BLACK BIRDS SEEN IN NORTH AMERICA

American Redstart 

SCIENTIFIC NAME: Setophaga Ruticilla 

Males are mostly black with bright orange patches on the sides, wings, and tail.

Females have yellow patches on the sides, wings, and tail. Head is gray and they have an olive back.

Juvenile males have yellow patches on the sides, wings, and tail with a variable amount on the face and chest.

BILL: flat and fairly long.

SIZE: measures about 4.3 - 5.1 inches in length, with a wingspan of 6.3 - 7.5 inches.

WEIGHT: weighs about 6 - 9 grams.

COLOR: black, orange, white, gray, olive and yellow.

Insects, small berries and fruits.

Edges and clearings of deciduous to mixed forest, also riparian areas and isolated groves.

North America, southern Canada and the eastern United States. Winters in Central America, the West Indies, and northern South America, and are very rare vagrants to western Europe.

CALL: Both males and females use a variety of calls in different situations, including sharp, sweet-sounding chip notes, soft "tsip" calls, and high-pitched alarm calls.

NEST: The female builds the nest by herself. It is a tightly woven cup of small fibers, such as birch bark strips, grasses, milkweed seed hairs, animal hairs, feathers, rootlets, leaves, lichens, twigs, mosses, pine needles, and wasp nest paper.

EGGS: 1 - 5 white or creamy with blotches of brownish or reddish, some are so speckled that they are nearly brown all over.

INCUBATION: 10 - 13 days.

FLEDGLING PHASE: 7 - 13 days.

They are active insectivores that seem never to stand still. They rapidly spread their cocked tails, exposing the orange or yellow in a quick flash, which often startles insect prey into flushing, whereupon the redstart darts after it, attempting to catch it in the air.

The oldest American Redstart was over 10 years old.

SOURCES:
https://www.birds-of-north-america.net
https://en.wikipedia.org
https://www.allaboutbirds.org
https://www.sdakotabirds.com