Common Grackle

Common Grackles are 12-inch glossy black birds with a purple, bronze, and greenish cast. They have a long, keel-shaped tail, a long bill, and yellow eyes. The female is less glossy than the male. In our area, they prefer to live around farmland, pine plantations and marshes. They like to eat insects, earthworms, salamanders, mice, the eggs and young of smaller birds, and the nuts and seeds of trees, shrubs, and crops. The female builds a bulky nest of grasses, feathers and debris. It lays 5 pale greenish white eggs, scrawled with brown and purple. It takes 12 days before they hatch and the young are ready to fly at about 2 weeks.

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© copyright 2001 by Chris Aker