And with Spackles! Not to mention snacks and jackals!
I DEEPLY LOVE THEM.
I had never heard of grackles until high school, when I read the short story of that name by Semyon Babayevsky. Sadly, I can't seem to find anything to link to about the story. Neither can I remember any details of the plot.
*shuffles off to rocking chair to watch birdies*
Cool birds, and it always looks to me like their tails are about to fall off. I've seen a few large flocks in Toronto lately, so perhaps some are migrating through.
The Grackle
by Ogden Nash
The grackle’s voice is less than mellow,
His heart is black, his eye is yellow,
He bullies more attractive birds
With hoodlum deeds and vulgar words,
And should a human interfere,
Attacks that human in the rear.
I cannot help but deem the grackle
An ornithological debacle.
We always call them McBirds since they are always in McDonald's parking lots here(Florida)scavenging for wayward fries and whatever. Nice to find out they are real birds as opposed to a 'McD' product.
Grackles can take over entire neighborhoods, and run off all of the other birds. Where my parents live the grackles took over for a summer or two, and they can get pretty loud and obnoxious. They also like to poop on your head (or your car, or your lawn furniture... but particularly your head).
I don't think I've ever been pooped on by a grackle.
Any of several Asian mynas of the genus Gracula.
heh. Gracula. Blah! blah! heheh.
It says they can be taught to mimic speech.
Not many grackles in these parts - they kinda look like little crows with a mettalic paint job.
Sorry Chy, I hate those miserable buggers.
Nash and Meridithea have it right--they run off other (pretty & melodious) birds, and they crap on everything. Any little hole will be exploited, and the get into sheds or barns and make a stinking messy nest. They carry bird lice, and right now they're a (vast) resevoir for West Nile. We've had several in this neighborhood confirmed for the virus, and my neighbor two miles down is just recovering from 8 weeks of misery from WN. (and I put over $200 into shots for the horses for WN)
*starts loading shotgun
Now magpies talk, and they be cool and funny birds
Not to be confused with their slightly less obnoxious cousins The Starlings
When people in the U.S. say they've seen a starling, it's usually a grackle.
they run off pretty & melodious birds, and they crap on everything. Any little hole will be exploited
Holy shit, I'm a grackle.
Desired username:
(This is the name that will appear on your posts. Please don't use the '+' symbol.)
Whoops. Heh heh. Nothing! Nothing, nevermind.
I MEANT WITH FRIED RICE
Simply waching them digging for seeds in fresh manure is a turn-off, as well as other nasty pursuits:
Their diet consists of a wide variety of animal and vegetable food, including insects and invertebrates but also occasional eggs and nestlings. In rare instances, Common Grackles will attack and eat small birds and lizards, and in coastal areas they forage at the tide line for small invertebrates, even wading into the water to capture live fish.
Yeah, but that's pretty common for animals of all types. Many pretty little birdies can be seen picking in the turdies.
FRIED RICE!!
*spit-take with pizza
Damn you Chy, you owe me a keyboard!
HA HA!
More grackle-cackle in this old thread.
dark birds stud the wires
leaving even gaps between
they space themselves
in fall while time ripens
the gathering flock
and then at last they rise
tornadically above the roofs
unfurl like smoke
above a guttered candle
in a swaybacked cabin
in North America where
if you are a black bird
men call you names
though no bird sings more liquidly
in spring from the forsythia
though you might think
with a name like cowbird
it ought to moo
I have never heard of these 'grackles'. Therefore, I do not believe they exist.
You are totally Steved from this thread, kit.
Politics of Desperation
What we cannot do now is imagine
any other way
*
Soft gurgles of three cowbirds
over the fence line.
Shadows in elm & spruce & oak.
Mist along the river stones.
Salt-spill on the table
and windows mapped with prints.
The tiniest thread of winter,
a gift, in mid-summer sky.
-- Sam Rasnake
*stands on park bench, applauds*
Allegory
The cockatoo hears gamelon,
and dances.
The peacock hears rude voices in his head.
the swallow hears her happiness
carooming all around her;
the grackle hears his doom being sealed.
The blue jay hears the cardinal,
his loyal opposition.
The seagull hears a sharp insoluble debate.
The vulture hears the world's
vulgar gossip, notes it well;
ambitious robin keeps his shrewd ear low,
and hears the dew
vanish, the shade
steal, the cat
mouse, the grass
cover the worm.
The crow hears lies, lies, lies, and cries
out curses. Nighthawk hears the crow's
lyrical soul.
The mnockingbird hears comedy
in all this.
The dove hears pain
in all this.
The lesser bird of paradise
hears, but can't sing.
The phoenix hears the sirens crying fire!,
and dances.
-- Jenny Mueller
fantastic, bees.
this is the end of moulting season, so many of the grackles no longer look like they barely survived a drowning. However, most of their tail feathers have not grown back yet. Watching a chubby, tailless grackle try to hustle across the yard is one of funnier sights in nature.
