Across North America, grackles are virtuosos of adaptation.
Across North America, grackles are virtuosos of adaptation. The small- to medium-sized New World blackbirds are particularly social and known for foraging skills that help them flourish in environments ranging from rural farms to urban parking lots.
They are often viewed as rather bold and somewhat amusing birds that pick up French fries and other fast food scraps — or, alternatively, as annoying pests that eat our grain crops.
UC Santa Barbara scientist Corina Logan, however, is fascinated by what goes on in their bird brains and how they manage to adapt to the growing footprint of human-made environments. In a pair of papers that appear in the Peer Community Journal, she and fellow authors investigate the role of behavioral flexibility in great-tailed grackles, a species related to cowbirds and meadowlarks that originated in Central America but has been rapidly expanding its range across the U.S.
Read More: University of California Santa Barbara
A great-tailed grackle eating fast food cheese sauce in Sacramento, Calif. (Photo Credit: Corina Logan)
