Birds of a Feather

Cute lil thing =) Nice capture!

Betty, ours are big gregarious culture-following trushes with a huge belly, yours are nimble and bright wild Icteridae of the marsh, so they are not even really close cousins.

Emigrants just had a tendency to give new world critters names of animals from home, and they did not always make a lot of sense, as few where named by ornithologists first, most just by homesick settlers.

The trush closest to our blackbirds in habitat, behaviours and shape is what they called a Robin, although our Robin is more something like a tiny Bluebird lacking all of the blue.

I always loved your blackbirds and miss them. All the Icteridae are fascinating and special to me, but Red-winged Blackbird was the first I ever met. I was so amazed as it started to perform, dangling from a bullrush, shrilling like a mechanic alarm clock and at the same time turning the inobtrusive bicoloured line on its wings into huge bright shoulder pads. What a smashing exotic display!

Eursian Blackbirds patrol their habitat in search of worms in the soil or a trayfeeder they can access standing upright, on the path before humans they hop straight along for a long time before breaking out sideways , they build flat cup nests into the most stupid of places so a lot end up easy to spot, accessible by cats or not well suited to high winds, they sing a melodious morning and evening song and also when clouds come and go and the light changes a bit -- they are exactly like any American Robin, just without wearing the orange sweater.