[mou] Great-tailed Grackle, St. Louis Co.

[Dan Amerman]

I watched a male Great-tailed Grackle from about 8:10
to 8:20 this morning in Duluth, near Mud Lake, close
to the Oliver bridge.  I have seen quite a few
Great-tailed Grackles in the past, and consider this a
definitive sighting:  crow length but more slender,
great big tail that was both proportionately and
absolutely longer than a Common Grackle’s tail,
solidly dark, non-brown body (I could not see the
iridescence under the overcast conditions), yellow
grackle eyes, grackle beak, and a fairly flattish
forehead.  Conveniently for size comparison, there
were Morning Doves beneath the Grackle in the same
dead tree and Ring-billed gulls not all that far away,
the Great-tailed Grackle was much larger than the
Mourning Doves.  The bird was perched at the top of a
dead tree to the east of the railroad tracks and south
of Mud Lake, within thirty to fifty yards in each
case.

Dan Amerman
Duluth, MN



		
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