Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for March 20, 2022

Pretty sure we’ll find out in today’s comments.

I am all in favor of scaring away grackles, starlings and squirrels.

Never heard of a grackle till now….

That celebration also works for pigeons and squirrels.

I put up a feeder this winter. Got 3 pairs of cardinals and a bunch of finches and a pair of morning doves. The feeder is a bit small for the grackles although they try

Just don’t try that in Bodega Bay.

Starlings and sparrows. Aggressive invaders out-competing our native species. My father told me he thought he saw a bluebird when he was young. I never have.

Kind of nice to see them having fun as a family.

Kate has working legs?

I’d like to see Petey go after cowbirds next.

“Think this is funny? Funny how?!”

My Sophie (see my avatar) does the same thing. But it’s mostly doves and squirrels in our yard.

Starlings never existed in this country, until around 1900, when some total idiot Shakespeare lover thought that every animal mentioned in those overlong plays of that overrated playwright should be in America. So that idiot brought over exactly one pair of those rotten noisy birds & now we have millions of them polluting out skies & our land.

It is the Spring Equinox as of an hour and a half ago. I didn’t know that until i saw this comic just now. and I had just finished watching an episode of The West Wing before I came over here. Guess which episode I watched. :D

I love grackles! They’re too big to perch on the feeders, so content themselves with the seed on the ground.Now, the suet feeders however,. !

His bark is worse than his bite.

All black birds matter

I feel the same way about grockles… local word for tourists.

My wife thinks they’re pretty (they are) but the noise they make? Not so much.

The Kraken goes after the grackles? The start of a whole new myth in the making. Happy Spring, by the way – we start Autumn on the 21st (tomorrow).

Oh, we exist all right. Grackles are loads of fun to watch most of the time, and if they’re not doing enough to keep you entertained, toss ’em a handful of pretzels and see how they deal with dividing them up.

One of the funniest performances I ever saw was one that came up to a bunch of random people waiting at a bus stop (some sitting on the bench, others standing nearby) and hopped around their feet looking up as if to say “I don’t really know what you’re all doing, but can I please be a part of it?”

“Happy Spring, by the way – we start Autumn on the 21st (tomorrow).”

I recall the first Winter after I moved to Minnesota, in the Fall of 1967. I thought I would die. Coldest nights in those years were in the region of -20 to -30 F with wind chills in the -65 region, and daytime temps did not go above 0 F. Typically, the first frost was in late August, warm coats and first below freezing by mid-September. Snow sticking on the ground by late Sept – early Oct, and staying until Spring by late Oct. First below 0 F in early Nov, and daytime highs below 0 F from mid Dec through Jan. Chinook thaw in late Jan, refreeze, and then pretty constant snow until late April or into May. Nights below freezing and no flowers until late May.

Thunderstorms beginning in March, sometimes in snowstorms or ice storms. Tornado season started in April and ran through into late September.

My brother taught me the local saying about Minnesota weather: “If you don’t like it, stick around for 5 minutes – it’ll change.” Then he’d stroke his chin and add “Minnesota: the only state in the Union that has 9 months of Winter, 6 months of tornadoes, and 13 months of road repair in every year.” He was quite on the mark.

Is it any wonder that, if the temp is above freezing, Minnesotans are out in shorts and T-shirts? +40 F and the girls are out in bikinis to get sun tans. [head shake] Then in late July – early August, we suffer from heatstroke when it goes above 90 F – which it does every Summer – sometimes above 100 F. I believe it might be the only US state with Winter coldest to Summer hottest temp spans that exceed 130 F.

They are the cousins of blackbirds, with irridescent colors and no morality.

Gotta make Project Feederwatchers out of everyone. Great way to connect with all the former dinosaurs. https://feederwatch.org/

They descended on NH a few weeks ago. Very Hitchcockian.

need to start this tradition at my bird feeder…. yes the grackles are back…

Meanwhile in Nova Scotia, residents there were asked to remove bird feeders due to H5N1 avian flu outbreak.

Give the grackles a break, native species with iridescent plumage in the sun. Elegant birds. It’s those d**n starlings, an invasive species a moron named Eugene Schieffelin released here in 1890 because Shakespeare mentions them in a play, that are the pain. Trash birds.

A good friend in Orlando “fights” the grackles everyday. She hates them because they eat the cat food she puts out for two feral cats she’s SNR’d. . .

No grackles, but I love to see the starling gang move in, really funny. Less varieties seen this winter for some reason.

Open feeders or platform feeders are homing beacons for squirrels and birds larger than the cardinals and blue, who, they very naturally dominate. I have hanging feeders that have an outside wire wrap that slides down to cover feeder holes when squirrels or larger birds land on the perches and they work very well. Used to want to chase squirrels, grackles, and cowbirds, but now their frustrated efforts to get the feed are entertaining ss we watch from our dinette. They get what other birds drop on the ground, so they don’t go hungry, but they no longer empty the feeders.

