Nature Done Wright

   My column in The Record and other USA Today newspapers today is about those annoying feeder birds, Common Grackles.

   Because I file the column a week in advance, I was unable to write about the news concerning a mysterious disease affecting feeder birds. I hope to write my next column in two weeks about this…

   In the meantime, here's the column…

By Jim Wright

Special to The Record

Don’t tell anyone, but I dislike common grackles. You know them, even if you call them “crackles” or, more typically, some epithet while shaking your fist. 

They’re those shiny-feathered blackbirds with yellow eyes that often flock together and show up at your feeder and eat everything in sight. Female grackles are a bit smaller and less iridescent but have the same voracious appetites.

Rap your knuckles on the window and they’ll fly away, only to return the first chance they get.  You can hear them clacking as they wait in the wings because, as you may have noticed, they tend to be loud. They’re native and invasive. 

 Grackles have been especially numerous late, feasting on all the summer buffets at North Jersey feeders. They are regular diners at my feeders, and I wouldn’t mind so much if these guys didn’t drive the other birds away from the feeder. Finches, chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and downy woodpeckers don’t stand a chance against these bullies.

If you’ve got a tray feeder, you’ve probably noticed that grackles like to root around with their feet and kick the seeds to the ground. It’s as if they can’t eat the seeds fast enough, so they discard the rest in hopes of annoying us humans even more. As for suet, forget it. It’s like serving them crack cocaine. 

To slow down a grackle feeding frenzy, put your suet in a cage. Take down your tray feeder for a while. And invest in a cage feeder — a feeder enclosed in a metal cage. They are a bit pricey, but then again, so is feeding all those voracious grackles.

 I may not be a big fan of grackles, but I am a veritable Welcome Wagon compared to farmers, who have to contend with massive flocks of grackles that devour fields of corn, tomatoes, wheat, lettuce, sunflowers and … the list goes on and on. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture even has a 16-page bulletin on getting rid of grackles as part of its Wildlife Damage Management series.

 Lest you think I am a negative Ned, let me say something nice about grackles. According to the American Bird Conservancy, common grackles, chimney swifts and many other bird species have a magnetic mineral called magnetite in their heads, beaks, and necks that helps the birds use the earth's geomagnetic fields for navigation. 

I’m familiar with a couple of their relatives, especially Antillean grackles. I’ve seen quite a few of the latter in Jamaica, where they are called Kling-klings and like to get into mischief. They play a significant supporting role in Ian Fleming’s last 007 novel, “The Man with the Golden Gun.”

    Alas (spoiler alert), the eponymous villain didn’t care for them much either.…

Do you like grackles? Please write to me and tell me why. I’d really like to know. Conversely, if you’ve found a way to rid your feeders of them …

The Bird Watcher column appears every other Thursday. Email Jim at celeryfarm@gmail.com.