The Blackbirds of Fall

People ask me how I became interested in birds and I might tell that story sometime, but not yet. That interest did not develop when I was young, partly because there was no model or mentor to guide me. However, there is a strong memory from my early childhood of sitting on my father's lap as he slowly turned the pages of a slim picture book. I can still feel the sense of anticipation as I called out the name of each bird.... jay, robin, chickadee. Finally he turned a page and I would loudly proclaim the name of my favorite bird in the book..... "GRACKLE. "

Who can deny that the grackle is a striking picture, dark, majestic, with flashing colors and a piercing eye. This bird looks and acts the wicked prince, a darth vader dressed in black with a crown of glossy purple and blue. In early summer we see this bird prancing slowly about the lawn with stately gait, not hopping and stopping like a robin. The long, broad tail stretches behind, set at a cocky angle, a message to all who approach, "Don't mess with me!"

Now it is late fall and we do not see them parading around the lawn, one or two or three at a time. In fact, if you have paid attention, you know that we do not see them at all after mid-summer. They and their cousins, the red-winged blackbird, virtually disappear about that time and may not be seen here again until early spring. Where does such an abundant bird go?

We certainly see a similar looking bird, the starling, which is not a blackbird at all, but more closely related to the thrushes. The starling is a flocking species, and the flocks slowly coalesce through the summer, until by fall many hundreds can be gathered together, moving like a winged storm of leaves through the fields and yards, perched in long rows on wires or on a bare tree like ripe fruit.

The grackles do the same, sometimes on an even larger scale. Their flocks can number in the many thousands, and they roost and feed together at such widely scattered locations, that most of us never see them. In late summer or early fall, you may look up before dusk and notice a swarming stream of birds moving across the high sky, and you will be shocked to find how long it will take for them to pass. Such a huge assemblage is heading toward a roosting area for the night, probably to a large heavy stand of evergreens in a forest.

In November more modest flocks of grackles and blackbirds are often encountered, and this year they seem to be more prominent than usual. Almost daily the raucous clamor of these birds has been heard in my neighborhood. These are groups from farther north, stopping on the way to southern wintering ranges.

One day recently I happened upon a flock that covered the grasses and fields of a farmyard and several adjoining house yards. There were several hundred, about evenly composed of grackles and red-winged blackbirds with a few cowbirds and starlings thrown in. They pecked at the ground as they walked about, closely packed within inches of each other. Every few seconds a group would rise from the "back" end of the flock, fly low over the pack and land on the "front" side to resume their search for seed.

Ornithologists are not certain what mode of communication is used that allows these flocking birds to move as one without a leader, although they believe the birds possess some form of magnetic sending and receiving capability. However they do it, their movement is a display that dazzles the senses, ours as well as that of any hunting hawk who is unable to pick out and capture the one bird that would make a meal.

I admired and studied these birds as they moved across the road and around my car, noting the different kinds and plumages, hoping in vain that one of those rare ones from the west, a yellow-headed blackbird or brewer's blackbird, might catch my eye. But our grackle is true royalty, and is always worth a closer look.