10 Fun Facts About the Common Grackle

Leggy and sharp-eyed, Common Grackles (along with their larger, showier relatives, Great-tailed Grackles and Boat-tailed Grackles) are often mistaken for crows—until they open their bills. Once you hear that glorious, discordant screech, there’s no mistaking this native blackbird, which seems equally at home in a marsh or a parking lot. From how they eat to how they keep clean, Common Grackles are both adventurous and inventive, qualities that have helped the species expand westward from its core range in the eastern United States. Read on to get to know the social songbirds…even if their song is not quite music to your ears.

1.) About the name: “Grackle” is derived from graculus, the Latin word for jackdaw, a Eurasian crow. With sleek dark plumage and a reputation for antics, grackles certainly have a corvid energy—but they are actually members of the blackbird family, more closely related to orioles, Bobolinks, and meadowlarks.



2.) Rarely considered melodious singers, Common Grackles are nonetheless talented vocalists. Unlike in many species, females sing, too (though less often): Both sexes perform a harsh, high-pitched readle-eak song often likened to the sound of a rusty gate. Mates—typically monogamous for the breeding season—may even sing back and forth to each other. Grackles also make a variety of whistles, creaks, clatters, and squeaks, creating quite a racket when they gather in large numbers.

3.) And gather they do! Common Grackles are highly social. Their courtship often involves a chase, with several males pursuing a female through the air, followed by shrieky vocalizations from both sexes, delivered with fluffed-out feathers. The species often breeds in colonies of a dozen or more closely-built nests (less commonly, they have been known to lay their eggs in old woodpecker cavities and even inside active Osprey nests). While their cousins, the Brown-headed Cowbirds, are notorious brood parasites, they rarely try the trick on grackles; researchers have speculated that Common Grackles were once a frequent target but became so good at rejecting the interlopers that cowbirds stopped laying their eggs in grackle nests. 



4.) Outside of the breeding season, Common Grackles gather at night in huge communal roosts. The congregations are often mixed-species, including Red-winged Blackbirds, Brown-headed Cowbirds, and European Starlings, and can number up to 1 million birds. Not all Common Grackles migrate, but the ones that do often travel in similarly motley flocks.



5.) Common Grackles will eat nearly anything and everything, from wild and cultivated plants (especially corn), to insects and other songbirds. They have been observed catching fish and crustaceans, stealing worms from American Robins, and prying leeches off the legs of turtles, not to mention picking through human trash for a choice morsel. Though they hardly seem to need it, Common Grackles have a hard ridge on the inside of their upper bill that they use to score and crack open acorns and other hard foods.



6.) Far from simply black, Common Grackles’ feathers have a colorful iridescent cast that is particularly striking in direct sun. Hues differ regionally, with the variations once considered distinct species. The more widespread “bronzed” grackles have dark, greenish-blue heads that strongly contrast with their bronzy bodies. In the southeast, “purple” grackles have greener bodies and purple heads with less overall contrast. Females of both varieties are somewhat browner, with less metallic sheen.

7.) To keep those lovely feathers fresh, a Common Grackle may employ a variety of strategies, the most intriguing of which is called anting: rubbing its feathers with an ant grasped in its bill, or lying on the ground to let the insects crawl over it. Although it hasn’t been proved, ornithologists infer that the formic acid secreted by ants deters parasites. Anting is widespread among birds, but Common Grackles are especially resourceful: They have also been observed “anting” with marigolds, walnut juice, limes, mothballs, chokecherry, and sumac.


8.)  Grackles hate a dirty home just as much as dirty feathers. When rearing chicks, adults fastidiously remove their offspring’s fecal sacs from the nest, carrying out the waste with their beaks. So fastidiously, in fact, that the species has drawn the attention, and occasionally ire, of its human neighbors in the spring: Common Grackles seem to prefer to dispose of the sacs in a water source, targeting pools and water fountains, as well as shiny objects that perhaps appear aqueous to the birds, including cars and even trampolines.

9.) In case you haven’t gotten the idea yet, Common Grackles are extremely adaptable and skilled at making use of whatever resources they encounter. This has allowed them to thrive in a wide variety of habitats and expand their range into Canada and the western United States. Although they are abundant (and voracious) enough to be considered pests—farmers can apply for permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cull the birds on their property—Common Grackles are, in fact, sharply declining across the country. The drop-off remains a mystery, though scientists suspect pesticides may be to blame.


10.) The oldest Common Grackle ever recorded was at least 22 years old. In 1995, a federally-permitted bird bander received notification that a band she’d attached to a male grackle more than two decades earlier had been recovered, 400 feet above the ground, in the regularly-inspected nest box of a Peregrine Falcon near St. Paul, Minnesota. Though presumably eaten by the raptor, the venerable Common Grackle beats the record for oldest known wild Peregrine (coincidentally also reported in Minnesota), which lived to be at least 19 years old.