All About Grackles!

I took an animal behavior class and my teacher had a PHD in Ornithology. I learned all grackles do a head display to show dominance/submissiveness. When they meet up, they all hold their heads up and the longer they keep their head up, the higher ranking they have. Once I learned this, I always watched the common grackles in my area and sure enough, they always do this!

"The Kroger parking lot in Mansfield Texas in October, You know that's the spot." - 5 billion grackles

Love grackles! I call these the “Walmart parking lot, French-fry eating birds”

I love grackles. They’re silly and entertaining.

I absolutely love grackles and their sounds and watching them roam around parking lots like iridescent dinosaurs and knowing they do millions of dollars worth of damage makes me smile

If grackles dominating feeders is a problem for you, I find that having multiple feeders has worked for me. I fill one with about 80% cracked corn/20% sunflower seeds - this is for the grackles and the starlings. Then I fill another, smaller feeder with 50% black oil sunflower, 40% finch blend (millet and other tiny seeds), and 10% safflower. The grackles go for the corn and any sunflower seeds that end up on the ground, and the starlings ignore the seeds because their beaks aren't really made to shell them. As a bonus, if you buy your cracked corn from a feed mill or farm supply store in 50lb bags, it's way cheaper than if you buy the little bags sold for birds. ;) So I get to enjoy watching grackles without them hassling any of the little songbirds or spilling seeds they don't even want to eat.

A few years ago I bonded with a murder of crows and since then I’ve been obsessed with birds. About a year or so ago I found an abandoned chick that I thought/hoped was a crow but it was a grackle. I raised her until her feathers grew and she was able to forage live insects. She was so good, she learned to fly to me with a snap, or she could walk by my side in the house 😅I felt she needed a natural life so I released her ❤ miss you, Midnight ❤

I like to catcall the grackles with the most magnificent tails in the parking lots in Houston 😂 Sometimes grackles are huge and it’s really something to see a big glossy one strutting around looking majestic! 🎉

I raise two half-dead baby grackles back in 2018. I had them for 30 days, taught them to hunt for food, fly, bathe, and seek shelter. When they flew away one day, I was so lonely . I hope they are in a flock, raising babies and happy!

Great-tailed Grackles are one of my most favorite birds! Their resourcefulness, ability to thrive in urban environments, and robust personality won me over years ago. It's a wonder to me that people can ignore them despite being surrounded by them and their charming shenanigans!

i'm north texan, and even though i understand why people see grackles as pests, i just can't disagree more 🥺 watching clouds of them dance around parking lots and cover telephone wires is always my favorite part of going grocery shopping. they always look like they have such rich lives!

I used to live in Texas, where the great-tailed grackles are EVERYwhere. They are actually crazy smart. Once I saw one (a female) go up to a dog food dish, pick up a pellet of dog food that was too big to get in its mouth, drop it in the dog's water, wait a few moments, then pick it up out of the water when it was soggy enough and swallow it down. It seems like it has to be able to learn from experience and generalize that to new situations in a problem-solving setting. That comes in handy since in the bird book under "diet" it says: "Almost anything edible"!

I saw a male common grackle in a creek bed with a ray of sunshine illuminating it through the trees, and it was one of the most beautiful birds I've ever seen in person! That blue head just blew me away!

I did not realize when I moved from my native Texas 7 years ago that I was going to miss the great-tailed grackles and all their noise...

This feels like a middle school educational video the teacher would show to explain something in detail, in the best possible way. No idea how I got lucky enough to stumble upon your channel, but thank you so much! I love how this video is done!

Grackles show up at my feeders every once in a while. It's interesting to see them somewhere other than a Walmart parking lot lol. 😂

Moved to Florida and noticed the beautiful boat tailed grackles are everywhere.I feed them at lunch in the publix parking lot and will have 50-60 of them all around me.

Great-taule grackles were my favorite bird growing up. I now live in an area without them, but the common grackle is still a very cool and cute bird <3

Grackles make me think of the prehistoric raptors that all birds evolved from, just smaller and with a beak without teeth

I didn't know much about these incredible birds until I went on a trip to Florida. I was instantly captivated by their cheekiness and guile. They are also just so gorgeous.