Red-winged Blackbird displaying

HAPPY SPRING, everyone! Here, today is heavily overcast and the forecast is for showers this afternoon and tomorrow, and a few snow flurries for Sunday. The temperature is 0C (windchill -3C). Ha, almost noon, and I've just noticed that it's snowing.

Good, it looks as if Flickr may be working OK this morning. All day yesterday, my photos were obviously not showing up on most people's Contacts' Photos page. I know some people were having the same problem.

I'm digging into my archives for all three of my photos today. I haven't been getting out much with my camera, and on the days I have been out, there hasn't been much to photograph. Hopefully, that will change soon. It is so rare that I get a cold, but I know I have been run down the last while, and I came out in a cold a couple of days ago.

This photo of a Red-winged Blackbird, caught in the middle of vocalizing loudly, was taken SW of Calgary, on a short drive along familiar backroads, on 1 July 2014.

"One of the most abundant birds across North America, and one of the most boldly colored, the Red-winged Blackbird is a familiar sight atop cattails, along soggy roadsides, and on telephone wires. Glossy-black males have scarlet-and-yellow shoulder patches they can puff up or hide depending on how confident they feel. Females are a subdued, streaky brown, almost like a large, dark sparrow. In the North, their early arrival and tumbling song are happy indications of the return of spring." From Cornell's AllAboutBirds.

www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/red-winged_blackbird/id?utm_s...

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-winged_blackbird