Red-winged Blackbird - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

In winter, this species will forage away from marshes, taking seeds and grain from open fields and agricultural areas. It is sometimes considered an agricultural pest. Farmers have been known to use pesticides such as parathion in illegal attempts to control their populations. In the United States, such efforts are illegal because no pesticide can be used on non-target organisms, or any use not explicitly listed on the pesticide's label.

As with the English name for the bird, the indigenous languages of the bird's range also describe it by its physical characteristics. In the Anishinaabe languages, an Indigenous language group spoken throughout much of the bird's Northeastern range, this bird's name is diverse. In the Oji-Cree language, the northern-most of the Anishinaabe languages, it called jachakanoob, while the Ojibwa language spoken in Northwestern Ontario and into Manitoba ranging immediately south of the Anishinini language's range, the bird is called jachakanoo (with the cognates cahcahkaniw (Swampy Cree), cahcahkaluw (coastal Southern East Cree), cahcahkayuw (inland Southern East Cree), cahcahkayow (Plains Cree)); the northern Algonquian languages associate the Redwinged Blackbird as a type of a junco or grackle. However, in vast majority of the other Ojibwa language dialects, the bird is called memiskondinimaanganeshiinh, literally meaning "a bird with a very red damn-little shoulder-blade." However, in the Odawa language, an Anishinaabe language in Southwestern Ontario and in Michigan, the bird is instead called either as memeskoniinisi ("bird with a red ") or as memiskonigwiigaans (" wing of small and very red ").

Heading into the Great Plains, the Lakota language, another indigenous language spoken throughout much of the bird's Northeastern range, the bird is called wabloša ("wings of red"). Its songs are described in Lakota as tōke, mat'ā nī ("oh! that I might die"), as nakun miyē ("...and me"), as miš eyā ("me too!"), and as cap'cehlī ("a beaver's running sore").