Crossword-Solution: GRACKLES 8 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 15

The Orioles and the Meadow Larks and the Grackles and the Bobolinks all belong to the Blackbird family.

The starlings, rooks, and jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the calls of our grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers, and chipping sparrows.

Hark to the grackles' chirr Whene'er an elm-bough swings! From off yon ash-limb sere Out-thrust amid green branches, Keen like an azure spear A kingfisher down launches.

The third warm day, and, behold, all the principal performers come rushing in,--song sparrows, cow blackbirds, grackles, the meadowlark, cedar-birds, the phœbe-bird, and, hark! what bird laughter was that? the robins, hurrah! the robins! Not two or three, but a score or two of them; they are following the river valley north, and they stop in the trees from time to time, and give vent to their gladness.

The woodthrush has a late nest in a young elm; her first family was eaten by the blue-jays just after the hatching,--so were the young grosbeaks in a nearby tree, but the cedar waxwings were slain and eaten by the cannibalistic grackles.