Audubon's Red-winged Starling

When John James Audubon first sketched the Red-winged Blackbird, he called it not by the name we know it today but by another - the Red-winged Starling. To those accustomed to seeing the male in its jet black plumage adorned with bold red shoulder patches, this association with starlings might seem a little odd.

 
However when this same bird is seen with heavily worn feathers (such as in this image of a male Red-winged Blackbird recently recorded using an Audubon BirdCam and uploaded by Rick of Tamarac, Florida), it is a little more understandable how the ornithologists of Audubon's day might have seen a resemblance between it and the European Starling.