I came home to find a grackle jerking and flopping in the front yard. At first I thought it must have a broken wing. I called the Wildlife Center of Virginia for the number of local wildlife rehabilitator, then prepared to go rescue the bird (scoop into box, cover and leave in a cool, dark place until the rehabilitator can come fetch the bird). Alas, in the intervening few minutes the bird had died.
I know many people regard grackles as a pest, but I have an odd affection for them. I love the iridescent quality of their feathers, and I regard the annual appearance, in late winter, of a big flock of them in my front yard as a harbinger of spring.
Because it had died so quickly when a few minutes before it had been frantically fluttering about, I thought that it must have hit a window and suffered head or spine injury severe enough to kill it in a few minutes. Now I'm wondering if it might have sustained pesticide poisoning. My front and back garden are pesticide-free, but I know that's not the case around the neighborhood. I watched my neighbor spraying God knows what on his tomatoes all last summer.
Here's a sobering bit of info from the Smithsonian/National Zoo migratory bird center:
On a global scale, over five billion pounds of conventional pesticides are used annually for agricultural purposes, forest and rangeland management, and disease control, as well as in homes, and on lawns, gardens, golf courses, and other private properties. Twenty percent of this total volume, or 1.2 billion pounds, is used in the United States alone. What does this massive chemical dousing of the earth mean for the health of the environment? Birds provide some of the answers.
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It is estimated that of the roughly 672 million birds exposed annually to pesticides on U.S. agricultural lands, 10%– or 67 million– are killed. This staggering number is a conservative estimate that takes into account only birds that inhabit farmlands, and only birds killed outright by ingestion of pesticides. The full extent of bird fatalities due to pesticides is extremely difficult to determine because most deaths go undetected.
67 million birds! What an astonishingly depressing statistic.
We buried the grackle under one of the oak trees.
But then, at the same time, the gift: what I believe was a rose-breasted grosbeak at my feeder, and I think we're a bit outside its normal range. I've certainly never seen one here before that I know of.
Sorry the picture's blurry, but it's as good a close-up as I could get with my camera.
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