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Boat-tailed Grackle Sounds Off

16 March 2013 - Boat-tailed Grackle ( Quiscalus major ) Sounds off at Ritch Grissom Memorial Wetlands at Viera in Brevard County, Florida. Boat-tailed grackle Quiscalus major Length: 16 inches Very long tail Eyes pale in birds from Atlantic coast, browner in Florida and Gulf Coast populations Long bill Frequently gathers in flocks Most often found in salt marshes (more widespread in Florida) Male: Entirely black plumage with purple iridescence Female: Buffy supercilium and breast Remainder of plumage dark brown Similar species: The male Boat-tailed Grackle is similar to the Common Grackle but is larger with a much longer tail. Great-tailed and Boat-tailed Grackles are very similar but fortunately have mostly different ranges. Great-tailed Grackles have paler eyes and different calls. Cool Facts: Fledglings that fall into the water can swim well for short distances, using their wings as paddles. The Boat-tailed Grackle has an odd mating system, called "harem defense polygyny," that has much in common with deer and other big game. Females cluster their nests in a small area safe from predators, and males compete to see which one gets to defend and mate with the entire colony. But it's not as simple as it may seem: though a colony's dominant male mates far more often with the females, DNA fingerprinting shows that only about a quarter of the young are actually his. The remainder are fathered by males who the females mate with while away from the colony. The Boat-tailed Grackle was formally described in 1819 by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot, from a specimen collected in New Orleans, Louisiana. The oldest Boat-tailed Grackle on record was nearly 14 years old when it was caught and released by a South Carolina bird bander in 2003. Habitat: Boat-tailed Grackles breed abundantly in salt and freshwater marshes along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. They are closely associated with saltwater and are rarely found more than about 30 miles from saltwater except in the Florida peninsula, where they occur across its breadth. Main breeding habitats include saltmarsh; marshes along rivers, lakes, impoundments, or ponds; and nearby upland habitats. They forage in city streets and plazas, cultivated fields, stockyards, open beaches, and saltmarshes. They stay in the same types of habitats during the non-breeding season. Food: Boat-tailed Grackles eat arthropods, crustaceans, mollusks, frogs, turtles, lizards, grain, seeds, fruit, and tubers. Inveterate scavengers and pirates, they also take food from humans, domestic animals, and other birds. They usually forage out in the open, in a wide variety of habitats that include floating mats, mudflats, beaches, roadsides, parking lots, dumps, cultivated fields, and cattle feedlots. They walk slowly over the ground or in shallow water, pecking or probing at soil, litter, or low vegetation. They often overturn debris, stones, and shells with their bills. In aquatic habitats they stand still and cock their heads to watch the water with one eye, then plunge their heads below the surface. They can pry open mussel shells and eat snails by forcing an opening between the tissue and the shell. Boat-tailed Grackles often dunk foods like bread, rice, and dog food in water before eating them. Behavior: Gregarious Boat-tailed Grackles roost communally in tall grasses all year round. During the breeding season, the nesting females stay on their nests, but males and non-breeding females leave colonies to join roosts that may include other blackbirds and European Starlings. The harem mating system of these grackles is unique to birds in North America, though it's shared by oropendolas of the American tropics. Individual males defend clusters of nesting females from other males. Only the high-ranked males, having established their status through displays and vigorous fights, get to mate in the colony, although DNA evidence indicates other males manage to mate with females away from the colonies. Boat-tailed Grackles often take advantage of humans for food and predator protection, through behavior like foraging in dumpsters and forming colonies on traffic islands. Their most serious predators are the yellow rat snakes that attack their nests, but they are also preyed upon by black rats, Norway rats, rice rats, alligators, and Purple Gallinules.