Goshen County Photographer – Great-tailed Grackle

Crackles are a common sight in Wyoming.  But I’d never seen a great-tailed grackle until I moved to Goshen County.  These birds aren’t rare, but they aren’t common in this part of the world.  So seeing them each summer is a bit of a treat!

The great-tailed grackle is slightly larger and longer than their common grackle counterpart.  The male’s tale is also longer and V-shaped.

Anytime I photograph a new bird, I like to do some research about it…where it lives, what it eats, how it sounds, etc.  I’m a science nerd like that.  I stumbled upon this article and I thought it was pretty amazing.  A researcher wanted to test the street smarts of great-tailed grackles so she designed some experiments for them.

“The experiment tests a bird’s problem-solving power by posing glass cylinders full of water with bits of food floating just outside of the animal’s reach. To grab the morsels, the subject must drop in pebbles to raise the water levels.”

After several trials, the great-tailed grackles figured it out.  They even figured out that larger/heavier pebbles worked better than smaller ones.

Who is the bird brain now?

I’m constantly amazed at the wonder and beauty of nature.  Now I can be awed by it’s smart birds, too!

–Teresa