Monday, October 7, 2013

The Birds Are Coming!

Yesterday was cloudy and gray with rain at times, but the day was brightened up a little by a huge flock of grackles! 

Source:  Wikipedia

I was sitting watching a football game when I noticed birds flying past the living room front windows.  And they kept coming and coming and coming and...well, you get the idea.  With so many, it almost felt like scenes from Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds'.  A few landed on my neighbor's house, but the majority landed in the surrounding trees around my house.  They were Common Grackles which often form huge flocks that can number in the thousands, especially for spring and summer migrations (according to my National Audubon Society bird book).  I don't think there were that many - more like a few hundred.  Grackles don't really sing, but make a variety of "squeaks, whistles, and croaks".  You can listen to their 'song' and get more info on them here.  Listen and then multiply that by a few hundred and you can imagine what I heard!

They gathered in a few huge trees, but then every once in a while a whole bunch headed for a small tree next to a mobile home a few up from mine.  It would be packed with birds and then they would suddenly all take off and head for the larger trees again.  (I was trying to photograph them so that may have been what spooked them!)  Then they all sort of 'migrated' to some larger trees a few blocks over.  But then they came back again about an hour later and I snapped a few more pictures. All the black 'dots' you see in this photo are birds.



You can see in the first two pictures the larger trees they gathered in, but the next picture is the little tree they all kept trying to pile into.






A real Hitchcock, but noisy, surprise.

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