What bird says conk-la-ree?

The bird singing conk-la-ree is a male Red-winged Blackbird, usually perched on a cattail, a reed or a tall weed at the edge of a marsh or wet field, lifting his red shoulder patches as he sings. The song opens with a variable, gurgled note or two and ends in a trill that rises and stretches out, konk-la-reeee. You can hear it in marshes nearly coast to coast, all year in the South and from late winter in the North. In California, the very similar Tricolored Blackbird sings a more nasal version.

Listen: the likeliest bird

Nobody agrees on how to spell this one. National Geographic's field guide writes the song as konk-la-ree, the version closest to the phrase most people search. Audubon's field guide prints it as o-ka-leeee!, with no consonant up front and a long run of e's at the end. Wikipedia calls it oak-a-lee. They all describe the same three-part phrase, and they all agree on the one thing that matters: the last syllable is the long one.

The adjectives wander as much as the spellings. Audubon's voice entry calls the song rich and musical, while its own summary describes the species singing nasal songs in every marsh and wet field from coast to coast. National Geographic hears it as hoarse and gurgling, and Wikipedia calls it scratchy. The most useful description is National Geographic's: a start that is variable but gurgled, and a trilled ending. Audubon files the pattern as rising. If you hear a phrase that sputters, then rings out and climbs, coming from a marsh, you have your bird.

The red-wing has other sounds worth knowing. Wikipedia describes the calls as a throaty check and a high, slurred whistle, terrr-eeee. Females sing too, a scolding chatter that runs something like chit chit chit chit cheer teer teer.

The show that comes with the song

You rarely get the song without the performance. To hold his territory and attract a mate, the male climbs to the top of a tall stalk, fluffs out his feathers, partly spreads his tail and lifts the front edge of each wing so the red shoulder patches stand out. Then he sings. He also sings in a slow, fluttering flight. Audubon notes that the red is hidden under body feathers much of the time and shows brilliantly when he is singing, and that one male often has more than one mate.

Red-wings breed mostly in freshwater marshes, but also in brushy or wooded swamps, weedy fields, hayfields and the upper edges of salt marshes. They are bold about it. Adults attack larger birds, such as hawks and crows, that fly over the nest area, and they loudly protest people who come too close. Outside the nesting season they feed in flocks in farm fields, pastures and feedlots, and sometimes roost in huge concentrations.

Timing tells you a lot. Southern populations stay put all year, so in much of the South you can find them in any month. Northern birds are short-distance migrants that, according to National Geographic, reach the Northeast in late February and March and leave by November. Audubon adds that the males arrive before the females, so the first conk-la-ree of the year comes from a male staking out his patch of cattails.

Other blackbirds that sing it differently

In the West the song itself changes. Wikipedia notes that in many western Red-winged Blackbirds, including the bicolored birds of California, the song comes out as ooPREEEEEom, longer and with a different shape. Audubon notes that in central California these bicolored males have shoulder patches that are entirely red, without the usual yellow border.

California also has a genuine lookalike, the Tricolored Blackbird. Audubon describes its calls as rather similar to the red-wing's, but its song as more nasal and less musical. It has a very small range in the Pacific states and breeds in big freshwater marshes with dense cattails or bulrushes, packing its nests together as little as a foot or two apart, and some colonies have held over 100,000 nests, though such huge gatherings seem to be getting scarcer. The male's shoulder patch is a deeper red with a white border, not yellow. If you are in a California marsh full of nesting blackbirds, check the border before you decide.

How to tell which one you heard

• A gurgle, then a rising trill, from a marsh or wet field: Red-winged Blackbird, almost anywhere in the country.
• A longer ooPREEEEEom in the West: still a red-wing, singing the western version.
• A more nasal, less musical song from a dense colony in California: look hard for a Tricolored Blackbird and its white-bordered shoulder patch.
• A short check or chuk: the red-wing's call, not its song.
• If you see it: the male is black with a red shoulder patch, bordered with yellow in most places. The female is streaky brown with a pale eyebrow and can pass for a sparrow, but has a spikier bill.

If the singer is out of sight in the reeds, Warble can listen and name it from the song alone.

Questions people ask

Warble is a game, not a field guide. Facts about birds on this page come from the sources above.