Monday, March 24, 2014
Monday, August 20, 2012
Mid-August: Great Horned Owl
Can you see what I see? (Hint: look almost dead-center) |
He moved a bit and I zoomed a bit closer, but he's still cautious. |
I learned we can tell he is a youngster because he still has a bit of the rufus (brownish-red) feathering around his face and head. |
After giving the youngster a bit of a break, my 'adopted daughter', Rheanne came over and I handed her my camera. Now, she is a photographer. In the mean time, the bird had moved some, so I suggested she try a shot from the other side of the tree. This is what she got:
By Rheanne Velie |
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Boat-tailed Grackle - Quiscalus major
is found exclusively along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts
of the United States.
The noisy, iridescent, purple-black male has a bluish sheen visible on the head, in good light, and grading to greenish on the body. The extroverted bird is hard to miss when it displays on power lines and telephone poles. Young males are black but lack the adult's iridescence. The smaller, brown female has a shorter tail and reddish brown plumage overall, darkest on wings and tail. She is quite beautiful but is much less conspicuous and might even be mistaken for a different species. Young females resemble pale adult females, with spots on the breast.
Boat-tailed Grackle, eating shrimp. |
General Description:
- Iridescent black body, usually more blue-green
- Larger, longer tail; held in deep ‘V’ during display flights
- Very large, long bill
- Yellow to brown eye color, depending on range/subspecies
Measurements: Both Sexes
26–37 cm
39–50 cm
93–239 g
Their favorite station for plumage exhibition is the top of a small bush or low tree. If these are not available, they will alight on the ground or on a muskrat house or pile of debris. Here they stay quietly for some minutes, with their feathers compressed and beak and neck pointing skyward, then suddenly one of them will give a series of squeaking, chuckling, raucous cries, during which all the feathers are fluffed, tail spread, wings half opened and vibrated rapidly, making a loud, rattling sound [see Voice]. The others of the group immediately follow the leader's example, and for a minute or two each individual is animated and noisy, only to drop back to the compressed statue like pose. This noisy exhibition takes place either while at rest or on the wing.
If, over such a group of males, flies a female seeking a mate, all of the males at once take flight on loudly flapping wings and with rattling quills, squeaking and calling in their most seductive manner, begin chasing her. Should none of this group of males attract her, she quickly out flies them and proceeds to look over other groups until she finds her choice. When a mate is selected she flies in front of and near him, leading him off to one side, until the other males in the group drop out of the chase. The pair then alights on the ground and mating is accomplished.
Cool Facts
- Eye color in the Boat-tailed Grackle varies from region to region. Grackles along the Atlantic coast north of Florida have straw-colored eyes. Florida birds have dark eyes. Grackles west of Florida to eastern Louisiana have light eyes, but those further west have dark ones.
- Fledglings that fall into the water can swim well for short distances, using their wings as paddles.
- The Boat-tailed Grackle has an odd mating system: harem polygyny or female defense polygyny. Females cluster their nests, and the males compete to defend the entire colony and mate there. The most dominant male gets most of the copulations in a system similar to that used by many deer. But all is not as simple as it seems. Although the dominant male may get up to 87% of the copulations at a colony, DNA fingerprinting shows that he actually sires only about 25% of the young in the colony. Most of the young are fathered by non-colony males away from the colonies.
Sound: Click Here to listen
Monday, May 7, 2012
Great-tailed Grackle - Quiscalus mexicanus
The Great-tailed Grackle, or Mexican Grackle, was historically almost exclusively found in Central and South America, but human alteration of the environment has caused the birds to expand their range to include parts of the United States. Their current range in the United States is north to eastern Oregon, with individuals sighted as far north as Canada, south to northwest Peru, and northwest Venezuela in the south; the grackle's range has been expanding north and west in recent years. It is common in Texas and Arizona in the southern regions and as far east as Western Arkansas.
http://birds.audubon.org/sites/default/files/photos/grackleanimatedmaps.gif
- Bright yellow eyes
- Iridescent black body, usually more blue-purple
- Larger, longer tail; held in deep ‘V’ during display flights
- Very large, long bill; nearly as long as head
Size & Shape
The Great-Tailed Grackle has a disproportionatelysmall, slightly rounded head on a neck that’s thin in relation to its large body. Males are long-legged, slender blackbirds with a somewhat flat-headed profile and stout, straight bills. The male’s tapered tail is nearly as long as its body and folds into a distinctive V or keel shape. Females are about half the size of males with long, slender tails.
