Boat-tailed Grackles are large blackbirds with yellow to brown eyes, long, sharp black bills, and long tails. Although they may appear to be all black, in good light the Grackle displays an almost metallic sheen, the color of which varies from an iridescent purple to green. Females are brown, with a lighter cinnamon color to its head and chest. Grackles are the most common birds at Gatorland, and can be found throughout Florida as well as the Gulf and Atlantic coast regions of the United States. The Boat-tailed Grackle inhabits a wide variety of areas such as coastal salt marshes and barrier islands, ponds, streams, farmland, towns and cities.

Grackles eat small fish, frogs, snails, insects, shrimp, small bird, eggs and the unprotected nestlings of other birds, small reptiles, fruit, berries, grain, and seeds, as well as food scavenged from humans.

Depending on their habitat, Boat-tailed Grackles will build their nest with dried stalks, grasses, and cattails in marshy areas, and with leaves, moss, feathers, mud, and bits of debris when nesting in trees and bushes. Grackles lay 3 – 5 eggs which are incubated by the female and hatch within 15 days.

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