Rusty Blackbird

Euphagus carolinus

The Rusty Blackbird prefers wet forested areas, breeding in the boreal forest and muskeg across Alaska and northern Canada. They are widespread, spanning the North American continent from coast to coast, including the land between the Great Lakes and Hudson Bay and all the way to the Atlantic from Maine to New Brunswick, Labrador and Nova Scotia. In winter, they all migrate to the United States east of the Rocky Mountains south of the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley and New England.

Science has learned that the Rusty Blackbird population has crashed in the past half century, declining as much as 85-99%. Why this bird has not placed them in a threatened status escapes me. The cause for their decline in not fully understood. Habitat loss, and disturbance from mining and oil industries in the far north have been observed. In the USA there have been deliberate poison campaigns aimed at cowbirds, grackles and Red-Winged Blackbirds. It seems likely that this may have killed these birds too, though there are no studies determining the numbers.

Modern research calls out two subspecies of Rusty Blackbird:

• E. c. carolinus breeds in Alaska, the northern Mid-Western USA, and northern Canada.
• E. c. nigrans breeds in Canada’s Maritime Provinces.

My first encounter with a Rusty Blackbird was in 2005 while I was at MacIntyre Marsh in the Canadian Yukon outside of the town of Whitehorse. During my epic expedition through western North America in 2022, I had my heart set on meeting this species again. I reached Whitehorse again on June 9, 2022. But I turned back south on the 19th without getting another image. I reached the end of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, on July 2, and I finally found them again and I captured a few satisfying images.