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Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula)

Length 13 in., wingspan 17 in., Family Emberizidae

 The Grackle is larger and more colorful than its cousin, the Blackbird. Grackles have shiny black plumage that reflects green, purple and bronze. John James Audubon wrote, “No painter however gifted could ever imitate them.” They are big birds with long bills; their tails are almost five inches long. Their song is an unmusical, metallic hiss.

  Grackles breed east of the Rocky Mountains, from Canada in the north to Florida in the south. They eat everything and have adapted to all kinds of habitat, even life in cities. Their bulky nests are placed in trees or shrubs, even underneath bridges!

 It is thought that the great botanist Linnaeus named the Grackle quiscalus quiscula from the Latin quis for “who” and qualis for “of what kind?”

 Swedish immigrants to the U.S. called the birds “corn thieves” because in spring flocks of them followed farmers sowing corn to gobble up seeds before they could sprout. Farmers shot or poisoned them until they learned that Grackles also eat grubs and cutworms that attack crops and decided that the corn was fair payment for the service.