how to feed everything but grackles?

[say_der]

My wife bought a new bird feeder this past weekend. Within hours half the seed in it was gone & there were about 30 grackles in our yard. Those things are PIGS! Any way to get rid of them other than not having the feeder out? I did notice a couple of finches at it & I wouldn't mind those. My wife said the grackles are ugly. I have to agree.

[buzzsaw]

Get the July edition of Birds and blooms "extra" and go to page 19. There is an article in the top right corner of page #19 titled: Creating sanctuary.... this should help alot! This is a great magazine to get!

[toughguy]

Yes Grackles are pigs. If you want the finch and you are feeding them out of an "open" feeder with sunflower seeds and other large food take it down and put up a finch feeder with black thistle seed. It has smaller holes that the grackles can't eat of and the finch prefer it. I live in the south metro and I have goldfinch and house finch all summer. I also get and like the red winged blackbirds and morning doves on the open feeder so I put up with the grackles, sparrows and the half dozen gophers that clean up their mess.

[Steve Foss]

Thistle is a good seed, though expensive.

Another option is to mount a second sunflower feeder, or even two more, in different locations. That way, when you get grackles and other undesirables, the desirables can still get to one or two of the feeders. If you eliminate the black sunflower and just go with thistle feeders as a way to get rid of the baddies, you're keeping away some of the goodies, because there are only a handful of species — smaller finches — that feed on thistle.

We have three sunflower feeders and a hummer feeder now, and we scatter shelled corn around, too. Come fall we'll subtract the hummer feeder and add suet.

[Gonzo]

I switch to safflower seed until the grackles and starlings start heading south. Gradually mix the safflower seed into your usual seed for three or four fillings, eventually switching to pure safflower. Cardinals, Chickadee's, Finches, Nuthatches and Woodpeckers all love safflower. Grackles and Starlings don't, and will move on. Once these "undesirables" move on, switch back to your regular mix.

[Tom Wilson]

I'm with toughguy on this one. I feed about 12-15 species daily, and I mix up a couple of special blends depending on the time of the year. Currently I am going through about 50lbs of mix a week. I too have an enormous amount of common Grackles, Starlings and Brown Headed Cowbirds. With that being said, I also have about 20 doves that use my yard daily and a large # of Red Winged BB's and Blue Jays. These birds I love having around and because of that (and their food needs) I simply deal with the other birds. There are ways to keep the Grackles away, but it does hinder you getting other species. Buzzsaw was right about the Birds and Blooms recommendations, and you can find lots of ways to limit different species, but if you limit one, you might be eliminating others that you would get enjoyment out of. If all you are interested in are the variety of Finches that we have--then Thistle is the way to go. In reality though all of the Finch species will flock to BO Sunflower seeds and if you do the math--50 lb bags of BO Sunflower seeds are not that much more expensive than thistle in comparison to how long it will last versus how many birds you can feed. One of the best ways to exclude Grackles and the larger birds is to put up feeders with wire cages around them. The little birds simply climb inside the cage to eat and the larger birds are trapped outside of it. The problem with these is that they are ugly. If you pick up any number of magazines or books, you can find a number of ways to control certain species, just be sure you're not excluding something you might like having around. I now have an Indigo Bunting using my feeders that I would have never seen had I quit feeding the grackles on the large hanging feeders and the ground feeders. I also have 3 species of Woodpeckers, Red Breasted Grosbeaks, Orioles, Blue Jays, and Cardinals that I would also lose. Feeding the annoying birds is the price we must pay in order to have the other species we like to see.

[The Kid]

I would love to have problems with Grackles. My next door neighbor is feeding the squirrels and no birds are coming around now.

['eyesmaster89]

Out of curiosity, is a common grackle an unprotected species or not?

[Fowlguy]

No they are not. You can shoot them

[Tom Wilson]

Fowlguy,

That's not correct sir. Grackles are a migratory bird, just like RWB's, Blue herons, finches, etc... They are not an endangered or protected species for specific reasons, but they are protected by Federal regulations under the migratory bird act. There are birds that are not protected, but they are the invasive species such as European Starlings, and House Sparrows and such. I looked for a list of these birds, but I found Grackles on no list. If you know of another list, I would be happy to know where you found it, but according to the information that I have found--Grackles are not fair game.

[Tom Wilson]

Addendum to previous post--I just got through reading the entire list of protected birds under the migratory bird act of 1918--Grackles are protected. For those of you who are interested--if you do a google search for migratory bird act you can find tons of information, including complete list of all CFR's (Code of Federal Regulations) pertaining to all migratory birds here in the U.S.

These laws were put into affect way back in 1918 and there are hundreds of pages pertaining to this, so make sure you really want to know before digging in. But absolutely for certain--Grackles are not fair game.

