Blackbirds!
The blackbirds drain the feeder in minutes! The other birds haven’t much of an opportunity to feed
The blackbirds drain the feeder in minutes! The other birds haven’t much of an opportunity to feed
Common Grackle Feeding Frenzy
We’ve only been in this house for a few years now but last year fall through winter, we got flocks of Grackles in the thousands. Later on in winter we get some Blackbirds too, but right now we only have the Grackles. I took a video and the photo in this submission is a screenshot from that video. Overall there was somewhere around 7,000 birds, it was so loud. Grackles never stop calling and with all of the Oak trees we have, acorns were falling like rain. I wonder if this will be the biggest flock this year, or if we’ll get an even larger one…
11/16/22
There are many grackles in our area, but we hadn’t found any of their nests until today. High up in a juniper tree, this nest is very well-built and hidden from sight and contains 4 eggs.
On www.feederwatch.org it says that suet cages are not a Common Grackles’ favorite type of feeder, so I’m guessing they only come to this one because it does not hang vertically.
Pictures of a Common Grackle nest about 18 feet (I measured it) up in a fir tree. A bit of climbing is required to check the nest.