Am I the only person that was wondering if Wiley drew this? The characters don’t look like his typical artwork.

I Love Grackles, so pretty as compared to Starlings

I like grackles and the sounds they make; too bad they are more socially appropriate though.

Binky PREMIUM MEMBER less than a minute agoI always like Danae’s little escapades. This was great! “RELEASE THE KRAKEN” LOL!!!

Haven’t seen any grackles yet, but the starlings have been here all winter, mobbing the mealworm feeder. Such gluttons!

Grackles can be as bad a Squirrels if you have a bird feeder.

snap, grackle, pop

Grackles are rats with wings.

You sure they aren’t starlings.

I want one of those krakens.

Do they swoop people like magpies do in Australia? Grrrr

Love the multi-dog in the second to last panel! What a hoot!

Starlings are worse

Starlings are worse.

I don’t mind the occasional ‘grack attack’. A flock of hundreds looks amazing, and rarely happens. Usually it’s just a few here and there.

There are names for collections of animals: for example a group of owls is known as a parliament, a group of crows is a murder, a group of larks is an exaltation, a group of nightingales is a charm and a group of geese, is a gaggle.

I am not sure what a group of grackles is but I suspect it’s an infestation.

We could do the same thing down here in the south if you swap squirrels for the grackles.

We had a couple of grackles that tried to over winter here (Northeastern Alberta), they made it until just after Christmas. They generally arrive in late April, early May.

Anyone who expects grackles, or any other animal for that matter, to live up to human expectations, has just not thought this thing through.

I have a couple of bird feeders in my back yard. The birds pretty much ignore my cats. However, when my neighbor’s orange tabby would appear silently at the top of the fence, there would be a “bird explosion”, as seen here. That’s respect.

Funny!

I’m guessing Wiley drew this in the midst of an LSD trip.

When I lived in Northern Arizona, we had two distinct types of grackles – the great-tailed grackle and the boat-tailed grackle. You could easily tell the difference, although both types are fairly large birds and are similarly colored ( blue-black iridescent males – brown-white females ) and both types of grackle males have very long tails that make up almost half their body length, the boat-tailed grackles typically hold their tail folded in a V-shape, like the keel of a boat.

I have a battery-powered squirrel-proof bird feeder. A grackle landed on it and charged at the other birds on it and chased them off. A cardinal was on the branch above it waiting for his turn. The cardinal landed on the perch and poked the grackle. The grackle lunged at the grackle and was leaning to that side to make sure he was gone. The cardinal scooted up behind the grackle and started jumping up and down and tripped the perch motor flinger switch and launched the grackle into the backyard. The cardinal grabbed a few sunflower seeds of victory and flew on.

The grackles don’t bother me. It’s the murmurations the starlings that make far bigger messes.

The red wing blackbirds are back. Around here they come in with the grackles.

My grandfather had 2 bird-feeders outside his picture window; inside were binoculars, a few birding books – and a BB gun for the starlings & grackles.

I don’t know anything about grackles, but I’d take them over Limpkins. Limpkins screech for hours at a time right behind my house.

I like to run this drill with two corgis to run off the herd of deer that regularly come to my back yard to devour every plant I’ve ever tried to grow. A pox on the deer lovers all around my neighborhood.

The one bird without a single redeeming quality!!

A Kraken is a legendary sea monster of Norway. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to release a YETI!.

I can handle Grackles it is Starlings that I hate.

I like grackles. Seriously.

A collection of grackles is called a ‘nuisance.’

It depends on the area you live in, and what available food there is whether you have large flocks of grackles. Here in NOVA, we don’t get grackles in large numbers, but when they appear they are usually accompanying huge flocks of European starlings. (I wonder if people think they are all the same since they are similar in color.) And then, it depends on what you are feeding. Grackles will eat almost anything, but corn is a magnet to them. If your seed mix has corn in it, you will attract grackles.

Really. They are abundant in East Texas. Very noisy.

It’s fun to see the three of them all cooperating so joyously.

They are pretty at dusk when the take to the air in undulating patterns but that’s the only time

For those not familiar with grackles, this should help.

https://ebird.org/species/comgra

The above site lists their status as “Near Threatened”, for what it’s worth.

I’ll just leave this here…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7e7MI8Q6xA

Great scene. Welcome to spring.

Happy vernal equinox!

At first I thought that Petey was doing the updated version of a snow blower – the snow typhoon….

birder here -they are a nasty breed

Nice to see Petey get a Sunday Showcase.The horse gets all the press releases and people forget Kate has a dog(picked up from a homeless person who died and found’guarding his body).