I’m not a big fan of Blackbirds but I found this one interesting. I was out photographing birds at the Pedernales Falls State Park bird blind when I spotted a Red-winged Blackbird. Photographing dark birds is difficult as the dark feathers create a gap against brighter backgrounds. So, I had to take special care in order to make sure that I did not lose the details in the bird while capturing the desired background.
Red-winged Blackbirds are one of the most abundant birds in North America. Glossy-black males have scarlet and yellow shoulder patches they can puff up or hide depending on how confident they feel (apparently this one was not very confident). Females are a subdued, streaky brown, like a large, dark sparrow.
Male Red-winged Blackbirds fiercely defend their territories during the breeding season, spending more than a quarter of daylight hours in territory defense. He chases other males out of the territory and attacks nest predators, sometimes going after much larger animals, including horses and people.
![Red-winged Blackbird](https://tkahler.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/20160402-Pedernales-Falls-Birding-029.jpg)
This image was taken with my Canon EOS 7D Mark II using my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 II Lens set on 400 mm. The camera was set on Manual mode with the aperture set at f/7.1, shutter speed at 1/320th of a second and the ISO set at 160. This is a single image processed in Lightroom.
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