I was sitting on a bench watching this Grackle gather some food to take back to her nest of babies inside the top of a six foot lamppost. When she was getting ready to return to the nest, she spied a mockingbird sitting on the metal arm of the lamppost. You should have seen her sputter and ruffle her feathers -- never dropping the food in her bill. The mockingbird got the hint and flew off.
Unless you get close to the Grackle and see them in the sunlight, you don’t realize how beautiful and iridescent their feathers are. They’re really quite lovely -- especially when they’re angry. With their bright yellow eyes, the Common Grackle is one of the most abundant breeding birds in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Photographed in Orange County, Florida.
This chicken-like marsh bird, commonly called a moorhen lives in freshwater marshes and can be found in just about every country except Australia and Antarctica. It loves lily pad covered water and uses those large, long, thin toes to walk on top of the pads while it feeds on insects, seeds, and water grasses. The Gallinule in the photo upper left is sitting on the leaf of a lily pad. They’re cousins to the rails and coots.
This colorful little bird loves warm climates and wet marshlands. His diet includes all kinds of insects as well as some of the plants at water’s edge. They tend to select habitats with plenty of lily pads and can be seen hopping from one to the other across the water. The two birds below are immature Purple Gallinules. You can see that their baby feathers of mossy brown are starting to take on the iridescent hues of the adult. Photographed in Lake County, Florida.
