350 IT. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 211 



assume this attitude, but the trait is not nearly so strongly developed 

 among them as among the males. 



The female grackles are not only smaller but quieter than the males. 

 Their most characteristic utterance is a rapid, clicking sound, a tlick 

 tlick tlick sharper and less sonorous than the corresponding note of the 

 males. They use this while building their nests, quarreling with their 

 neighbors, or flying. Single throaty clucks are also uttered by both 

 sexes. Sometimes a female attempts to deliver the note that I ven- 

 tured to call the most typical of the male, but hers is a weak, squeaky 

 imitation. 



Field marks. — It is scarcely possible to confuse the boat-tailed 

 grackle with any other bird of southern Mexico or Central America. 

 The larger size of the male, his bright yellow eye, and his long fan- 

 shaped tail, easily serve to distinguish him from the other wholly 

 black or blackish members of the troupial family that inhabit the 

 region. Perhaps, at a distance, the giant cowbird (Psomocolax 

 oryzivorus) might be mistaken for a male boat-tailed grackle. But 

 in flight, these cowbirds with red eyes close their wings momentarily 

 after each five or six beats, while the grackles fly with regular, unin- 

 terrupted strokes — peculiarities which will serve to distinguish the 

 two species almost as far away as they are visible. 



The members of this race are somewhat larger and darker, especially 

 the female, than those of the other races inhabiting the South Atlantic 

 and Gulf Coast States. 



DISTRIBUTION 



Resident in the lowlands and tableland of Mexico from eastern 

 Jalisco, southern Nuevo Leon, and southern Tamaulipas to Guatemala, 

 British Honduras, El Salvador, and northern Nicaragua; extending 

 northward in recent years (a specimen from Cameron County, Tex., 

 has been identified as of this race; this record has not yet been acted 

 on by the A. O. U. Committee on Classification and Nomenclature of 

 North American Buds). 



