D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
September 2011
It's Good to Be Great
...at least when you're a great-tailed grackle, for whom life is mostly worth crowing about.
by Jay Sharp
In one of our next lives, I told my wife, Martha, who was reading a Larry McMurtry novel, we're going to come back as a pair of wealthy Parisians. They have a lot of fun. We'll live on the Right Bank, near the Tuileries Gardens, in one of those fancy second-story flats with big chandeliers. In the evenings, we'll take the dogs for a walk through the park. We'll stroll across that old bridge Pont-Neuf to the Left Bank. We'll go over to Rue Descartes and have a glass of Chateau San Michelle chardonnay at the Mayflower Bar. We'll spend long weekends at Honfleur, at the mouth of the Seine River, where Toulouse-Lautrec used to go to dry out from the absinthe.
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A female great-tailed grackle foraging for delicacies in trash that had accumulated at the edge of a park pond. (All photos by Jay W. Sharp) |
"Sounds OK to me," Martha said, turning a page in her novel.
Then, in another one of our next lives, I told her, we'll come back as a pair of great-tailed grackles (Quiscalus mexicanus monsoni). They have a lot of fun. We'll live in a park with water, in a tree with a lot of other grackles. I'll point my beak toward the sky and strut for you. I'll serenade you from the top of a house. I'll circle around you and fluff my wing feathers and fan my tail feathers. While you take care of the little ones during the summer, I'll protect our tree and our nest (when I'm not too busy circling another lady grackle). We'll forage around the pond and eat bugs and tadpoles and lizards and other birds' eggs. We can even pick through those humans' trash for some real delicacies. We may even make some short trips when the seasons change.
"Sounds OK to me," Martha said, turning a page in her novel.
I had anticipated her enthusiasm for life as a wealthy Parisian but not as a great-tailed grackle. That bird does, however, know how to have a good time.
Distinctive Features
"These noisy and conspicuous birds [the great-tailed grackles, not the wealthy Parisians] are familiar residents of city parks, towns, ranch lands and occasionally marshes, where they form huge nesting colonies in isolated groves," says The Audubon Society Master Guide to Birding: Old World Warblers to Sparrows. "With their long keel-shaped tails, piercing yellow eyes, and distinctively odd songs and calls, the males are among our more spectacular native birds."
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A male great-tailed grackle making himself at home in a Las Cruces park. |
The mature male great-tailed grackle, about a foot and a half in length, sports shiny black plumage with an iridescent purplish blue gloss. Its distinctive tail, accounting for roughly a third of its total length, has, as the Audubon guide says, a fold "down the middle, forming a scoop or keel shape." The mature female, only some three-quarters as large as the male, has an olive-brown head and breast, with darker, dusky brown wings and tail. Her tail is essentially flat, not keel-shaped like that of the male. Both sexes have heavy black beaks and black feet and legs. The male has intensely yellow eyes, the female, paler yellow eyes.
The great-tailed grackle has an "unusually large vocal repertoire," according to authorities Kristine Johnson and Brian D. Peer (my primary sources for this article), writing for Cornell's "The Birds of North America." In fact, "Other grackles recognize individuals by vocalization." The male, like an aspirant to an avian opera, issues specific and brash calls to attract a girlfriend, solicit copulation, proclaim territory and sound an alarm. (The young male, like a teenage boy with a cracking voice, has to learn and master the songs.)
The female, usually more demure, issues subtle calls to attract a boyfriend as she builds her nest at a site she has chosen. She may chatter coyly to solicit copulation. She seldom proclaims territory. She may, however, scream intensely, and, with neighboring females, hover above any predator that attempts to plunder her nest. The females may rally a mobbing of a predator — including a human — by their neighboring male great-tailed grackles.
Range and Habitat
The great-tailed grackle occupies a range that extends from the Caribbean coastal areas of South America northward through Central America and Mexico across the Southwest and Texas into the southern Great Plains. The bird has been expanding its range steadily northward for decades, gleefully attracted — unlike other wildlife — by agricultural and urban development. It arrived in southwestern New Mexico early last century, suggest Collins and Peer.
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A male great-tailed grackle serenading a girlfriend. Notice his purplish-blue gloss and lemon-yellow eyes. |
In our region, especially during the breeding season, the great-tailed grackle, according to Collins and Peer, favors "open areas with scattered trees and water nearby, including pastures, agricultural lands, livestock feed lots… secondary forests and second-growth scrub" as well as "urban sites such as parks, garbage dumps, lawns, streets, campuses and golf courses." The bird generally has little use for "dense forests and deserts or prairies without water sources." The great-tailed grackle may migrate for short distances with the change of the seasons, especially at the leading edges of its ongoing expansion.
The female usually selects a nesting site near an open area with readily available water. She may build a nest in a tree along a city street or plaza or near a farm home or a stream. If a tree is not available in an acceptable location, she may build a nest in a man-made structure such as a power pole or storage shed.