Male
- Length: 18.1 in
- Wingspan: 22.8 in
- Weight: 6.7 oz
- Length: 15 in
- Wingspan: 18.9 in
- Weight: 3.7 oz
- Exceptionally long-tailed and large songbird. Much smaller by weight than an American Crow, but about the same length.
Color Pattern
- Male Great-tailed Grackles are iridescent black with piercing yellow eyes, and black bills and legs.
- Females are dark brown above, paler below, with a buff-colored throat and stripe above the eye.
- Juveniles have the female’s dark brown plumage, with streaked under parts and a dark eye.
Favored habitat includes partly open situations with scattered trees, cultivated lands, pastures, shores of watercourses, swamps, wet thickets, around human habitation, sometimes in marshes. Often roosts in village shade trees or urban parks. South America: common locally in mangroves and along shorelines and on lawns and in parks in towns and. Nests in trees, bushes, man-made structures, mostly near or over water; marsh vegetation where no trees or bushes are available near water. Sometimes nests in heron colony.
Short, but sweet little clip
Cool Facts
- In winter, enormous flocks of both male and female Great-tailed Grackles gather in “roost trees.” These winter roosts can contain thousands of individuals, with flocks of up to half a million occurring in sugarcane fields in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley.
- In 1900 the northern edge of the Great-tailed Grackle’s range barely reached southern Texas. Since the 1960s they’ve followed the spread of irrigated agriculture and urban development into the Great Plains and West, and today are one of North America’s fastest-expanding species.
- The Great-tailed and Boat-tailed grackles have at times been considered the same species. Current thinking is that they are closely related, but different species. They do hybridize.
- Because they’re smaller and require less food, female Great-tailed Grackle chicks are more likely than their brothers to survive to fledgling. Likewise, adult females may outlive males, resulting in a “sex-biased” population with greater numbers of females than males.
- Although you’ll usually see them feeding on land, Great-tailed Grackles may also wade into the water to grab a frog or fish.
- Great-tailed Grackles—especially females—learn to recognize individual researchers working in their breeding colonies, and will react with a chut alarm call when they see the researcher, even away from the nesting site.
A fine little slideshow of several many photos of
the life of a Boat-tailed Grackle
Call
- Low chut; males may give a louder clack. This bird has a large variety of raucous, cacophonous calls.
- Song is a strange mix of slurred whistles and electrical static-type sounds, usually ending in a staccato, mechanical rattle; call is a soft tchut. The male Great-tailed Grackle's horribly loud "song" is a series of harsh rattles, squeaks like that of styrofoam rubbing together, whistles, sounds like the tuning of an old radio, and gravelly "Check!" calls. You can hear three here:
- Wikipedia
- Cornell’s All About Birds
- The Crossley Guide – Eastern Birds
- Kaufman Focus Guide – Birds of North America
- Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds of North America
- Stokes Field Guide to Birds of North America
- Wikipedia
- YouTube
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
My Best Yard Bird?
- American Kestrel - having lunch amongst the peonies.
- Black Phoebe, maybe. I love Black Phoebes.
- Chihuahan Raven, because I like big corvids.
- Western Meadowlark - A splash of yellow on the snow covered grass - sweet.
- Gray Catbird - because I heard it so many times before spotting it!
- Western Tanager - yellow and red...what's not to like
- Hermit Thrush come every year...love 'em.
- Indigo Bunting - so BLUE
- Belted Kingfisher - I built a fish-pond for 'em.
- Harris's Sparrow - everybody was seeing them that year.
- American Redstart - flicking wings & tail, pugnacious little fellow.
- Turkey Vultures - roosting in my trees!
- Lewis's Woodpecker - spent a winter visiting my feeders here, once.
- Calliope Hummingbirds - all hummingbirds actually, 100's at a time!
- Northern Shrike - dining al fresco...stunning.
So, you can see I can't just pick one. Perhaps if I absolutely HAD to pick the most exciting experience with birds in my yard, it would be the time the young scientist was here with mist nets; sampling, measuring and banding Evening Grosbeaks. He had one he had caught that he was keeping for a few weeks in a cage as a decoy. He watched his caged pal intently, never keeping him out in the sun for long. He regularly moved the caged bird over next to us, sitting in the shade while we waited to catch birds, or where he made his notes on birds he'd caught.
