Sandhill Crane and Red-winged Blackbird

EOS-1D Mk III, 500mm f/4+ 1.4xII, 1/800, f/5.6, ISO 400
Manual exposure using incident meter
About 90% of Full Frame

Photographed in early morning light in Burns, Oregon from car using BLUBB.

I'm posting this mostly to see if anyone has seen this behavior before.
I have not spent much time photographing Sandhill Cranes and this was a first for me.
There were 4 or 5 Red-winged Blackbirds (male and female) swarming around this crane.
They would briefly land on its back and seemed to be feeding on something in the plumage.
The crane did not seem all that annoyed with the blackbirds and did not make any
real effort to discourage them.
This image is of the blackbird taking off from its "perch" on the back of the crane.
It is one of just a few images where I managed to get decent poses from both birds and get them
anywhere near to the same plane of focus, but not quite.
On close examination, the blackbird is not really sharp.

Looking forward to your comments and critiques !

Hi Mike, that is certainly interesting behavior and one I have not seen at Bosque, where the two species are present. Maybe it is some bugs present in the summer????

I'll keep an eye on this thread to see if any of the biologists here can explain and thanks for bringing this up, very cool!

Neat capture Mike. We've got lots of RWBBs here and I've watched them sit on a perch and snap the mosquitos that swarm around them right out of the air. Maybe they're doing the same to the ones (if any) on the crane?
Steve

Great light and interesting behavior. I don't know why blackbirds do that but picking off insects would make sense.