Oct 07 2008
Underrated Birds I: Boat-tailed Grackle
How can we possibly explain the scorn heaped upon grackles? They are so big and beautiful and spectacular–just look at that handsome buck above. He’s splendid, if just a little bit sandy. How can you not be impressed?
Grackles do, it’s true, have some annoying behaviors–they’re abundant, gregarious, and noisy; moreover, they steal a percentage of our crops and sometimes foul our paths with their droppings. But all those things are true of Canada Geese and we love Canada Geese. Yes, we hate them on our fairways and on our runways, but that doesn’t cancel out the affection we have for them.
How many T-shirts, coffee mugs, and so on do you see with Canada Geese on them and how many with grackles? I rest my case.
Can it be that the geese are viewed more favorably because we eat them, or just have a cultural memory of having eaten them? Does that association gives them a pass that the grackles don’t get? I must admit it is hard to get filled with Christmas Spirit thinking of Scrooge springing for a big platter of roasted grackles for the Cratchit family. And don’t bring up the old “four and twenty” blackbird pie–those were thrushes and the whole affair ended badly, anyway. 
Whatever your reasons, if you don’t appreciate grackles, I have the cure. Go birding with Brits, or other visitors from the Old World. Watch the awe and appreciation with which they regard the birds we despise or simply ignore. In the Old World, they just don’t have birds like these. And believe me, there are plenty of people who would be thrilled to have not only our grackles, but almost any of our blackbirds. Well, perhaps not cowbirds, but that’s a subject for another post.
I would love a t-shirt or a mug with a grackle on it. Grackles are beautiful and entertaining. And they typically congregate in the open spaces we create. For some reason I imagine grackles would taste bitter.
Thanks for the great post!
Great post! With one tiny flaw. The bird in the picture isn’t a Boat Tailed Grackle!
They do have dark eyes – yours looks like a Great Tailed Grackle. Very similar – just not the same!
Cheers, Klaus
Hi Jeff, Those Great-tailed Grackles are beautiful, if only they didn’t squawk so darn loud! I actually like their cool whistle. Nice photo!
Hi all–
Thanks for the nice comments–I really do appreciate hearing from readers!
Klaus–your comment about identification and eye color is partially correct, but doesn’t change the fact that this is a Boat-tailed.
Boat-tailed Grackles have dark eyes (vs. the always-yellow eyes of Great-tailed) ONLY in their relatively narrow zone of range overlap along the Texas Gulf Coast. In most of their range, Boat-taileds have yellow eyes, just like Great-taileds. They are structurally and vocally distinct in all cases.
This is a classic example of two closely related taxa evolving additional reproductive isolating mechanisms where they are sympatric. It presumably lowers the likelihood of hybridization and was one of the pieces of evidence used to split the two large grackles into separate species a couple of decades ago.
Great-tailed Grackle has never been recorded within the state of Delaware, nor in any of our mid-Atlantic neighbors, as far as I know. This may change, though, as Great-tailed is certainly expanding its range, mostly to the west and north, though eastern vagrants are possible.
We had the name ‘Grackle’ in the common names of 2 birds here, but they were changed to ‘Myna’ later on. So we are now Grackle-less. I love the ‘personality’ of these birds.