Roscoe The Tame Grackle Is Back

No, that is not a grackle, it's a brown headed cowbird. They lay their eggs in other birds nests. LOL

My other site is gone. I had it hosted at Godaddy, which doubled it's prices for hosting, so they lost my business. The fools.

I think you can upload images directly to this site unless there are reasons to do otherwise.

Thank you for pointing out that was a cowbird.

Right now, I have a sick Goldfinch in my bird cage. I bought a birdcage from E-bay awhile back to keep sick or injured birds in till they recover, this is the first one. He had the Goldfinch Eye disease, conjunctivitus. They can survive if they can find warm and food and water till the disease runs it's course, Look it up in Google. The eyes close up with scab, then they get better after a few days of that, but in the wild, they are dead by then. So I keep him in here with me and his eyes were closed for 3 days, but he could find the food and water and was eating and drinking. Now his eyes are starting to open again. I hope he recovers, then I will let him go outside again.

I will get pictures.

I also hope very much he will recover soon.

I hope the Goldfinch is better now. How is he?

Still waiting for Kitchi. Roscoe was not back in 2010 till mid April as you wrote if I got it right. Like Roscoe, Kitchi was among the very last grackles in town to leave for south November 3 at about 4 PM flying SEE just a couple of days before freezing temperatures. He spent last 40 min before flying having a nap on my shoulder. Perhaps he should come back in a week or two. More grackles are coming. Now we have more roosting for the night in our bamboo and spruce – seemingly more than 50. This is the first time we have them roosting in our yard in the pre-nesting season. Some stay longer in the morning till about 10 AM before leaving for corn fields already staying for a while in their pine tree where they nest every year about 20 of them usually. They will start building nests soon. Other birds are fine too. Cardinals seem a bit disturbed for a while when grackles land in the bamboo in loud numbers. In about 20 minutes every bird however finds a place for the night and all get quiet at about 7:50.

I hope your Goldfinch is well.

A professor of ornithology from Cornell said first year migratory birds do not come back to the place of their birth as a rule. Their first year come back from the south is when they disperse. They do not remember the place of birth. Only once they start to breed and nest having joined a group they remember the place and tend to migrate together with the group and come back in the spring to that place again each year - only the place of their first breeding and nesting. So I gave up now waiting for Kitchi. Once I see grackle nestlings on the ground I will do what I did with Kitchi a more than a dozen other little birds - will feed and warm them up and see to it that all of them are fine and back in their nature where they belong.

Yes, Kitchi is back for sure this time spending half a day in our yard going usual routes foraging and flying close by almost always when called. He is a smart bird with the most quiet flight and he is very quick to notice hawks. He would not land on my hand or shoulder any more or fly inside our house, but he goes around six-seven feet away from me looking for bugs in the grass and glancing back knowingly exactly as he did last year. There are several other grackles around that can tolerate me at this distance for a short while occasionally, but you would not confuse them with Kitchi in all other respects.

Kitchi is back after the winter migration in his year two. June 2014.