How to Identify Great-tailed Grackle Feathers

What Great-tailed Grackle's Feathers Look Like

The Great-tailed Grackle is a large, brash icterid that has expanded rapidly across open and urban habitats in the Americas, and males in particular produce some of the most distinctive feathers of any common blackbird. Male body feathers are glossy black with a strong iridescent blue-purple sheen, especially vivid on the head and breast in good light, while the wings and back can show a slightly greener cast depending on angle. Female feathers look entirely different — a warm brown above, paler buffy-brown below, with a faint pale eyebrow stripe, and none of the male's iridescence, which can make the two sexes seem like different species if compared feather to feather.

The single most diagnostic feathers come from the tail: male tail feathers are very long and distinctly keeled, folding into a deep V-shape in cross-section rather than lying flat like most songbird tail feathers — an unmistakable feature if you find one still showing its natural curve. Female tail feathers are shorter and much less keeled. Flight feathers in males are glossy black without barring, while female flight feathers are a plainer, matte brown.

Step-by-Step: Is This Feather From a Great-tailed Grackle?

• Check for a V-shaped keel. A long, glossy black tail feather that naturally folds into a deep V-shape in cross-section is close to diagnostic for an adult male.
• Measure length. Male tail feathers can reach 20–25 cm or more, exceptionally long for a passerine, while female tail feathers run considerably shorter.
• Assess iridescence. Strong blue-purple gloss on an otherwise black feather points to a male; plain, non-iridescent brown points to a female.
• Look at underparts color. Warm buffy-brown, unstreaked underparts with a faint pale eyebrow support a female identification.
• Compare overall size. This is a notably large blackbird, so even female flight feathers run larger than a typical Red-winged Blackbird or cowbird feather.
• Consider the setting. A feather found in open farmland, urban parking lots, marshes, or agricultural fields in the southern and southwestern U.S. through Central America fits this highly adaptable, expanding species.

Similar Species & How to Tell Them Apart

The Common Grackle, found across much of the eastern and central U.S., is notably smaller with a shorter, less deeply keeled tail and a bronze or purple (rather than strongly blue-purple) sheen. The Boat-tailed Grackle, restricted mainly to Gulf and Atlantic coastal marshes, is extremely similar and genuinely difficult to separate by feather alone; overlap zones along the Gulf Coast require caution, though Boat-tailed tends to run slightly smaller with a proportionally shorter tail and bill. Brewer's Blackbird is much smaller overall with a short, unkeeled tail, ruling it out quickly on size alone.

Where & When You'll Find Them

Great-tailed Grackles favor open country, agricultural fields, marshes, and increasingly urban and suburban areas across the southern and southwestern United States, Mexico, and much of Central America, with the range actively expanding northward in recent decades. They are largely non-migratory across most of their range, foraging boisterously in flocks on the ground. Molt occurs gradually after breeding in late summer, so feathers are most often found near roost trees, parking lots, and agricultural areas from July through early fall, though this common and conspicuous species can turn up feathers near its foraging grounds year-round.