Suddenly, we were shocked to see a Cooper's Hawk swoop down, from over the roof of my house and attack the cage that was sitting on the ground, between us, right at our feet! The poor grosbeak nearly had a heart attach...in fact, we nearly did. We stood up, the hawk moved to the top of the cage and kept trying for the bird inside! He kicked at the hawk, who moved again; trying desperately to get the little bird. Finally, making enough noise and practically physically grabbing the big bird...he finally gave up. Talk about exciting! For a few minutes, we imagined the hawk was going to just pick up the (large) cage and just fly off with it. It's wings nearly wrapped around the entire front of the cage; the darn thing wanted in! Thankfully, the little Evening Grosbeak was just fine and was released later that season.
That was probably my most exciting experience birding my backyard. Leave your experience too, if you like. I like to hear from my readers!
Monday, April 9, 2012
Common Grackle - Quiscalus quiscula
Common Grackles, or Crow Blackbirds as they are sometimes called, are blackbirds that look like they've been slightly stretched. They very common almost everywhere east of the Rockies Longer than most blackbirds, slimmer than most crows, Common Grackle males are very iridescent and have long tails with a distinct crease down the center. Generally, their heads, necks and breasts are glossy purplish-blue or bluish-green. However, common grackles in different parts of North America have somewhat different colored plumage.
In New England and in the West, the subspecies has a brassy bronze body coloration. Often called the Bronzed Grackle: it has a black head with blue-green iridescence. Sharply defined bronze back. Long, black tail with purplish iridescence. Called the Purple Grackle, this one has a black head, back, and sides with purple iridescence. May have iridescent barring on the back. Long, black tail with possible blue-green iridescence. Tail displays a longitudinal ridge or keel when in flight. Pale yellow eyes, though not always. Found from central Louisiana and Alabama north to southern New York and Connecticut, west of the Appalachian Mountains and in New England. East of the Allegheny Mountains, the body is purple, and in the southeast the feathers have a greenish hue.
Females are not as iridescent or as colorful, and their tails are not as distinctive, nor do they keel their tails much.
The iridescence of the head is different from that of the body, and changes abruptly behind the neck and breast; this applies to all forms of common grackle. The central feathers of the long, rounded tail are often depressed, so that the tail is displayed in flight with a deeply keeled V-shape, especially with breeding males in flight. Common Grackles taller, with long, strong legs and longer tailed than a typical blackbird, with a longer, and more tapered bill; bill and legs are black.
Grackles walk around lawns and fields on their long legs or gather in noisy groups high in trees, typically evergreens. They eat many crops (notably corn) and nearly anything else as well, including garbage. In flight their long tails trail behind them, sometimes folded down the middle into a shallow V shape, especially during breeding time. The adult female, beyond being smaller, is usually less iridescent; her tail in particular is shorter, and unlike the males, does not keel in flight. The juvenile is brown with dark brown eyes and faintly streaked on breast. These are one of the earliest passerine migrants in spring.
Common Grackles are large, lanky blackbirds with long legs and long tails. The head is flat and the bill is longer than in most blackbirds, with the hint of a downward curve. In flight, the wings appear short in comparison to the tail. Males are slightly larger than females.
Sized for Both Sexes:
- Length: 11–13.4 inches
- Wingspan: 14.2–18.1 inches
- Weight: 2.6–5 ounces
- Relative Size: Larger than a Red-winged Blackbird; about the same size as a Mourning Dove, though its long tail makes it appear larger.
Common Grackles appear black from a distance, but up close their glossy purple heads contrast with bronzy-iridescent bodies. A bright golden eye gives grackles an intent expression. Females are slightly less glossy than males. Young birds are dark brown with a dark eye. As you know, there are many Leucistic birds; this is a Leucistic Common Grackle, below. Click the tag 'Leucistic' (at the end of this article) for more information.
Their diet consists of a wide variety of animal and vegetable food, including insects and invertebrates but also insects, crustaceans, earthworms, frogs, and small rodents and occasional eggs and nestlings. In rare instances, Common Grackles will attack and eat small birds and lizards, and in coastal areas they forage at the tide line for small invertebrates, even wading into the water to capture live fish. During the winter and migration months, their diet shifts to plant food, such as seeds and waste grain. Because of their predilection for agricultural grain and seeds, especially corn, Common Grackles have earned a reputation as a significant pest in certain areas of North America. The omnivorous grackles feed in farm fields, pastures, and suburban lawns by walking, rather than hopping, and they act aggressively toward, even stealing food from, other ground-foraging birds such as robins.
