Grackle Mortality

     On the morning of May 26, 2015, I saw an adult red-tailed hawk flying over New Holland, Pennsylvania with an animal in its talons.  I've been seeing red-tails in this town for years, but this was a situation not often seen.  The hawk landed on the flat top of a utility pole.  With my 16 power binoculars I could see the hawk pulling the black feathers from a young grackle.  When most of the feathers were off the bird and floated away on the breeze, the red-tail took flight with the dead bird in its claws.  It didn't eat its victim, so I guessed the hawk was taking the grackle to its young in its open, stick nest in a tree top somewhere in town.
     Waves of purple grackles pour into Lancaster County, as elsewhere in northeastern North America, during March.  By early April those great floods of blackbirds disperse into smaller colonies of mated pairs around coniferous trees in suburban areas and parks where they intend to raise young.  During April, males court their mates by raising their feathers to show off their beautiful, iridescent-purple plumage.  Each female, meanwhile, constructs her nursery among the sheltering, needled boughs of evergreen trees.  Young grackles hatch early in May and fledge toward the end of that month.  All this seems idyllic, but it isn't because grackles, like all forms of life, have mortality, especially among their eggs and young.
     Nesting pairs of the related American crows and blue jays raid grackle cradles to consume their eggs or young, or feed them to their own youngsters.  Several parent grackles dive at the marauders to scare them away, but usually to little avail.
     Tree-climbing raccoons, opossums, gray squirrels, black rat snakes and other predators also take a toll on grackle eggs and small chicks.  Again the adult grackles attempt to defend their helpless offspring, but usually are not successful, losing some of their young to those predators.
     Young grackles, like most birds, are not strong or accomplished fliers when they first leave their nests.  Predators see that lack of experience and equate it with easy pickings.  American crows, red-tailed hawks, Cooper's hawks, great horned owls, house cats and other types of predators take advantage of blundering young grackles, and other kinds of birds just out of their nurseries.
     But predation of the less adapted creatures has its advantages to nature in general.  Predators get meals from those critters.  There is not enough food and cover for all those animals of every species.  Most animals produce more young than the environment can sustain, to make up for losses.  And only the best adapted individuals live long enough to reproduce.  But, of course, try to tell all that to the animals that fall victim to predation.  And, besides, grackles raid smaller birds' nests to eat their eggs or young, so too many grackles in one area is not good for smaller species of birds.   
     So our fledgling grackle didn't mature to be a strong flier fast enough to avoid being caught by the red-tailed hawk.  And, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time with its temporary weaknesses.  So it became a meal for a sharp-eyed, discerning hawk, a hawk we enjoy seeing soaring on high.
     And that is the way with nature.  Some life lives long enough to reproduce, while other life becomes meals for other kinds of creatures.  Every critter benefits nature in some way, even by losing its life.