Re: Great Tailed Grackles, Mourning Doves, and Me

On Mon, 12 May 2008 17:35:31 -0700 (PDT), Snidely
<Snidely.too@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> On May 10, 12:10 pm, "Reunite Gondwanaland (Mary Shafer)"
> <reunite.gondw...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> 
> > Based on my extensive bird-watching here over the years, the favorite
> > food of the great tailed grackle is the fast food French fry.  They
> > cruise the parking lots and tidy them up, starting with the fries.
> > They're pretty bold about it, too, although they won't actually try to
> > take the fries out of your hand the way the Steller's jays will in
> > Yosemite.  My dad, who worked running horses in the Wasatch and was in
> > the CCC, called jays "camp robbers" and it's a pretty accurate name.
> 
> I guess I've got to go to Yosemite some day (Yosomedaye?) 'cause the
> Steller'ses in Oregon never let me get that close.

The Yosemite jays will land on the end of the picnic table and stroll
down the center, deciding what they want.  The attitude appears to be
"This is a National Park and we own it and the rangers won't let you
hurt us."
 
> And do the grackles appoint junior members to fight off the English
> Sparrows at the French Fry Showdown?

I've never seen sparrows at the French fry-o-ramas down here in the
Coachella Valley, just great-tailed grackles and Brewer's blackbirds.
The ravens line up on the chain link fence that separates the
fast-food places from the freeway in Lancaster.  I used to see them
every morning as I went by on the way to work.

The Brewer's blackbirds have an interesting trait.  The mother
continues to feed the babies after they're flying.  They follow her
into our courtyard and flap their wings at very high frequency, while
uttering piercing chirps.  She feeds them and gives them water.
However, this morning one of the mothers had stopped feeding her baby
and would make an upset-sounding noise when his im****tunings got too
persistent.

One of the babies who is still being fed didn't notice that his mother
and sib had flown away without him this afternoon.  He was sitting in
the courtyard, kind of hunched down and lonely, all by himself.
Fortunately, mom remembered where she'd left him and retrieved him.

We also had a raven drop by and sit on the roof, looking down into the
courtyard, for about twenty minutes this morning.  We didn't know
whether he was considering a little bread snack or a young bird snack.
Apparently it was neither, because he flew away empty-beaked.

The tray feeder and the fancy no-waste bird feed showed up this
afternoon.  I set the feeder out and filled it with the feed.  I
sprinkled a double handful of bread cubes on it to give it some
familiarity.  I also put a double handful of the feed on the ground.
The birds found the feed immediately and really liked it, but it took
a little while before a (probably disposable) young male grackle had
the nerve to actually hop onto the tray and grab a single bite before
flying off.  By this evening none of the birds was avoiding the tray
and over half were eating from it.  I expect a big confrontation and a
lot of shrieking tomorrow morning at about 0500, which is when they
come by the first time.  Fortunately, I've got a second tray feeder on
order, which should reduce the din a little.

Mary "The collie alarm clocks were much quieter."

-- 
Mary Shafer   Retired aerospace research engineer
We didn't just do weird stuff at Dryden, we wrote re****ts about it.
reunite.gondwana@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 or miliff@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 my blog at http://thedigitalknitter.blogspot.com/