Great-tailed Grackle

The great-tailed grackle or Mexican grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) is a medium-sized, highly social passerine bird in the Icteridae family. It is native to North and South America.

Their current range stretches from northwestern Venezuela and western Colombia and Ecuador in the south to Minnesota in the north, to Oregon, Idaho, and California in the west, to Florida in the east, with vagrants occurring as far north as southern Canada. Their habitat for foraging is on the ground in clear areas such as pastures, wetlands and mangroves, and chaparral. The grackles’ range has expanded with agricultural and urban settings.

Great-tailed grackles are noted for their diverse foraging habits. They extract larvae and insects from grassy areas; eat lizards, nestlings, and eggs; forage in freshly plowed land; remove parasites from cattle, and eat fruits (e.g., bananas, berries) and grains (e.g., maize, corn on the cob by opening the husks). They turn over objects to search for food underneath, including crustaceans, insects, and worms, they hunt tadpoles and fish by wading into shallow water, and although they do not swim, they catch fish by flying close to the water’s surface, and are even reported to dive a few inches into the water to retrieve a fish. They are also known to pick dead insects off the license plates of parked cars, and kill barn swallows while flying.