Velvety iridescence of a boat-tailed grackle stands out richly against a green background & its perch of curled dried leaves.
A Boat Tailed Grackle is perched on an aquatic plant no longer green but attractively dried , shriveled and full of interesting texture in Florida's wetlands. Its black velvety plumage with dark blue and purple iridescence looks striking against a soft green background. Grackles are a most ubiquitous species but there sheer numbers do not take away from how amazing they look when the light changes. Audubon was quite taken with the characteristic iridescence of grackles describing the Purple Grackle ( Quiscalus versicolor, Viell) (or Common Crow-Blackbird as it was known then) as he observed them in Louisiana where much to the irritation of farmers they devoured young corn plants. His description is not unlike the purple grackles brethren ...the boat-tailed grackle!! See below Audubon's words: “No sooner has the cotton or corn planter begun to turn his land into brown furrows, that the Crow-Blackbirds are seen sailing down from the skirts of the woods, alighting in the fields, and following his track along the ridges of newly-turned earth, with an elegant and elevated step, which shews them to be as fearless and free as the air through which they wing their way. The genial rays of sun shine on their silky plumage, and offer to the ploughman’s eye such rich and varying tints, that no painter, however gifted, could ever imitate them. The coppery bronze, which in one light shews its rich gloss, is, by the least motion of the bird, changed in a moment to brilliant and deep azure, and again, in the next light, becomes refulgent sapphire or emerald-green.”
Size: 3456px × 5184px
Location: South Florida USA
Photo credit: © Judy Lovell-Janthina Images / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: animal, avian, background, bird, black, blue, boat, boat-tailed, br, bright, colors, common, dark, dried, fern, florida, grackle, green, iridescence, iridescent, nuisance, rich, shining, shiny, tailed, ubiquitous, velvety, wetland, wild, wilderness
