I have participated in Project Feederwatch for more than 20 years now, and I’ve never recorded a Red-winged Blackbird sighting in my backyard in November before. A couple of the birds were still hanging out on my feeders last week during the record-breaking warm weather. This was just hours before a strong cold front moved through and dropped the temperatures 50 degrees in less than 12 hours. The last few days have felt much more like winter with high temperatures not getting out of the 30s(F).
If you look at range maps, some Red-winged Blackbirds are in southern Wisconsin year-round, but we are on the northern fringes of that “year-round” designation. Until last week I had never seen any Red-winged Blackbirds in our area between the months of November and March.
Here’s a fun fact about Red-winged Blackbirds from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: “Red-winged Blackbirds roost in flocks in all months of the year. In summer small numbers roost in the wetlands where the birds breed. Winter flocks can be congregations of several million birds, including other blackbird species and starlings. Each morning the roosts spread out, traveling as far as 50 miles to feed, then re-forming at night.”