Grackles are the state bird of Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I always liked them because of their strangely iridescent black feathers. I used to date a girl who had dyed her hair just the same color, and I would sometimes call her gracklehead, which for some reason, she didn't like.

We never got them in the numbers you apparently do. For that, we had starlings, which would come in flocks that would blot out the sky, literally - and who my grandfather hated passionately because starling poo was hard to clean off his car.