I suspect that a lot of people tend to overlook a lot of the black birds that we have living here in Florida. Often, unless you look closely, it’s easy to think that all of these black birds are the same, and even folks who are pretty avid birders, may want to go in search of more colorful birds. Last week, I presented the American crow, one of the many black birds common in our state. In that presentation, I explained how to tell the American crow from the fish crow. Another one of our Florida black birds that can be confusing is the grackle. Inexperienced birders may mistake them for crows, but there are quite a few differences, especially in size (grackles are notably smaller with much longer tails), and they actually belong to two different families.

Like the crows, the grackles aren’t easy, though. There are actually three species of grackles that live in North and Central America. They are the common grackle, the boat tailed grackle, and the great tailed grackle. In Florida we have both the common grackle and the boat tailed grackle. In most areas where they overlap, the easiest way to tell the two apart is where you find them. Boat tailed grackles are a coastal species while common grackles are more often found inland. But here in Florida we have to be difficult. We have both species even inland! Here on the west coast of Florida the best way to distinguish the two is by their eye color. Common grackles have yellow eyes while boat tailed grackles have darker eyes. Common grackles also have darker colored females (dark brown to black, but not iridescent) and the males have iridescent feathers on their heads, but generally not on the rest of their bodies. Female boat tailed grackles are definitely brown in color and male boat tailed grackles tend to have iridescent feathers all over their bodies.

At the beginning of August I took a little trip out to Fort Island Gulf Beach in beautiful Crystal River, Florida. It’s a man made beach, so it’s not as impressive as some of Florida’s natural beaches, but it’s been there for a long enough time that it sports plenty of Florida coastal wildlife. When we arrived (my Mom came with me) there was a lady who was feeding the gulls and the grackles so it was a great time to get some photos of the birds. They are pretty used to people, so they allowed us to get pretty close. There were actually more than the usual number of grackles around that afternoon, and for awhile we were wondering why. Later, while I was wading around in the mangroves, I discovered why. The mangroves were full of snails! When people weren’t feeding them, that’s where the grackles were hanging out, feasting on snails!

Between the habitat that we were in, and the fact that these birds had brown eyes and the females were brown, it was pretty easy to identify them as boat tailed grackles. As I stated earlier, boat tailed grackles are a coastal species, and they are only found in the eastern United States. They range from southern New England through Florida and west into eastern Texas. They are omnivores and will literally eat almost anything. They will eat human food and garbage, grains, seeds, insects, mollusks, eggs, minnows, small frogs, and even mice and baby rats. Like crows, they will even eat carrion as long as it’s relatively fresh. They tend to be social birds, so it’s not uncommon to see them in good sized flocks, especially at night when they go to roost. Since they are social birds, a flock of them can put away a lot of plant damaging insects, which makes them helpful to the environment and to people. As you can see, we have yet another black bird (and a member of the blackbird family, too!) from Florida that is beautiful, good for the environment, and interesting as well. Who says that black birds aren’t worth the birders’s attentions?

If you enjoy beautiful nature photographs and artwork and interesting, nature and pet related content, please consider subscribing to our blog!