C'mon and lemme see you shake your tailfeather ♫♪
C'mon and lemme see you shake your tailfeather
C'mon and lemme see you shake your tailfeather ♫♪
C'mon and lemme see you shake your tailfeather!!
aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAHH Twist it!
Shake it shake it shake it shake it babayyy!
do the Grackle!
A Grackle's Poem
Howard McCord
You, Pilgrim,
tell me about pigeon's milk,
the black eggs of the Emu,
which birds ant, and why
the rail is thin.
You do know birds,
Pilgrim?
Are not the bones
of the loon more
solid than my own?
And the cry
of the Kestrel
klee, klee?
Gypsy Bride
Yes my love seedy birds like you
On blackberry canes by deep lagoons
Ring sunset bells of untuned woe
But for you a midnight coat I'll weave
And find for your boots a last From the ear
Of a sow a fine pouch perhaps
Then I'll pick ripe berries and dance
With you by the cold-thorned canes
As I tambourine our tin-can fare
You've boots and coat yet still can't
Marry so I'll steal a horse
On the horse you say from this thicket
You'll fly to your own true love who
Waits for I'm nothing but
A dark bird's dream a trick of light
Wild breech of faith
--Susan Terris
13 Ways of Leering at a Grackle
1.
Among sixty rumpled grackles,
the only moving dream
flowed through the mind of a beholder.
2.
I polished myself,
like a mirror
etched by the flight of grackle wings.
3.
There grackle danced his dark feathers.
He was more tango than Astaire and Rogers.
4.
One times one times one
is one.
One nest one egg one grackle
hatching.
5.
I know well which I prefer,
the churr of wings pressed tight against
the pearl of spiraled sky,
as smoke surmounts the ash
flame swirls.
6.
Coyotes filled a steep arroyo
with barbaric yawps.
The bustle of the grackle
twitched, up and down.
The wind
stitched feather to flight,
no man knows why.
7.
O fat lady at the bandstand,
why leaf through your programme?
The grackles on their thin shanks
enter next
to peck seeds from sunflowers.
8.
I see noble furrows
in your implacable brow;
I see, too,
the grackles drawing circles
tight about us.
9.
See the grackle take off
to loop the loop
of a common fate about us.
10.
Waiters, after gazing at the grackles
glazed salad with sweet oil,
and a bowl of saffroned rice
got spilled.
11.
He drove through East St. Louis
to a cardinal point.
Then a fear pecked him
so that he perceived
he was only a vehicle
for a grackle poem.
12.
It isn't smoke that's rising.
This column of grackles gyres.
13.
It was famished and replete.
It flew in circles
and was going to land.
The grackle shat
on the television antenna.
Ooh, that's the sort of poem I like. Who wrote that?
I bee.
Oops. I bee the author.
Well, then, that explains it!
*applause!*
The grackle shat is totally the name of my new band.
Sorry Chy, I hate those miserable buggers.
...
*starts loading shotgun
But wait! Why not work on your marksmanship at the same time? Yes, that's right - you should be offing those miserable buggers with your very own George Jones 50th Anniversary Tribute Rifle! Order today, quantities limited.
Fish Tick:
If anything could make me look upon grackles with delight, it is the poem by our Poet Lariet, Beeswacky.
Bees, that's printed and on my wall as I speak. Tomorrow I shall share it with Mr. B. Horse
*blush*
Written in hopes 'twould amuse you in particular during those sleepless hours, BlueHorse.
A good 'un for Pete:
A Grackle's Poem
by Howard McCord
You, Pilgrim,
tell me about pigeon's milk,
the black eggs of the Emu,
which birds ant, and why
the rail is thin.
You do know birds,
Pilgrim?
Are not the bones
of the loon more
solid than my own?
And the cry
of the Kestrel
klee, klee?
And a not-so-good 'un:
The Grackle
An Affectionate Parody of The Raven by EAP
by Will T. Laughlin
Once upon a midnight boring, as I sat, alone and poring
Over many a quaint and curious volume of electric bills,
Suddenly there came a thumping, as of someone gently bumping,
Or a pair of hamsters humping underneath my window sills;
Scant attention was I paying, as my thoughts were gently straying,
And the stereo was playing Greatest Hits of Ish Kabibble --
All at once, a vast, unpleasant Grackle, black and irridescent,
Flew in through my chamber window like a wayward dirigible:
Quoth the Grackle: "Wibble, wibble!"
All unmoving, all uncaring, long it sat and watched me, staring
'Til I lost all sense of bearing and my lips began to dribble.
Then that grim and grisly Grackle looked at me and gave a cackle,
And his coarse and croaking crackle made my very giblets gibble:
Quoth the Grackle: "Wibble, wibble!"
