It seems incredible that blackbirds should belong to the same family as sweet-voiced meadowlarks, gay bobolinks, and musical orioles. They are literally the “black sheep” of the family, with a plumage in keeping with their dark deeds, and a sinister expression that arouses suspicion and wins them few friends. Their habit of destroying birds’ eggs and young birds makes them a terror to their neighbors. Dr. Frank Chapman humorously says that he “can imagine bird-mothers frightening their young into obedience by threatened visits from that ogre, the Grackle.”[61] I saw a flock of them invading the seclusion of Wade Park, Cleveland, one spring morning. Two irate robins drove three bandit blackbirds away from their nest with loud cries and swift pursuit. A few minutes later, I saw a wood thrush attack a grackle. She administered a severe blow upon his shoulder, which disarranged his feathers and left him in such evident pain as to be quite oblivious of my proximity. This habit of devastating nests is not, however, so general as has been supposed, for Professor Beal reports that “remains of birds and birds’ eggs amount to less than half of one per cent. of his diet.”[62]

During the breeding season, grackles do much good by their destruction of insects upon which their young are almost wholly fed. They devour beetles, the caterpillars of gypsy and brown-tail moths, cutworms, grasshoppers, and locusts in great numbers. They “follow the plow” in search of the grubs and worms to be found in the up-turned earth.

Grackles are in great disfavor, however, because of the grain they consume. Professor Beal states that grain is eaten during the entire year except for a short time in the summer. Waste kernels are consumed during winter and early spring, but that eaten in July and August is probably standing grain. Middle-western farmers suffer considerably.[63]

It is interesting to see blackbirds migrate. They fly in flocks thousands strong. Mr. Forbush tells of a flock which formed a black “rainbow of birds” that stretched from one side of the horizon to the other. There seemed to be “millions” of them.

They fly with wonderful precision, like a well-trained army bent on destruction. They are truly “Birds of a feather” that “flock together” with a kind of joyless loyalty, disliked by most of the world.

THE BRONZED GRACKLE

The Bronzed Grackle, like the Purple Grackle, has a purple head, but has a bronzed back without iridescent bars. It is found in central and eastern North America from Great Slave Lake to Newfoundland in Canada, south to Montana and Colorado, (east of the Rockies), and southeast to the northern part of the Gulf States, western Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. It winters mainly from the Ohio Valley to southern Texas.