved Rusty Blackbirds like this one from the very start. They’re very beautiful, especially in fall; they’re shy; and they’re the “birder’s bird” par excellence, absolutely unknown to the benighted classes that have never opened a field guide.

The bird in the photo was one of several Charles and I encountered yesterday at the Great Swamp. Most were overhead, giving the slightly “chewy” flight note, but the odd individual dropped out of the icterid flocks to fix us with an icy stare.

This species and its close relative, the Brewer’s Blackbird, occupy the genus Euphagus. It’s a pretty-sounding name, but not a flattering one: Cassin gives no etymology in his description of the genus, but it’s not hard to figure out.

A euphage is literally a “good eater,” a “glutton.” The description applies well to the Brewer’s Blackbird, a hugely successful attendant on cattle and their feeding troughs; Rusties, in contrast, are more at home in damp woodlands, where they live up better to the genus name assigned by Swainson, Scolecophagus, “the worm-eater.”