redwing black birds

[centrarchid]

Flock of male redwing blackbirds, adult and young of year, is coming in and stealing black oil sunflower seeds. They might be bringing in a disease but they are certainly bring in the Coopers hawks. Kind of fun watching black birds go crazy trying to avoid hawk by diving into high bushes. At this time my chickens appear to be ignored.

 

[woodmort]

Yeah, it's that time of year--we get flocks of them as well as robins closely followed by hawks. The nice thing is once the birds leave so do the hawks.

 

[desertdarlene]

Coopers do like those black birds, that's for sure. Can't tell you much on how to make them go away. I know when the Coopers start chasing around other black birds, like grackles, those birds move on. Don't know if the red-winged ones will, too.

 

[centrarchid]

I think the redwings will move on when local food supply exhausted. The redwings will soon merge with common grackle and I think Brewer's black birds to form the mega-flocks that take many minutes to fly past a given point. Even now there are so many black birds the Coopers can hardly put a dent in them even if each hawk catches a couple each day.