Thirteen More Ways of Looking at a Blackbird Dorie Bargmann (bio) 1. In one of its past lives, the Commodore building in downtown Austin had a food court and a three-story atrium. The food court attracted grackles, which scurried in through the swinging glass doors. The atrium's roof leaked, forming a mini-swamp among the large potted plants on the fourth floor landing. The combination of greenery, dripping water, and trapped birds flying to and fro created a lovely outdoor feeling, enhanced by the building's crickets and geckos. New management has wiped out the food court, which should discourage the wildlife. I do not know management's plans (if any) for evicting the ghost from the Commodore's upper floors. 2. The Hyatt Regency sits just south of downtown, across the Colorado river. At dusk in November thousands of great-tailed grackles often roost here in the trees and shriek. "What are those birds?" an out-of-town man yells at me over cocktail chatter. "Grackles," I say. "Crackles?" he yells back. I am indoors at a noisy reception for urban administrators. I have just read research suggesting that dogs evolved to fill the ecological niche created by human garbage. Grackles often carry around bits of garbage, and I propose to this man that the birds be trained to clean up his city. He looks puzzled; possibly he can't hear me over the shrieking humans. I am taking a proactive approach. Because it's just a matter of time before the grackles take over his city, as they have mine, and I want to nip potential hostility in the bud. Because I hear very little appreciation for grackles in Texas. "Garbage birds." "Rats with wings." "Greasy street chickens." They displace the songbirds, [End Page 136] say my suburban friends. They eat grains and grapefruit, say the farmers. "Widely regarded as pests," say the naturalists. What can I offer in reply? That they eat grasshoppers? That they recycle hamburger buns? That, as scavengers go, they are remarkably good-looking? 3. A neighborhood cat was chewing on a young grackle. We frightened off the cat and caught the bird, still alive. At first, he sat rigid with his eyes closed and beak pointed skywards. I fed him softened pet food, bread, and fruit. His swallowing reflex was good; he left light-green droppings in the cage. He was well-feathered, though a bit bald about the neck, with a buff chest, long tough legs, and a long tough beak. The only visible injury was at the base of one wing. He chirped at me once, at 6:30 pm. Tsik! This sealed my affection for him, because my sister makes the exact same noise when she sneezes. I let him stand on my finger. His claws were firm, and his beak grasped my hand to adjust his stance, but he used these tools courteously, not to hurt. He lived a good twelve hours; at 10:00 P.M. I found him keeled over. He had never quite lost the expression that said, Someone's been chewing on me. Earlier that day I had run into a lawyer who had the same puzzled, slightly cross, slightly distracted look as my grackle. We were not on intimate enough terms for me to ask who had been chewing on him. 4. Breeding season. The winter grackle conventions break up into small groups and disperse throughout the city. The males strut their terrains and fend off challengers. They tussle and tumble beak-over-tail in the dust and chase each other up trees. Or they square off on the ground, point their beaks to the sky, and try to bend their necks back even further, in a sort of competitive grackle ballet. Finally the losers fly away, and the dominant male takes up residence on a high perch and begins a noisy come-hither call. Male great-tails are designed for courtship and – it appears – for little else. Their black coats are uncomfortable in the Texas heat; they pant in the summer and regularly dunk themselves in water. Their long tails are a burden on windy days, when one good gust can...
Read full abstract
Sep 1, 2010
Douglas A Eifler + 1
Open Access