Female Grackle

by Kathy White

Title

Female Grackle

Artist

Kathy White

Medium

Photograph - Photography--greeting Cards Or Notes Are Cheaper By The Dozen!

Description

This Female Grackle photograph was shot in the Dallas area. She didn't seem to have any idea I was taking her picture until I started to talk to her later.
Boat-tailed Grackles are large, lanky songbirds with rounded crowns, long legs, and fairly long, pointed bills. Males have very long tails that make up almost half their body length and that they typically hold folded in a V-shape, like the keel of a boat.
Males are glossy black all over. Females are dark brown above and russet below, with a subtle face pattern made up of a pale eyebrow, dark cheek, and pale �mustache� stripe. Along the western Gulf Coast, Boat-tailed Grackles have dull, brownish eyes. Along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf Coast west to Mississippi, Boat-tailed Grackles have bright yellow eyes.
The glossy blue-black males are hard to miss as they haul their ridiculously long tails around or display from marsh grasses or telephone wires. The rich, dark-brown females are half the size of males and look almost like a different species. Boat-tailed Grackles take advantage of human activity along our increasingly developed coast, scavenging trash and hanging out in busy urban areas away from predators. Main breeding habitats include salt marsh; marshes along rivers, lakes, impoundments, or ponds; and nearby upland habitats. They forage in city streets and plazas, cultivated fields, stockyards, open beaches, and salt marshes. They stay in the same types of habitats during the non-breeding season.
Boat-tailed Grackles eat arthropods, crustaceans, mollusks, frogs, turtles, lizards, grain, seeds, fruit, and tubers. Inveterate scavengers and pirates, they also take food from humans, domestic animals, and other birds. They usually forage out in the open, in a wide variety of habitats that include floating mats, mudflats, beaches, roadsides, parking lots, dumps, cultivated fields, and cattle feedlots. They walk slowly over the ground or in shallow water, pecking or probing at soil, litter, or low vegetation. They often overturn debris, stones, and shells with their bills. In aquatic habitats they stand still and cock their heads to watch the water with one eye, then plunge their heads below the surface. They can pry open mussel shells and eat snails by forcing an opening between the tissue and the shell. Boat-tailed Grackles often dunk foods like bread, rice, and dog food in water before eating them.
Boat-tailed Grackles have a variable song with harsh jeeb-jeeb-jeeb notes and low-pitched guttural rolls. Both males and females sing, though females do so only rarely.

Uploaded

August 27th, 2013

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