Birds

Common Grackle Quiscalus quiscula in Central Park

October 26, 2009 by Corey 16 Comments

I’ve recently discovered that if I hustle out of my office for my lunch hour, jump on the uptown C train and get off at 72nd St I can spend some time birding the west side of Central Park while I work my way north to 81st St to get on the downtown C train by the Museum of Natural History to go back to my office on 42nd St.  Even though there are two train rides and a half-block walk to and from my office I can still get a solid half hour of birding in, a wonderful midday stress reliever.  A recent lunch hour spent this way was devoted almost entirely to photographing a horde of Common Grackles that were feeding, mostly on fallen acorns, on leaf-covered slopes in Central Park.

At first I was content to wait for the grackles to come to me but eventually I noticed that whenever an acorn dropped from above the grackles would scramble to be the first bird to it. I took advantage of this by picking acorns up off of the path and tossing them up in the air, trying to get them to land where I wanted the grackle to be.  I think that technique, combined with my 100mm macro lens, worked rather well, but I will leave it to you, kind reader of 10,000 Birds, to judge.

I hope you enjoyed the iradescent plumage of Quiscalus quiscula as much I do.  This post has been submitted to Bird Photography Weekly #62.  Go check it out!

Written by Corey
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.