Grackles and Crows

One thing I miss about Austin is the grackles. Here in Corvallis we have crows in great abundance, which have their own charm, but their grating caws can't quite match the marvelous electronic car-alarm call of a male great-tailed grackle strutting his stuff. (I once saw a tourist during the SxSW music festival trying to photograph a grackle.)

Now you might be excused for assuming that Corvallis takes its name from the crows, which are of the genus Corvus. In fact the name Corvallis was cobbled together from Latin roots that describe its position in the heart of the valley.

For years I had believed that grackles were also of the genus Corvus, along with jackdaws and ravens. In fact birds commonly called grackles are of several genera, none of which is Corvus. The great-tailed grackle that inhabits (or infests, depending on point of view) Austin, Texas, is of the Quiscalus genus. You have to move two steps down the taxonomic tree to the "order level" to find the common linage of crows and grackles in the Passeriformes, which includes most songbirds.

Although Corvallis has plenty of crows (there's even a watering hole downtown called the Crow Bar), the big black birds don't exactly darken the sky, as do the great wheeling flocks of Austin grackles. I've often thought that the grackle, rather than the armadillo, should be the animal emblem of Austin. One would be hard pressed to find an armadillo within those vaunted city limits, but grackles probably outnumber the human citizens by more than ten to one. Their very ubiquity likely causes them to be overlooked when people are considering names for things. They're so common, they're invisible -- or at least irrelevant. On the other hand, you see signs everywhere promoting Armadillo Wrecker Service, Armadillo Pest Control, Armadillo Tattoo Shop, Music, This, That, etc. -- but nary a commercial or civic mention of the loathsome grackle, which (along with the bats) actually contributes immensely to pest control. Yet atop of the signs and above the doors of those very businesses honoring the lowly armadillo are perched the gleaming black birds, ever watchful, always ready to swoop.

One time Leela was in an Austin boutique when a male grackle happened to fly in the door. The young lady in charge of the shop became very upset -- not because the bird might poop on her merchandise, but because she was afraid that black birds brought bad luck (they do have a rather menacing countenance). In complete sincerity, the woman wondered aloud if she should have the place exorcised. Leela tried to disabuse her of such thinking, saying: "Grackles -- they're party birds! They bring good luck."

And that's how I think of them -- party birds. While the city works hard to perpetuate its image as a good-times music capital, the grackles are living that lifestyle day and night, whooping it up in the trees and parking lots at all hours. Yeah, I miss that mess.