Please.
While I was in Austin, Texas, these birds were everywhere. Millions (okay, thousands) of them. Every evening around sundown they would let loose with a cacophony of birdscreech, which I understand tended to drive the locals crazy. Personally, I loved it, but I did see how it could get old.
Anyway, they were sort of similar to the blackbirds around here, but a little larger, lighter in color (not shiny black), and they had larger beaks. They did exhibit the same bold behavior around people. I looked at pictures of blackbirds and none fit the bill.
Anyone who has ever been there knows what I’m talking about. The birds are, to say the least, obvious.
Peace,
mangeorge.
Almost certainly they were European Starlings.
Then they should be named Clarice.
Almost certainly Great-tailed Grackles. A male and a female are shown in the photo. From your description of them being lighter and not as shiny black I would guess you were seeing females.
They are very common in southern Texas, and larger than the typical blackbirds of most of the rest of the country (including Starlings, which are smaller than most blackbirds). They are also extremely noisy when going to roost at night, calling loudly with a variety of screechs and hooting noises. They are common around here too, and also regarded as a pest.
Every year or two for a while, I had to look up starlings and grackles, chiefly because the feathers of the starlings changes from winter to summer. The starlings’ tails are relatively short, and the grackles’ tails are quite long, like mourning doves’ tails. I could bore you with colors of eyes and feet, but the main difference, in both seasons, is the spots on the back. The starlings are speckled, and the grackles aren’t. They’re both aggressive at feeders. The starlings have “open bill probing,” which means they can jab the bill into the ground, then open it. It gives a big advantage in hunting grubs. In the lawn, you’ll see holes that look like a pencil was stabbed in and wiggled around.
I’ve noticed that Starlings and the Great-Tailed Grackles tend to hang out in the same areas in suburbia, typically around shopping center parking lots. But I’ve noticed that the Grackles prefer to sit in trees, but the Starlings like to sit on wires.
Parking your car under a tree when Grackles are around is a mistake you won’t make again.
ETA: the one saving grace of the Grackles is how the males behave when they’re trying to impress a female. This happens extremely frequently for some reason. Maybe the same reason there are so many of the damn things around.
Hmm. I grew up in Texas, among starlings and grackles, and from the description of the crepuscular behavior it sounds more like starlings to me, although it wouldn’t surprise me *very *much if it were grackles.
I would assume that the OP would already be familiar with starlings in California, while Great-tailed Grackles would be new to him. Both Starlings and Grackles are very noisy going to roost in the evening. If anything, grackles are individually louder.
If they’re larger than blackbirds, I think that rules out Starlings - they’re usually slightly smaller.
I have to think they’re not starlings on that theory that everybody should know what a starling looks like. They’re one of the most ubiquitous birds in the Western Hemisphere, if not elsewhere.
This may be IMHO material, but are there really people who do not know what starlings look like?
Aside from the characteristics of the individual bird, can you tell anything from the size and flight patterns of the roosting groups? This YouTube fragment shows starlings roosting; in fall, in area’s with enough starlings, thousands, even millions of individual birds move in the sky like a massive black swirl of smoke. Anyway, that’s how I know them from the Netherlands. If there are fewer starlings around, the roosting is less impressive and can look like this (the video said a few grackles roosted in with the starlings.
To finish off: a video’s of two talking starlings. Once can say “gimme a kiss” , and the sound of lips pursing, “and hey buddy, what you doing” so well I actually wonder if that video is a fraud. The other one mimics the “melody” of speech so well, but interprets in birdese.
I’ve looked at too many photos now, and it’s messed with my memory of those birds I saw in Texas. I think I may have a picture or two in my camera. I’ll look when I get home. Time to edit anyway.
Aside, inspired by **Maastricht’s link;
Do birds fly for the joy of it?
This confused me a little bit - my experience with blackbirds is with Grackles, Crows, and Ravens, plus the infrequent Red-Winged Blackbird. Saying larger than a blackbird indicates a damn big bird to me. But I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen one of these that goes just by the name “blackbird.” Is that a specific one?
Damar (the second one) does seem to know his own name, though.
Here is a photo of a blackbird (Turdus merula) on the right of a European starling (Sturnus vulgaris). The blackbird is female and thus brown in colour. A mature specimen will grow to about 10 inches in comparison to the starling’s 8.5 inches.
In contrast a carrion crow (Corvus corone) is about 18 inches in length.
The blackbird to which Mangetout refers is the European blackbird, a single species - turdus (heh heh) merula, which is indeed slightly larger than a European starling.
Austin, TX, yep, grackles. When visiting, Im pretty taken with them, too, as we don’t have them in great numbers here in NC. Since it is Austin, I figgered there had to be some hip reference to anything outstanding in the city, and wasn’t disappointed,
found a swell painting by Austin artist Ellen Gibbs,“Grackle Con Cheeto”. She even has T-shirts with the image for grackle fans.
Here’s a nice side by side comparison of “Black birds” on the Texas Department of Health website; scroll down to the bottom.
Must-have-tee-shirt.
Thanks, elelle, for costing me 17 bucks. 
S’OK, Hon, you and me both; never saw it before googlin’ around for an answer to this thread, and loved it too.