Looking to Rid Your Yard of Grackles? We Have Some Solutions!

Here at the store, we hear a lot of complaints about loud and rowdy Common Grackles, especially at this time of year. During the spring and summer months grackles pair up to nest and raise young, so they aren’t coming to our yards in large flocks. But, as they prepare for fall migration, they can amass in the hundreds and even thousands, foraging for food and scaring away all the smaller and less boisterous birds.

Grackles eat just about anything we serve up at our feeders, which is why they love our yards so much. One seed they don’t particularly like is safflower. If grackles are devouring all your seed and not allowing the other birds to eat, you may want to temporarily change out the seed you normally feed and replace it with safflower. For the most part European Starlings don’t like it either, so it is a real win, win seed! Here at the store safflower is available in loose seed, seed cylinders, and seed cakes.

Other ways to discourage grackles from feeding in your yard is to put out our Eliminator Squirrel-Proof Feeder, which can be set to close down on large birds, preventing them from getting to the seed. Tube feeders and some of our other feeders can also be outfitted with cages that don’t allow larger birds to get to the seed.

You can also decide to wait them out. In September, grackles are just beginning to gather into large flocks, but by mid-to-late-October those birds will be flying off to their wintering grounds. Common Grackles don’t migrate far. In fact, if you miss the grackles when they are gone, you only need to travel as far New Jersey to visit them!

We hope you find these suggestions helpful!