Flora and Fauna News

Great-tailed Grackles

Have Lost Their Rudders!

By Michael Plagens
Sonoran Desert Sciences

PHOENIX ----- Male Great-tailed Grackles sport a long magnificent tail to go with their iridescent black-feather coat. The tail is so cumbersome in flight, that the birds must twist and hold it like a keel when flying. Towards the end of the monsoon season, usually the middle of September, their big tail feathers fall out leaving the birds stubby-tailed. Over a period of several weeks the birds will grow new tail feathers.

Great-tailed Grackles are abundant city birds in Tucson, Phoenix and Yuma. They thrive in lawns and parks where they eat spiders and other bugs that float up during irrigation. They are not at all adverse to accepting handouts at picnics and garbage cans. The males, which are all black, save a yellow eye, are boisterous and spend a lot of time strutting their stuff, usually in the company of other males. From trees, telephone poles and lawns they squawk, squeak, cackle and whistle. The females, are drab brown, sport tails only a fraction as long, and seem to hardly notice what the males are up to.

A male Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus) (with tail).
Photographed in Scottsdale, AZ, Aug. 2002.