Sharp-shinned Hawks, Great Horned Owls and Red-tailed Eagles are predators of Grackles, not to forget predators of all birds; cats and dogs, skunks, raccoons, snakes and people.
Call
The Lone Pine Field Guide to Birds describes the Common Grackle as a "poor but spirited singer who, despite his lack of musical talent, remains smug and proud, posing with his bill held high". Their call is a loud chuck, while their song is short creaky koguba-leek. Call: a loud and deep chuck. Song: a mechanical, squeaky readle-eak. Variety of whistles, clucks, and hissing notes. Both sexes sing.Cool Facts
- Those raggedy figures out in cornfields may be called scare-crows, but grackles are the #1 threat to corn. They eat ripening corn as well as corn sprouts, and their habit of foraging in big flocks means they have a multimillion dollar impact. Some people have tried to reduce their effects by spraying a foul-tasting chemical on corn sprouts or by culling grackles at
their roosts. - Common Grackles are resourceful foragers. They sometimes follow plows to catch invertebrates and mice, wade into water to catch small fish, pick leeches off the legs of turtles, steal worms from American Robins, raid nests, and kill and eat
adult birds. - Grackles have a hard keel on the inside of the upper mandible that they use for sawing open acorns. Typically they score the outside of the narrow end, then bite the acorn open.
- You might see a Common Grackle hunched over on the ground, wings spread, letting ants crawl over its body and feathers. This is called ‘anting’, and grackles are frequent practitioners among the many bird species that do it. The ants secrete formic acid, the chemical in their stings, and this may rid the bird of parasites. In addition to ants, grackles have been seen using walnut juice, lemons and limes, marigold blossoms, chokecherries and mothballs in a similar fashion.
- In winter, Common Grackles forage and roost in large communal flocks with several different species of blackbird. Sometimes these flocks can number in the millions of individuals.
- Rarely, Common Grackles nest in places other than their usual treetops, including birdhouses, old woodpecker holes, barns, and in still-occupied nests of Osprey and Great Blue Heron.
- The oldest recorded Common Grackle was 22 years 11 months old.
One smart Grackle!
Watch this one problem solve.Where are Common Grackles found and how are they moving?
- Sources:
- Wikipedia
- Cornell’s All About Birds
- The Crossley Guide – Eastern Birds
- Kaufman Focus Guide – Birds of North America
- Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds of North America
- Stokes Field Guide to Birds of North America
Photos:- Wikipedia
- YouTube
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Grackles
- Boat-tailed Grackle, Quiscalus major
- Common Grackle, Quiscalus quiscula
- Great-tailed Grackle, Quiscalus mexicanus
The best way to separate Common Grackles from blackbirds and cowbirds is by size and shape: Common Grackles are larger, lankier, longer tailed, and longer billed. Common Grackles have a widened tail, often held in a V-shape, even in flight. Great-tailed Grackles of the Southwest and south Texas, and Boat-tailed Grackles of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, are even larger, and the males have much larger and more deeply keeled tails. The Great-tailed Grackle is the largest of our grackles, by several inches; while lighter in body-weight, they are about the same length as an American Crow.
Boat-tailed Grackles overlap with Great-tailed Grackles only in coastal Texas and Louisiana. They live mainly in coastal salt marshes, rarely moving inland (except in Florida where they are widespread across the peninsula). Boat-tailed Grackles, only slightly larger than the Common Grackle, have a much more rounded head, whereas Great-tailed Grackles have a sloping, flat crown.
Grackles tend to congregate in large groups, such a group is called: a plague of grackles.
A Plague of Grackes; likely with other black birds
like starlings and Red-Winged Blackbirds.
I like these big guys; probably because I don't get anywhere near that many! I should be thankful I've never had many more than about 100 mixed 'black birds' in my yard at a single time! But because I am intrigued by these Grackles (and used to confuse Great-tailed with the much smaller Boat-tailed Grackles), I intend to follow this post with a 3-part piece on the Grackles I might actually see here in Colorado. I hope you enjoy...and leave a comment; I love 'em. Again, if you click a label you'll find other postings & photos of a similar nature.
Sources:
- Wikipedia
- Cornell’s All About Birds
- The Crossley Guide – Eastern Birds
- Kaufman Focus Guide – Birds of North America
- Smithsonian Field Guide to Birds of North America
- Stokes Field Guide to Birds of North America
Photos:
- Wikipedia
- YouTube