Nature Done Wright

A ruckus of grackles recently invaded this North Jersey neighborhood.
Photo by Heidi Gross, Autumn Years
My latest "Bird Watcher" column is all about the flocks of blackbirds seen of late in North Jersey. With a photo by Heidi Gross.

You can read it here:

By Jim Wright
Special to The Record
    The dispatch arrived via Facebook late last month: Local resident Heidi Gross reported seeing hundreds of blackbirds flying down her street and alighting on lawns. 

    The scene was right out of the 1963 Alfred Hitchcock classic, “The Birds,” except no schoolchildren were menaced on their way home. Similar reports soon arrived from Oakland, Elmwood Park, Ridgewood and elsewhere: huge flocks of blackbirds. 

   What the heck was happening? A murmuration of starlings? A murder of crows?

   My best guess: a cackle of grackles.*

   Fortunately, Heidi took a terrific photo of her feathered conclave, and that made the identification easier. The robin-size birds had glossy blue-black feathers and black bills, which indicated grackles. 

    In case you’re wondering, starlings are smaller. They have yellow bills and tan speckle on their chest feathers. Fish crows and American crows are much bigger, and they tend to gather in large numbers mostly toward evening when hundreds might roost together in the winter months.

     After Heidi posted her blackbird bonanza, Facebook was abuzz with replies, including people wondering what the birds were up to and where they were going. Migrating, perhaps?

   The answer: The grackles were most likely flocking together in search of food in the colder months. (By the way, common grackles don’t migrate much; they tend to hang around all year long.)

    A few days after the grackle report, I saw a mixed flock of a hundred robins, grackles and starlings going after ripe berries on a tree in a nearby office park. News of free meals travels fast.

    Grackle flocks have numbered into the thousands around here some years, and flocks approaching a million birds — with another species or two tossed in– have been reported in Maryland and Virginia. Crow roosts, on the other hand, have numbered as high as 2 million in Oklahoma.

     Although grackles can be aggressive around other birds at feeders, humans have nothing to fear — especially if they keep their car’s windshield-washer fluids filled.

     * It turns out that collective nouns have been coined to describe various groups of birds, from a flock of gulls to a trembling of finches, but there's some debate over the word for grackles. Several online sources include none for the medium-size blackbird, so last year a writer for the Houston Chronicle asked readers what noun they prefer for grackles. Their answers included a ruckus, an omen, a hassle, a squawk, a grifting, an annoyance and — my favorites — a Hitchcock or a (Tippi) Hedren of grackles.

     Fieldnotes: The 122nd annual Christmas Bird Count begins next Tuesday and runs through Tuesday, Jan. 5. To participate, you need to sign up with a birding group in your area. If you email me your name and address, I’ll try to give you the contact information for your area. The Christmas Bird Count, by the way, was invented by Teaneck’s Frank Chapman in 1900. Thanks, Frank!

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