I was taken quite aback, although I knew 'twas but a Grackle;
In the face of one so black, alas! my face turned white as chalk,
For though I am not religious, still I felt it was prodigious,
And I cried out to this creature that had learnt somehow to talk:
"Tell me, tell me, cryptic Sibyl, what you mean by 'wibble, wibble';
Could it be some ancient shibboleth, for centuries unheard?
Are these words that you have spoken to be taken to betoken
Something else? Or are you jokin'? Are they meaningless? Absurd?"
"Wibble, wibble!" quoth the Bird.
Then I thought, "A swift attack'll shortly rid me of this Grackle,"
And I cast about to find myself a poker or a broom.
But the bird, as though denying me the chance of even trying,
Took to fluttering and flying 'round and 'round about the room:
With a burst of laughter ribald, once again he "wibble, wibble"-ed,
As he settled for a moment on a pallid bust of Trakl.
Then the Grackle dropped an oily purple dropping on the doily,
And he set himself to pecking at a random bit of spackle:
"Wibble, wibble!" quoth the Grackle.
It would take a block and tackle now to rid me of this Grackle,
For the evil-hearted jackal isn't lonely anymore:
Now his every kin and sibling comes to join him in his wibbling,
And their nightly noise is nibbling at my spirit's very core.
I am welded to this Grackle with a strong and sturdy shackle;
By his beak am I impaled, as was Mercutio by Tybalt.
Since I cannot last these pains out, I must blow my silly brains out,
And I'm going to pull the trigger when this final verse is scribble't,
'Ere the final "Wibble"'s wibble't!
cooooooooo
I'm raven again -- for wondrous is BlueHorse's Poe-em!
Flight Reflex
It must be winter in this part of Texas
because the grackles are posse-d up.
They toupee rooftops and wires.
They ornament trees and anything
else with room and resilience
for beak and claw. Anything
that doesn't move much.
And always, that damn epistle
of chalk and fingernail.
And always,
grackles signify the need for unity
in Texas, whether bird, black, or both.
It must be winter because it feels
like spring and the man-sized bugs
have split for wherever bugs go
because of the grackles.
Like urban flight, only not, and the trees
naturally crooked for hanging
hang just a little lower, their leaves
chilling in the surplus cusp of winter.
--Adrian Matejka
Safe
Linda Bierds
Safe, we thought.
The flood waters nestled
the arc of their udders, but no higher,
dewlaps, flanks, even the tips of the briskets,
dry. All day they stood
in the sea-scape meadow,
their square heads turned from the wind.
By evening they were dead.
Chill, we learned, not drowning,
killed them — the milk vein
thick on the floor of the chest
filling with cold, stunning the heart.
We had entered the house, where silt-water
sketched on the walls and doorways
a single age-ringing. When we looked back
they had fallen, only the crests of their bodies
breaking the waterline. I remember
the wind and a passive light,
then the jabber of black grackles
riding each shoulder’s upturned blade.
La Brea
I am the tarred and feathered stork
Who flapped its limbs until they stuck.
I am a tapir ancestor
Who came for water, swallowed tar.
This is the asphalt killing-ground,
A lake that thirsts. Beware. Be warned.
His trunk a blowhole out of reach,
A mammoth trumpets liquid pitch.
We are a pack of dire wolves
Who scented death and mired ourselves.
I am the grief of a giant sloth
Who drank the waters of black death.
Lion and lioness salivate
At bison ready trapped to eat.
Coyote, jaguar and puma
Die for a taste of dying llama.
A squirrel bleating in distress
Allures a rattlesnake to death.
The tar immobilizes both
The short-faced bear and sabretooth.
The water winnows skeletons
Caught in a trap of sun and rain.
I am the skull of the only human,
Anonymous La Brea Woman.
The sump of ancient swamp-remains
Swallows the battles of old bones.
The eagle and the condor drown
In liquid nightfall underground.
--Duncan Forbes
Sit
Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile.
You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead.
No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll
Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead.
The world is too opaque, distressing and profound.
This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day:
To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around,
Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away.
--Vikram Seth
Allegory The cockatoo hears gamelon, and dances. The peacock hears rude voices in his head. the swallow hears her happiness carooming all around her; the grackle hears his doom being sealed. The blue jay hears the cardinal, his loyal opposition. The seagull hears a sharp insoluble debate. The vulture hears the world's vulgar gossip, notes it well; ambitious robin keeps his shrewd ear low, and hears the dew vanish, the shade steal, the cat mouse, the grass cover the worm. The crow hears lies, lies, lies, and cries out curses. Nighthawk hears the crow's lyrical soul. The mnockingbird hears comedy in all this. The dove hears pain in all this. The lesser bird of paradise hears, but can't sing. The phoenix hears the sirens crying fire!, and dances. -- Jenny Mueller