Meet the Great-tailed Grackle

FOCUS NATURE EL CLARINETE — BIG, BOLD, AND MELODIOUS

Fort Lowell Park, Tucson, Arizona. At 11:00 A.M. the mercury already nudges toward serious heat. Sitting under a pecan tree near the Hohokam Village site, I see a path come out of a mesquite bosque, cross the footbridge spanning a dry wash, and curve round the village midden.

Behind me to the right, a riparian reconstruction shows how it was when the Rillito and Pantano washes were meandering creeks where Hohokam children caught fish with their bare hands. Later, soldiers from Fort Lowell would ride their horses into the same waters to bathe.

High in a line of cottonwoods alongside the stream replica, the great-tailed grackle whistles and chortles among his harem. Like the herring gull and the brown rat, el clarinete, as he is sometimes called in Mexico, his homeland, follows human migrations. He's an opportunist and knows that where humans go the good life awaits.

He arrived late in Arizona, in the 1930s, as a winter visitor, but, like a lot of us, once here he stayed and staked his claim to the place. In the wild, he inhabits marshes, but he's learned to favor city parks. Well-watered, with plenty of grass, tall trees, and spilled-over refuse containers, parks are perfect. He'll eat almost anything - yes, garbage but usually forages on the ground for insects and grass seeds.

He's big. Like his cousin the boat-tailed grackle of eastern salt marshes, he measures up to 18 inches from the working end of his strong beak to the tip of his keelshaped tail. It's his identifying feature, that tail, conspicuously longer than either wing and, in flight, Sagging a bit, as if too heavy a load. He's black. Blue-black. When the angle of reflection is just right, his feathers gleam rainbow hues, like light bounced off an oil slick. His eye is a yellow orb riveted by a shiny black bead.

Noisy, bold, streetwise, he's one of the bird world's blackjackets like the crow, but he's not related. The great-tail's tribe is Icteridae, made up of other blackbirds, meadowlarks, and orioles. Crows are Corvidae, the same family as jays and magpies.

He's a polygamist. Watchful and cunning, el clarinete sends his harem out to feed on the ground while he tunes up in the treetops. Is he standing guard, I wonder, or playing it safe?

When it comes to song, the great-tail is in a class by himself. Most grackles are limited to a raspy one-note "chack, chack." Not el clarinete. His alarm call is a terse "clackety-clack," but when he soars into full voice, he covers all the stops: rattles and shrieks; wheezes and whistles; soft whirring sounds; and a clear-noted, rapidly repeated, high-pitched "tee-tee-tee," somewhere around G, four octaves above middle C.

Listen to him. He noodles around, muttering to himself, it seems, until he discovers a riff. Then he improvises variations on the pattern for 15 or 20 seconds. Back to the figure, repeat it, improvise. For variety's sake, he kicks into double time, runs it down as an up tune, and pushes the volume from pianissimo to forte.

Some say the mockingbird is the king of song, but he's only a mimic. A good one to be sure a mockingbird once delighted me with a pretty fair imitation of my electric weed chopper but still only a mimic. The great-tail is an original.