February 24, 2008 - Returning Redwings Welcome to the Nature Notebook. Winter doesn’t end for another month, but a sure sign that spring is coming will appear any day now. Male Red-winged Blackbirds will be returning to our area to find a piece of real estate to claim as their own. These glossy black birds with red shoulder patches return early to find the best neighborhood in which to set up housekeeping. After all, a good home — or in the case of blackbirds, a good nesting site — has a better chance of attracting a female. So, for the next two weeks, male Red-winged Blackbirds will defend their individual sites with song, conspicuous flashes of their red shoulder patches and short chases. They will be well settled in to their cattail marsh homes when the females make their way back north. Then the competition for mates will really heat up as their distinctive “konk-la-reee” calls will echo across the marshes.[insert Red-winged Blackbird calls here] This is PPL's naturalist, Jon Beam, with the Nature Notebook for WVIA.