The Common Grackle

I like animals and birds that have adapted to man's alteration of the natural environment. Very often they are the scruffs and the toughs of the wild, the ones that seem ordinary because they are so common. But they are common for a reason; they have looked at the changes humanity has made and worked out how best to use them to their own advantage.

So I respect and admire the mice and rats, the sparrows and the gulls, even the pigeons that seem hardly fitted to a life in the real wild. These are the creatures that have refused to lie down and die in the face of our rampages through nature; not for them the meek and pathetic eking out of an existence in some constantly threatened corner of nature. No, they have decided to use us to make their lives easier.

In Britain, one of the best known of these opportunists of nature is the starling. Here is a bird that looks the part of tough, devil-may-care exploiter of humanity. Starlings always look slightly scruffy, as though preening was for the effete of the bird world, yet they strut around in supreme confidence that our buildings and regimented gardens were invented entirely for their use. To see a gang of them arrive on your lawn and walk around stiff-legged with hands behind backs like city gents on important business can only make you smile at their cheek. Good luck to them, say I.

We have starlings in Oklahoma. I enjoy the fact that they are immigrants like me; introduced into New York City in 1890, they have spread throughout the States like true opportunists. As I watch them assemble in strings along the telephone wires now that winter approaches, I am reminded of similar sights in England.

Yet the starling is not the lord of his niche here. In Oklahoma that position is occupied by a bird even more numerous and villainous-looking: the grackle. What a delightful name that is and how expressive of the character of its owner. It is not as scruffy as the starling but shares the same habits, gathering in gangs to push other birds off the sidewalk, strutting around human spaces as though it owns them and accepting discarded hamburgers as its due. Add to this its greater size and longer tail, its dark coloring and golden, staring and slightly crazed eye, and you have a superstarling, a bird just made to take advantage of its environment, no matter how we alter it. And, of course, being American, it has a much louder voice than the starling and is not ashamed to use it.

Interestingly, the grackle does not seem to resent the competition inherent in the arrival of the starling. I have seen gangs of both birds going about their business in a field, intermingling without animosity. I can only presume that either the grackle is so confident of its superiority that it sees no need to assert it or it is demonstrating the traditional American acceptance of immigrants. The starling is not from Mexico, after all.

Human Americans do not notice the grackle at all. I have conducted a little research into this and found that most do not even know what kind of bird it is. It has become part of the background, so common as to be completely unremarkable.

But I like it already. To see one in a crowded supermarket car park, pecking at the remains of a half-eaten bun, and to note how it looks up at me with its beady eye, daring me to interfere and unafraid, is to recognize the existence of a true survivor, one who accepts the new landscape of concrete and asphalt with a shrug of its shoulders and a sneer, before returning to its own affairs. It makes me smile and say, "Go on, you old thug, I don't want your bread. Enjoy."

Quite rightly, we become concerned about animals that are near extinction. I would rejoice with everyone else if the Tasmanian wolf were found to be still alive in the tangled bush of the west of that island. But let's spare a thought, too, for the creatures that don't need our help, those that have taken what we've made and prospered through adaptability and intelligence. If nothing else, they are worthy of our respect.

Technorati tags: Starlings; Grackle.