BRONZED GRACKLE 413 



fruit for that purpose. On July 3, 1945, G. Hapgood Parks (1945) 

 saw a male bronzed grackle anointing its feathers with juices devived 

 from the green fruits of the cucumber tree (Magnolia accuminata 

 Linnaeus). The bird was seen to take pieces of the fruit, and, fre- 

 quently, entire "cucumbers" in his bill and rub them vigorously against 

 his breast and body feathers. The bird preened his feathers with un- 

 usual industry. The tail and wing feathers as well as the body, 

 breast, and neck received energetic attention. It also frequently 

 scratched the head and neck first with one foot and then the other. 

 The bird was trapped and found to be in normal condition and had 

 the usual brilliant iridescence of its feathers. No parasites were 

 found. A half hour later after releasing the banded bird, Mr. Parks 

 saw two other unbanded, adult male bronzed grackles go through 

 the identical behavior of "anting" with the cucumber tree fruits. 

 Judging from the number of reports, the practice of anointing the 

 plumage with various substances is not a rare behavior among grackles. 



Voice. — The notes of the bronzed grackle are not pleasing and 

 beautiful, nor are they at all musical, but they are characteristic 

 and easily recognized. The song consists of one or two short notes 

 followed by a prolonged squawk. The quality is harsh and squeaky, 

 with a peculiar metallic sound difficult to describe. It has been 

 likened to a noise of a squeaky hinge on an iron gate. A. A. Saun- 

 ders (1935) has interpreted the call by Kuchaku wee ee k ee, ku w&a a, 

 saying: "The male often produces this sound with a spreading and 

 fluttering of the wings which resemble similar actions of singing 

 Red-winged Blackbirds and Cowbirds." F. Schuyler Mathews (1921) 

 compares the queer noises uttered by the grackles with "rattling 

 shutters, watchmen's rattles, ungreased cart wheels, vibrating wire 

 springs, broken piano wires, the squeak of a chair moved on a hard- 

 wood floor, the chink of broken glass, the scrape of the bow on a fiddle 

 string, and the rest of those discords which commonly play havoc with 

 one's nerves!" When a large number of grackles are singing in chorus 

 all of these discordant sounds are beyond description. 



The ordinary call note is a hoarse loud chuck or harsh clack. When 

 answering the call, a fellow grackle may utter a kind of subdued cuk. 



Witmer Stone (1937) describes the notes uttered at a nesting colony 

 of grackles as follows: "About the nest trees there is a constant chorus 

 of harsh alarm calls; chuck; chuck; chuck; like the sound produced by 

 drawing the side of the tongue away from the teeth, interspersed with 

 an occasional long-drawn seeek, these calls being uttered by birds on 

 the wing as well as by those that are perching. Then at intervals 

 from a perching male comes the explosive rasping song chu-seeeek 

 accompanied by the characteristic lifting of the shoulders, spreading 

 of the wings and tail, and swelling up of the entire plumage." 



