Common Grackle

Here's a Common Grackle I met at Great Swamp. These are slightly tall blackbirds, and the males have a bluish sheen to them, especially on the head. This is a fairly common bird that lives in NJ all year round. They might look a little like a small crow in bad lighting, but their bright eyes are a give-away that this is no crow.

They are fairly social birds; sometimes they're found in huge flocks. It sounds like they can be a problem in a corn field; they love to eat corn. But like many birds, they're omnivorous and will eat their share of bugs. 

They've got what I'd consider to be reasonable tails, though their Boat-tailed Grackle and Great-tailed Grackle cousins are both bigger. (For identification purposes, the Great-tailed is a bird of the southwest, and the Boat-tailed tends to live near the ocean, so I don't normally have to differentiate these grackles

April 14, 2021 at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
Photo 121032300, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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