Grackle

What kind of name is "Grackle?" Poor bird! You see them all the time, and they make a slightly obnoxious sound, but why tag them with such a hideous name?

This guy was hanging around at the end of this dead tree in a park near where we use to live. I loved the way he was silhouetted against the evening sky, and I'm lucky to have captured him just the way I wanted to. He was backlit just enough to make him look completely black against the soft blue sky.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (my husband will be proud):

Common Grackles are blackbirds that look like they've been slightly stretched. They're taller and longer tailed than a typical blackbird, with a longer, more tapered bill and glossy-iridescent bodies. Grackles walk around lawns and fields on their long legs or gather in noisy groups high in trees, typically evergreens. They eat many crops (notably corn) and nearly anything else as well, including garbage. In flight their long tails trail behind them, sometimes folded down the middle into a shallow V shape.