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photo ©Eric Tilton

Aaah, grackles. I realize this makes me a bad person, but I'm actually rather fond of grackles, especially the males. Let's get this out of the way: I know they're vermin, and they're filthy, and they screw up ecosystems. They're also, like pigeons, pretty much inevitable in a semi-urban environment, at least in the south. Unlike pigeons, they're not feral. They've just adapted really well to the ecosystem havoc that humans wreak. On the bright side, they eat gobs of insects in addition to all the garbage they consume.