[Dotch]

Just like everything it seems, there are exceptions to the rule. From a USDA bulletin:

"Lethal control, involving either trapping or shooting birds, is illegal without a permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. State permits also may be required. An exception to this requirement applies to the common grackle, which under Federal provisions can be killed without an advance permit when birds are in the act of causing depredation. However, State permits for grackle control may be required. Inquiries about obtaining a permit should be made through the appropriate Wildlife Services (WS) office of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)."

I know SD & ND both have some special rules regarding their shooting but haven't found an indication what MN's possible stipulations are. Check before you unload on them.

[Tom Wilson]

Dotch,

You could be, and probably are right, but I have not found this info yet. Like Crows, this is probably true, but one had better be able to prove that there was some true loss being caused before letting em' have it. Like most things of this nature you would have to argue it from a financial point of view and probably prove it before you would get by with it.

[Steve Foss]

Yeah, "depredation" in the seed-eating bird sense usually applies to farmers' crops. Red-winged blackbirds in particular can really have an impact on grain. Doubt that gobbling a few bucks worth of birdfeed would work.

[Dotch]

Sounded like this was a rule that was set in stone, no exceptions. But there are exceptions and conditions required to off them which is precisely why I qualified the exception with the statement at the end of the post. In ND at the time I lived there, the landowners got permission to shoot them as they were consuming a lot of sunflowers in addition to the wheat & barley laying in the swath. They supplied us with all the .22 ammo we wanted to move them around as we scouted their fields. Don't think I am alone either in having taken a potshot (or several hundred) as a farm kid with a BB gun at these pests that are also livestock disease carriers, with toxoplasmosis and salmonella amongst them. Dad was incensed too that they'd break the leaders off all the nice spruce trees he'd planted so I always had the green light. I highly doubt the USFWS has the time or the manpower to patrol for such heinous criminals as myself. Am certainly not going to cower under my desk waiting for them or the mattress tag police...

Do I still shoot 'em? Haven't had much reason to. Have a nice blend of birds to begin with. Work on habitat has helped. I feed a mix of safflower and sunflower. Border collie Gus chases the grackles away from the feeders. Doves clean up the safflower they toss out. While there are a few grackles here, their mortality rate is high without any help from me. Traffic picks off a bunch and an occasional stray cat seems to keep them in check, if the cat doesn't get run over in the road or I don't shoot it first anyway. Besides, am more in tune with a house sparrow control project I initiated a few years ago. Have wanted bluebirds for a long time and this year after much hard work, have finally got my wish. And, shooting grackles (blackbirds to any red-blooded farm kid) is really not much of a challenge anymore. As long as they stay out of the barn, we co-exist. We don't see the huge flocks of them here we once did. The switch from a more diverse rotation to one that's more row crop intensified has been partially responsible for that.

[Steve Foss]

Hey Dotch:

Well, I reckon the statute of limitations has long worn off your criminal past.

I lived in N.D. for 20-some years, mostly eastern and central, but have visited all corners of the state. Where did you live there? The farmers in central N.D. used to use propane cannons that would fire periodically with timers to scare blackbirds off their sunflowers in late summer/fall. The blackbirds gather there in flocks of hundreds, and sometimes thousands, after the young have matured in late summer, and they can do a lot of damage while they're staging for fall migration.

We have a border collie, as well, but she's too old and stiff to go running off after birds now. She still tries to herd the wife and I together when we're in different parts of the yard, though.

[Dotch]

Sure hope I don't wind up in the klink; got a lot of work to get done. Maybe they'll let me out via the Huber law.

I lived in ND for 3 years right out of college. Lived in Rugby for 6 months, Cando (where you can-do better but a friend of mine from there recently told me otherwise) 6 months, then 2 years out northwest of Rock Lake near the Armourdale Dam amongst the Finnlanders. Absolutely loved the area, the hunting, fishing & the people, especially the women, both of them.

They tried the propane cannons at that time but the blackbirds got accustomed to them, the same as the geese have around here. Don't see it as often as we once did but every once in awhile one sees the "perpetual" string of blackbirds flying single file that stretches for miles. Have been known to look out the window, start a nap, wake up a half hour later and notice the birds are still flying by. Mayybe they're flying in a circle to confuse me.

Gus will turn 2 in a few weeks so he'll be chasing grackles away from the feeders for some time to come. His mother Lucy who's 9 lays on the porch and looks up when he tears out there as if to say "Moron!" She's right there though when the squirrel comes down the tree.

[Steve Foss]

Knew the Rugby area well. Was editor of the Harvey paper a couple of years in the early 90s, and we printed in Rugby.