Great-tailed Grackle

Description:

Great-tailed grackles are slender blackbirds with flat heads and stout, straight bills. Males are easily identifiable with their tapered, long tails that fold into a “v” shape and their iridescent black color with yellow piercing eyes. Females, on the other hand, are only about half the size of males with long, slender tails and have upper bodies that are brown and lower bodies that are paler with a stripe above each of their eyes.

Habitat:

They can be found inhabiting the suburban lawns, golf courses, fields, marshes, parks, and neighborhood lawns of Texas, the Southwest, the Southern Great Plains, North and South America, and the Midwest and West.

Notes:

Great tailed grackles feed on a variety of plant material, including corn, grains, sorghum, oats, and fruits. During the summer and early fall, though, they also prey on grasshoppers, spiders, wasps, beetles, bees, snails, moths, worms, slugs, lizards, frogs, tadpoles, fish, snakes, and small mammals. Some living at the northern edge of the North American range migrate southward during the winter.