I probably haven’t seen a Grackle since last October and was pleased to find several today at Humber Bay.

Old bird guides list Grackles as either “Purple Grackles” or “Bronzed Grackles.” These days they are all called Common Grackles but this one would have formerly been a Bronzed Grackle.

I love the description which my grandfather, Dr. J. Murray Speirs, wrote in 1985:

These are the “snooty” big blackbirds that waddle across the lawn with “their noses in the air”, puffing themselves up with pride, then collapsing to expel love songs that sound like rusty hinges.

A friend calls them the ”gangsters of the bird world.”

I took so many photos today that I include only the land birds and will make a separate post for the waterfowl.

Beaver are normally nocturnal, but we saw one today:

Today’s group:

NATURE POETRY

Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap,
but by the seeds that you plant.                               – Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94)

Miles Hearn