There Will Always Be Blackbirds
If you can’t find any other wildlife to photograph, Red-winged blackbirds seem to be everywhere, at least in marshes or anywhere there is standing water and vegetation. They are one of the most abundant birds in the world. The species ranks sixth in population are 210 million birds, far behind the number one, the domestic chicken, at 30 billion birds.
They are relatively easy to photograph. The males are territorial and aggressive. I regularly get strafed when walking close to their nests, but have never been physically attacked, as I have been by a mockingbird that I could never get past safely when walking in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
“. . . In New England they once thought blackbirds useless, and mischievous to the corn. They made efforts to destroy them. The consequence was, the blackbirds were diminished; but a kind of worm, which devoured their grass, and which the blackbirds used to feed on, increased prodigiously; then, finding their loss in grass much greater than their saving in corn, they wished again for their blackbirds.”
- Benjamin Franklin