The day after 42 Mourning Doves showed up in my yard to empty the feeders, I was swarmed by a flock of Common Grackles. It’s definitely fall migration time!
I counted more than 70 grackles just in our yard alone. Many more were perched in the trees surrounding our house. They were even walking around in the grass. I was annoyed at first until I noticed something. They were cleaning up the acorns!
Have you ever walked under an oak tree in the late summer or early fall when it’s having a mast year (a year when it produces more acorns than usual)? The best analogy would be trying to walk on a bed of marbles.
In past years I’ve tried raking up the acorns, but it’s really difficult for the rake tines to grab and hold onto them. Meanwhile dozens more fall from the trees every few minutes anyway. It’s nearly impossible to catch up.
Mowing the lawn this time of year is also an awful experience (and hazardous!). The mower blade chews up and flings acorns everywhere and the noise is cringe-worthy. That poor mower blade!
If the grackles wanted to help clean up our yard, I wasn’t going to stop them!
As I watched them work, I wondered if grackles can swallow acorns whole. A number of the birds seemed to be trying to do so. I looked it up, and yes indeed they can if the acorn is small enough! Then their muscular gizzard grinds it up.
The flock wandered around the backyard vacuuming up acorns for at least a half hour. They did a thorough job!
While I hadn’t seen many chipmunks picking up acorns in recent days, all it took was some competition for them to jump into action. Not long after the flock of birds landed, a half-dozen chipmunks appeared. They scurried around stuffing their cheeks with acorns before these “just-passing-by” birds could steal them all.
The only critters that were missing from the scene were squirrels. Perhaps they were too busy stuffing their faces with acorns in the trees instead.