Epaulets

On a warm day in May I headed out to the Skokie Lagoons near Northfield, Illinois to see what birds were in the area. I found a lot of barn swallows gathering mud for their nests. Caught a few field sparrows singing away looking for a mate.

Perched on the reeds was a male red-winged blackbird who was singing relentlessly in an attempt to claim the entire shoreline and the adjacent terrain for its exclusive territory. The red-winged blackbird is a very common bird in that habitat. He was quite active and the upper photo shows him in full display. After a while another red-winged blackbird showed up to stake a claim as well. He is in the lower photo. You might notice that his epaulets are colored differently than his rival's. The wing markings on the bird in the upper photo are bright red with a yellow stripe at the bottom of the epaulet. The wing markings on the bird in the lower photo is a yellow almost yellow orange solid color. I had never observed a red-winged blackbird with yellow-orange epaulets, so I was curious if this might be a different species or simply an aberration.

When I got home and downloaded the pictures to my computer, I immediately emailed the photos to a friend of mine in Southern Illinos who is a Park Ranger for the Army Corps of Engineers at Rend Lake, Illinois. He was not sure what to make of the coloration. So, since last May I have been wondering about the identification of the red-wing with the odd colored markings.

Two weeks ago while wandering through the internet I typed in a search and came up with the answer ... the yellow epaulets occur in some immature male red-wings. One more mystery solved!