I Miss the Grackles

I never thought I would utter those words.

Ever since we came to live in Cochrane, we’ve had to live with the blackbird-like grackles.  When they are attending a nest of eggs or raising their young, they are fierce little defenders of their space.  There have been a few times when it just wasn’t worth trying to sit out on our deck while the grackles dive-bombed us, warning us with their sharp clicking sound.  All we had to do was step our our door when their offspring were fledging and two or three of them would be after us.  Once their offspring were off on their own life adventure, the attacks would stop.  We only had to put up with that for about two weeks, plus or minus a day or two.

A Grackle

If a crow, raven, or magpie came within 100 metres of their nesting area, a swarm of grackles would, like fighter planes after a bomber, harass those predatory birds.  Not wanting to put up with the attacks, the crows, ravens, and magpies gave our neck of the woods a wide birth.

This year, for some reason, we’ve had no grackles in our area.  I’ve asked several ‘birders’ why, but they're not sure either.  They’ve seen some grackles outside of the town.  Maybe something went wrong where the grackles winter, but no one knows for sure.

One of our local Crows this summer. Perched on one of its favourite lookouts.

The consequence of that is that we have crows and magpies hanging out near our place, which means that the song birds we normally get throughout the summer are keeping clear of our area.  The other annoying feature this summer is that the crows love to do their communicating first thing in the morning by cawing incessantly from lamp posts and roof tops.  It is an awful noise to wake up to, often at ridiculously early hours of the morning.

A local Magpie in our front yard.

What used to go on in the avian world around our house was a great busyness of swallows, sparrows, and robins when they built their nests, then fed and managed their offspring.  The neighbours have a couple of bird houses on their back deck and the swallows used to love making use of them.  Once the young ones fledged, our bird bath became a haven for the growing families.  Often a whole family would gather at the bird bath; then, one by one, each would flap around in the water when they bathed.  That was always good for a laugh.  Waking up in the morning to a robin’s song was far preferable to what we’ve been subjected to this summer.

So, yes, I miss the grackles.  Those small, determined, brazen little things kept the neighbourhood clear of crows and magpies.  I mostly miss the activity of new life that, up until this year, we had in our backyard every summer.

Here is what we're missing this summer:

Young Pine Siskin family at play in our birdbath.

Newly fledged Robin.