Illustration: Colleen Newquist
March 2006 | BackWords
The Not-So-Common Common Grackle
By Colleen Newquist
Common Grackles — those medium-size blackbirds with a blue sheen to the feathers around their head — are so common that it took years for me to even bother looking them up in my bird book. They lack the physical beauty of cardinals, blue jays and yellow finches, or the complex song of a warbler or rose-breasted grosbeak. They never caught my attention with their stunning grace, like a great white egret or blue heron, or captured my imagination like the haunting hoot of an owl, who in the dark I could not see.
As individual birds, they’re ho-hum, the grocery store clerk you recognize but whose name you’ve never learned. But put them in a group, a few hundred in a flock, and holy cow, those birds know how to party!
They are gregarious socializers, I’ve since learned, after what had to be several hundred descended on our grass and woods last week. The chuck-chuck of their chatter sounded like New Year’s Eve cocktails with 500 of your closest friends. I watched as they swooped on invisible cue from ground to treetops, their incessant racket growing louder as they flitted high in the branches from tree to tree.
I couldn’t help myself. At the risk of scaring them off, I crept outside, into the woods, and stood in awe, staring upward, listening.
As suddenly as they came, they ascended, their patter trailing behind them like a slowing rain.
And then, silence.
A twig cracked under my shoe. Russet oak leaves drifted to the ground.
I missed them already.
Common Grackles:
• Are gregarious, known to roost together with thousands of other birds, including other species, like red-winged blackbirds.
• Are omnivorous and opportunistic foragers, eating insects, fruit, nuts and small animals. They’ve also been known to eat the eggs of small birds and to steal worms from robins.
• Are usually monogamous
Writer and illustrator Colleen Newquist enjoys watching the woods from her home in south suburban Park Forest, Ill.
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