File:Agelaius phoeniceus (red-wing blackbird) (Marblehead Peninsula, Ohio, USA).jpg

English: Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) - male red-winged blackbird on fossiliferous limestone outcrop at Marblehead Peninsula, southern shore of western Lake Erie, northern Ohio, USA (photo by Mary Ellen St. John).

This is one of about 100 species of icterid passerine birds. Male red-winged blackbirds are entirely black, but have a shoulder patch of red, generally fringed with yellow. The species is strongly sexually dimorphic in plumage coloration. Juveniles and females have sparrow-like feather colors & patterns, but are significantly larger than sparrows. Red-winged blackbirds have a varied diet, but are principally insectivores and granivores (seed eaters).

Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Aves, Passeriformes, Icteridae

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Birds are small to large, warm-blooded, egg-laying, feathered, bipedal vertebrates capable of powered flight (although some are secondarily flightless). Many scientists characterize birds as dinosaurs, but this is consequence of the physical structure of evolutionary diagrams. Birds aren’t dinosaurs. They’re birds. The logic & rationale that some use to justify statements such as “birds are dinosaurs” is the same logic & rationale that results in saying “vertebrates are echinoderms”. Well, no one says the latter. No one should say the former, either.

However, birds are evolutionarily derived from theropod dinosaurs. Birds first appeared in the Triassic or Jurassic, depending on which avian paleontologist you ask. They inhabit a wide variety of terrestrial and surface marine environments, and exhibit considerable variation in behaviors and diets.