Researchers to Trap Grackles in 7 San Angelo Area Parks

Angelo State University researchers will begin trapping grackles at seven City parks on Tuesday, Dec. 1, in an effort to learn more about the birds’ roosting behaviors.

Dr. Ben Skipper, an assistant professor of biology at ASU, and two undergraduate students plan to trap 30 grackles in fine-mesh nets and attach radio transmitters that will allow them to locate and follow the birds through the winter. The City has granted the researchers access to Glenmore, Mountainview, North Concho, Picnic Bend, Jaime Padron, Producers and Rio Concho parks.

The mesh nets will be erected between two poles placed near waste receptacles and will remain under constant surveillance when open. After trapping is complete each morning, the nets and poles will be disassembled and removed from the park. The trapping will cease once 30 birds have been marked.

In a memo requesting access, Dr. Skipper described the great-tailed grackle as a large, gregarious blackbird whose presence has exploded in the southwestern United States over the past century. In some places, the population of urban grackles has grown so large the birds constitute a public nuisance. This is particularly true of winter roosts, where thousands of grackles may congregate, chattering noisily and leaving accumulations of feces.

Skipper wrote that, to date, managing the birds’ roosting behaviors has been reactionary, relegated to noisemakers and pyrotechnics to disperse flocks. Proactive management requires a greater understanding of the factors that elicit roosting behaviors, which is what’s driving his research, he added.