BOAT-TAILED GRACKLE 347 



Since the grackles had begun to nest at the end of February, they 

 had had time for rearing two broods. One sanate, who in some un- 

 known manner had lost her tail and got a piece of red tape entangled 

 around her right leg, making it easy to recognize her, built a second 

 nest and hatched a second brood after her first had been successfully 

 fledged; but how many birds actually succeeded in raising two broods 

 to the point where the young could shift for themselves, I was not 

 able to determine. 



During the night of July 6 the grackles which roosted in the coco- 

 nut trees were restless, shifting their positions and often crying out 

 in the dark. After this the great majority of them withdrew from 

 the hilltop which had so long been their home. There remained only 

 a few sanates who still had young in the nest, one whose two eggs 

 were just hatching, and two faithful clarineros. The early mornings 

 were strangely silent after the grackles departed. 



On the Pacific side of Guatemala, where the dry season begins 

 in mid-October or early November, 2 or 3 months earlier than in the 

 Caribbean region, the boat-tailed grackles begin to breed corre- 

 spondingly earlier. At an altitude of 3,300 feet on the Finca Moca, 

 a great coffee plantation situated on the Pacific slope, I found grackles 

 feeding nestlings as early as the first week of January. These birds 

 must have begun to build no later than the middle of December, 

 more than 2 months before those at "Alsacia," which began to build 

 in late February and had no nestlings before mid-March. 



Food. — Few birds, I imagine, subsist upon a greater variety of 

 food than the boat-tailed grackle, or display greater ingenuity in pro- 

 curing nourishment. "Everything is grist for their mill." Their diet 

 includes both animal and vegetable products. Much of their food is 

 picked up from the ground, where they extract the larvae of beetles 

 and other insects from among the roots of the grasses, and capture 

 small lizards. They are said to hunt in freshly plowed land, following 

 close behind the plowman. They pluck ticks and other vermin from 

 cattle, often alighting upon the animals' backs for this purpose. The} r 

 spend much time foraging in the vicinity of water. On bare shingly 

 flats along the shores they turn over small stones by inserting the tip 

 of the bill beneath the nearer edgo and pushing forward, then devour 

 the small Crustacea, insects, worms, or the like that they find lurking 

 beneath. It is chiefly the more powerful males that hunt in this 

 fashion. Often the grackles wade into shallow water, where apparentl} r 

 they capture tadpoles and small fish. Or if the water be deep, they 

 may adopt other modes of fishing; A. W. Anthony (Griscom, 1932) 

 tells how at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala the grackles caught fish as 

 they flew low over the surface of the water, seizing their prey by means 



