This is the time of year when all of the Grackles arrive and invade our bird feeders. They come in droves, eat a lot of the bird seed and scare all the other birds away. They are relentless!
We have been using the large and small version on the Squirrel Buster bird feeders. The bird feeders close when a heavier bird lands on them. But the Grackles figured out how to eliminate that problem and ate most of the bird food.
After trying many new adaptations each year and failing, we finally modified our Squirrel-Buster bird feeder hoping this would make it Grackle-proof. It worked!
It is so much fun to watch the Grackles scavenge around on the ground looking for some leftover seed while the smaller birds are eating from the bird feeders. The Grackles don’t even try to get anything from the feeders anymore. So much fun!
One more Grackle diet detail – Yikes!!
“Those raggedy figures out in cornfields may be called scare-crows, but grackles are the #1 threat to corn. They eat ripening corn as well as corn sprouts, and their habit of foraging in big flocks means they have a multimillion dollar impact…”
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Grackle/overview#