Eight reasons grackles are awesome (Texas Monthly). May I offer a ninth? They eat fire ants!
One of my favorite grackle experiences was on a little-used trail up near Granger Lake several years ago. For a few hundred yards the trail passed beneath a canopy of tall, tall trees filled with screaming grackles; it seemed like there were hundreds of thousands. They could have picked my bones clean.
I enjoyed the author's thoughts on mockingbirds, too - few things are funnier than seeing a businessman in a suit running in fear from a four-ounce bird. They're fierce little dudes, but they're not all that dangerous. I saw one attack an elderly saffron-robed Buddhist monk; he laughed about it like a little kid - it was glorious.
At the beginning evening of our last snowstorm, when it was still cold rain, we saw a lone, puffy robin on our front steps-trying to sip some icy water from a shallow puddle.
ReplyDeleteA day or so earlier, we had seen him under a leafless bush and then again on a bare branch of a front tree. Haven't seen him since--yet.
Robins rarely come into our yard - we usually see them at the park or along the trails.
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