This Bird Native To Minnesota Always Brings Spring With It

This Saturday, my wife and I will have been married 28 years, and there’s one thing I’ve learned about Kim, she loves birds. She loves to learn the identity and origin of birds that she doesn’t recognize when she sees them in nature. 

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We were sitting on the balcony of our apartment in South St. Cloud on Sunday when she noticed a bird she didn’t recognize. She made a few attempts to get a good picture of the bird so she could learn more about it, but she didn’t get a quality picture. She was finally able to get one good enough to learn the identity of this bird. 

And to be honest, it’s a bird that I wish she could have found sooner. Because it is one of Minnesota’s tried and true signs that spring is here. 

I’m talking about the Red Winged Blackbird. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources says that the Red Winged Blackbird is related to the Oriole, which is what my wife thought the bird she saw was at first.  

This bird is in the same relational line as meadowlarks, bobolinks and other blackbirds. The DNR says that as up and down crazy as the spring weather in Minnesota can be, this creature doesn’t start showing itself or sharing its voice with the world until the colder weather is mainly gone.  

The males are black with the orange, red or yellow on the wings. Female Red Winged Blackbirds are brown in color with what is called a beige stripe on her wings.  

The Red Winged Blackbird thrives in an area where there are wetlands nearby.  

The Department of Natural Resources provides this map of where these birds are most prominently found.  

You’ll see these birds around until early August and then they’ll begin the period when they “molt”, (the process of shedding old feathers and growing new ones). Red Winged Blackbirds can’t fly during this time so that’s why they will be hard to find. 

Most Red Winged Blackbirds will finally reappear and then begin to fly south in November ahead of the colder weather moving back into Minnesota.  

Once we get into October, you can keep an eye out for these guys, because if you don’t see them, that’s likely a sign of the colder weather coming in early.