Vol. 20 // Which birds are scarecrows meant to frighten off? 👻

When you get FOMO from scrolling social media (via @smokeymtn2022)

Found in the central and eastern regions of North America

Hear Their Song

Common Grackles pretty much always look like they’re mad about something. This grumpy-faced bird can be spotted sauntering around fields picking up grain and seeds, or gathering in large groups in trees and making quite the racket. (Their largest groups can number in the millions!) 

They look like blackbirds, but longer, with iridescent feathers. They’re big omnivores and will eat small rodents, frogs, and bugs, and can saw open acorns with their mandibles! They can also be very aggressive toward and even kill other birds vying for the same food source.

Fun fact: Grackles love corn, and scarecrows are meant to scare them off more than any other bird!

Give a Hoot

Birding bits you should know about this week

🦤 Learn
These extinct birds really stretch the definition of “bird”
Did birds really descend from dinosaurs?

📺 Look
A birder is back in the public eye, now on his own terms
Manhattan’s Christian Cooper—who entered the public consciousness after a woman in Central Park called the police and falsely claimed he was threatening her—will host his own birding show on National Geographic.

👂 Listen
Have you ever heard a bird mimic a car alarm, or a chain saw?
The Superb Lyrebird can do it all!

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Your Shot

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I will never give up longing. 

I will let my hair stay long. 

The rain proclaims these trees,

the trees tell of the sun.

Let birds, let birds.

Let leaf be passion.

Let jaw, let teeth, let tongue be

between us. Let joy.

– “Let Birds” by Linda Gregg

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Flying Colors makes premium organic wild bird food, offering ethically sourced, toxin-free seeds and nuts of the highest quality to nourish wild birds of all types and inspire birders of all ages. Each specialty blend and single origin creation is rigorously sourced & researched, and every jar is produced with love & packaged by hand in small batches in New York's Hudson Valley and tested in our own backyards.