Cropped, sharpened.

Here is a male Red-winged Blackbird in full territorial display. What at first I thought was pre-mating season courtship behavior is in fact a display to the other males in the area that they are claiming this prime real estate when the ladies arrive. The females arrive several weeks after the male set up shop and stake their claim for the best location to mate and raise a brood of chicks.

They continue to display this behavior until later in the spring or early summer when they will tuck their colorful epaulettes back under the cover feathers so as to not be unsocial with the others in the flock.