Great-tailed Grackle

About the Great-tailed Grackle

The Great-tailed Grackle is the big, brash, iridescent blackbird of Texas parking lots and marshes - the male glossy purple-black with pale yellow eyes and a huge keel-shaped tail he folds into a V, the female half his size and warm brown. Its voice is an astonishing repertoire of whistles, clacks, rattles, and sounds like a rusty gate, delivered with the whole body.

Grackles are supreme opportunists: they patrol lawns and shorelines, wade for minnows and tadpoles, raid crops, and work fast-food lots for fries. Males display by pointing their bills skyward and fluffing, and winter roosts in city trees can hold tens of thousands of birds in a deafening dusk chorus.

Once a bird of the Rio Grande Valley, the Great-tailed Grackle has spread across Texas and far to the north over the last century, following irrigation and development. It is now one of the most abundant birds in the state, year-round and everywhere - so common it is easy to forget how spectacular a male is in good light.