Greater Antillean Grackle
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| Greater Antillean Grackle | ||||||||||||||
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 Puerto Rico subspecies
Q. n. brachypterus |
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| Quiscalus niger (Boddaert, 1783) |
The Greater Antillean Grackle (Quiscalus niger) is a grackle found throughout the Greater Antilles and the Cayman Islands as well as smaller, nearby islands. Like all Quiscalus grackles, it is a rather large, gregarious bird. The 27 cm long male is glossy black with a large tail; the 24 cm long female has a smaller tail and is similar in colour but less glossy than the male. It lives largely in heavily settled areas.
It has a variety of local names such as Cling-cling or variations of this name in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. It is commonly known as Chango in Puerto Rico or as Chinchilín (onomatopoeic for its song) in the Dominican Republic.
There are seven subspecies, each restricted to one island or island group. they differ from the nominate Hispaniola subspecies niger in size, bill size, and colour tone.
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2006) Species factsheet: Quiscalus niger Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 22/11/2006.
- Bond, James. Birds of the West Indies. (fifth edition). Houghton-Mifflin, 1993.
- Jaramillo and Burke, New World Blackbirds ISBN 0-7136-4333-1
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