northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another Common Grackle . The North American grackles tend to have non-prestigious names: Our Common Grackles sound rather ... common. It sort of sounds like we're making fun of the size of the tails of the Boat-tailed Grackles . The same for the Great-tailed Grackles .  So what is a grackle  anyway? It sounds like grackle is Latin for jackdaw. So what's a jackdaw ? They are smaller relatives of crows/ravens . But while jackdaws are close relatives of crows, our grackles are not; our grackles are instead New World blackbirds . It's easy for me to think that, grackles being dark-feathered, they got their name because people thought they, like jackdaws, were basically little crows. (Note that the dark blue sheen of the head can look black in poor light, increasing their crow-like appearance.) July 4, 2023 at Scherman Hoffman Wildlife Sanctuary Photo 301260618, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

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 r...