It’s a big, beautiful world out there. Please enjoy it responsibly. For the longest time I didn't really care about birds. They were all over the back yard of the house I grew up in and I can remember watching them with my mom, but they didn't really move me. Subsequently, I didn't really learn what birds I'm supposed to dislike for various reasons and so, I think some of the pest birds are very pretty. Like grackles. The first time in my adult life that I *experienced* grackles was when I was living in San Antonio, where they fill the sky at dusk and swoop into parking lots or local parks or...everywhere...and roost in any available roosting-spot. It was super-Hitchcockian and since I didn't have any corn fields to lose (side note: birds are just flying bellies), I thought it was weirdly cool. Here, they just swoop in and eat all my bird seed, but they roost elsewhere, so I don't need to laser-beam them out of my trees. See the above link about San Antonio for clarification. So here is Mr. Grackle, getting to work in my yard, looking for bugs and seeds and whatever else he may deem useful. We usually see the purple variety of common grackle, as opposed to the bronze ones. I'm interested in the bronze, of course, though I have come to love looking out the window and seeing the purples in their shimmery black irridescence. I mean, look at them, they're freaking cool. If I could command the birds to fly around me like they were a living cape, I would want that cape to be made of grackles. The end.