Starting with my first trip to that shady zoo in Kansas, I started seeing grackles whenever I went down to the area.  Not constantly, not on every fencepost, but pretty common.  While I’m certain some were regular type and some were boat-tailed, because I saw them in quick succession at the zoo, I couldn’t be 100% on that this long after the fact.  Like if I met a kinda taily regular grackle I’d be like, is this a boat tail?  And if I saw a boat tailed non-boating I’d be, well, clearly this is regular flavor grackle.

My favorite was at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, just a single boat-tailed grackle hopping around and looking for crumbs like a brewer’s blackbird would around here.  They’re more leggy, more beaky, more funny looking.  They just look like a fun bird.  I’d love to have them around, but I’ll wait until global warming pushes them into Western Washington.  Fuck going anywhere near that heat again.

While I don’t have much experience with them or much to say about them, I’m sure anybody from the US Midwest to Southwest could say lots.  I open the floor to that…

This is too short.  What can I say that is grackle adjacent?  Good bird name.  It’s a crackle or a cackle, coming from the grass or the green.  I suppose they’re named for the sound they make, like cats being called “mao” in China.  I’m gonna name animals after what they sound like to me and start calling dogs “fucks.”  Migratory thrushes can be called eeoo-eeoos.  Sad chickadees can be called umpeewees.  When my husband was a wee child he called crows awk-birds.

Bring the noise.  It’s onomatopoeia time.

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