Grackles!

I’m sure you have all been wondering what has been going on with the birds in my backyard?!  Well I’ll tell you:  chaos!  Chaos and ruin.  And that is because a large flock of grackles has moved in and seem in no hurry to ever leave.  There are about forty of them, and they eat ALL THE SEED.  Plus they bully the other birds away from the area—even doves and bluejays.  The other birds come when the grackles temporarily fly off, but it is all very disappointing. 

I googled “backyard bullies” and immediately found sites with ideas of what to do if you have grackles or European starlings or the like.  And the plan which I think I will resort to once my current bags of seed are gone is to offer only safflower seed, instead of the mix of safflower and sunflower which I had been serving.  The grackles don’t like the safflower, whereas the chickadees and titmice and cardinals do.

I’ve even spotted the grackles chasing our cute little woodpeckers from the front suet feeder.  Meanies!  I wish they would head on out to wherever they came from.  Sean calls them crackles, which makes me giggle.  It’s like a cat’s version of the perfect rice krispie treat:  snap, grackles, and pop.

And the grackles are also very noisy.

This morning, we did have a red-winged blackbird at our feeder, which I had never seen in our yard before.  We also have a bird which I have seen many times but can’t identify.  It’s the size of and has the markings of a bluejay (although chubbier) and without the blue.  It’s sort of a khaki/light brown and there even might be a bit of light yellow on it.  Any ideas?  It too really likes the suet.

In the meantime, I’ve come up with two new curses for the day:  May your yard be filled with grackles!  And unrelatedly:  may the person who used the coffee maker before you at work fill the pot with hazelnut coffee.

Sure, he's cute by himself, but times forty?