Back Cover

What is it?

Our photographers have been busy exploring the intricacies of the Missouri outdoors. See if you can guess this month’s natural wonder. The answer is revealed below.

Red-Winged Blackbird

On the back cover and right is a red-winged blackbird by Noppadol Paothong. A common permanent resident of Missouri, they forage for seeds and insects in marshes, moist grasslands, wet roadside ditches and borrow pits along highways. Often they are present in large flocks in crop fields in late summer and fall. During migration and in winter, they roost at night in cattails and other tall emergent marsh vegetation, or with other blackbirds in tree roosts that may include millions of individuals.