Strange Birds

[sartorias]

Yesterday, rachelmanija and I drove out to Arizona for a session of Camp Lipizzan, which we have become completely addicted to. We had a pleasant, uneventful drive along the 8, which traverses the nervous landscape over the San Andreas Fault. (yes, the fault bisects the state, pretty much, but it seems . . . larger here, what with the vast stretches of broken

Comments

[steepholm]

Rooks, perhaps? Very Dark is Rising!

[sartorias]

Rooks! Wow, that never occurred to me. I figure they must be Dakotan birds, maybe Canadian. Possible!

[steepholm]

Just checked Wiki, which doesn't seem to think they exist on your continent. But hey, what does Wiki know? Where there are sign-seekers, the rooks will follow.

[birdsedge]

As far as I'm aware rooks and crows are the same size as each other and thus can be difficult to tell apart. If these birds are smaller than a crow, they're not rooks.

[lnhammer]

Those look like grackles to me. Boat-tailed grackles are local variety in Tucson. Their vocalization are remarkably varied.

---L.

[maribou]

I was also going to suggest grackles. cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqsPfGEIib4&feature=related (grackles in a tree in Austin, sounding completely BANANAS)

[sartorias]

That's it--mystery solved! Thank you!

[rosefiend]

We have more of the regular grackles (without the boat tail) but when you run into a boat-tailed grackle, you can definitely tell the difference. One time I started repeating back a boat-tailed's call in a parking lot, and oh man, after a few rounds that bird got mad and started calling me some very bad names. It was bird language, but you could tell!

[queenoftheskies]

We had them when I liked in Vegas. We dubbed them "vampire birds" because they preferred the dark and made odd sounds.

Perhaps this?

http://www.arizonensis.org/sonoran/fieldguide/vertibrata/euphagus_cyanocephalus.html

[saare_snowqueen]

We get bird masses like that here in the Baltics. I was told they are starlings.

[ashnistrike]

We get masses of starlings here in the (eastern) US, also. Some yahoo released a set in Central Park (NYC) about a hundred years ago, and now they're a complete nuisance. Grackles are larger, noisier, and not speckled. Sometimes you get mixed flocks.

-Nameseeker

[eglantine_br]

Grackles are cool birds too. They have very subtle fancy markings.

[lnhammer]

I love the calls. Around February, when the weather gets warm enough, they start getting especially frivolous. A couple of them perched on the streetlamps of a barren parking lot can make me smile.

---L.