Grackle is back
On Friday the 13th last month, Liberty Lake was invaded by a grackle, and word spread quickly that “the grackle is back.”
If you are not a birder – that is, an obsessive bird-watcher – you may not understand the delight in that shout. Depending on the inflection in the cry, the name “grackle” could even sound a bit scary.
When heard coming from Trailhead Golf Course, however, those are words full of excitement. The Liberty Lake great-tailed grackle is back for its fifth year, having arrived with one of the spring’s first flocks of Brewer’s blackbirds.
Still, you probably are wondering what all the enthusiasm is about. After all, the grackle looks like just a big, albeit rather flamboyant blackbird. Why is it that when that call goes out, birders from all over the state come running?
Well, it is a beautiful blackbird, with its iridescent feathers, its striking yellow eyes and its crazy, keeled tail.
Spokane Audubon Society member Ron Dexter, who has been keeping tabs on this grackle since it first arrived in 2003, describes the bird as looking “like a kite gently fluttering in the sky.” The grackle also is a large blackbird, “crow-sized counting the long tail,” according to Dexter.
The main reason for all the interest, however, is that great-tailed grackles are not supposed to be here. Only five other birds of this species have ever been seen in Washington state.
For many avid Washington birders keeping a yearly state list, Liberty Lake is the only place they have a prayer of adding a great-tailed grackle to their tally. And for birders who don’t travel outside the Northwest, this is the only place they’ll ever see a great-tailed grackle and add it to their lifetime list.
So, this poor guy is way off course – and apparently has chosen to stay that way.
He’s also quite lonely, as grackles are extremely gregarious birds. They nest in colonies; they roost communally (a roost in Texas contains half a million birds); they travel in flocks.
During this grackle’s first trip here in 2003-04, he over-wintered with a flock of red-winged blackbirds. Since that time, he has adopted a flock of Brewer’s blackbirds that, Dexter believes, he migrates with.
How this grackle got here, we’ll never know, but he seems reasonably satisfied living with his Brewer’s blackbird cousins.
They may even be “kissing cousins,” as our grackle has shown some pre-nesting territorial and mate-soliciting behavior this year. There is a record of a hybrid from this sort of pairing in California, so our guy may get lucky.
The last two years, this grackle has been seen here until early June when the flock moves on after the young have fledged.
However, if you miss him this season, he’ll probably be back, barring some mishap. One great-tailed grackle is known to have lived for 12 ½ years.