How to Get Rid of Grackles From Feeders, Yards, & Trees (10 BEST Tips)

grackles

To get rid of grackles we need to understand them a bit. Grackles can harm small to large areas of crops and tend to feed off of areas that have seeds, insects, minnows, frogs, and eggs of different animals. They can be a nuisance particularly because they tend to travel in large, noisy groups. 

Grackles prefer to stay in flocks, so it is possible to find hundreds to thousands of grackles circling your home. Because Grackles are both intelligent and stubborn, it can be tough to get rid of them. 

We will share several steps you can take to get rid of Grackles from your property, but first we will briefly describe them so you can be sure dealing with a Grackle problem rather than crows, blackbirds, cow birds, or some other similar looking birds that Grackles are often confused with.

What Are Grackles?

Grackles have long dark bills with a long tail. They have deep yellow eyes and dark glossy feathers. They tend to nest in dense pine trees where they are well concealed. They can be found close to water and man-made structures and shrubbery. 

They often steal food from bird feeders, scaring smaller birds away. They steal food from other birds in general too. As they are commonly found in North America, they tend to look for food in residential areas on lawns and farms.

They do have predators who they seem to try to stay away from including a Red-tailed Hawks, Cooper’s Hawks, and Short-eared Owls. There are also predators that will eat grackles’ eggs—namely, Fox squirrels, snakes and raccoons.

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Getting Rid of Grackles

One of the most common things that attracts grackles to your property is bird feeders. Grackles, like most birds, like bird seed. The problem is that they will crowd out many of the smaller song bird you might also be trying to feed.

How to Get Rid of Grackles From Your Bird Feeder

If you have a bird feeder that attracts Grackles, try removing the bird feeder for a while and make sure to use a feeder that goes by weight or has tubes that feed the smaller birds. Small birds like sparrows and songbirds get scared away from eating the seeds you set out for them. You might not mind grackles eating the feed you put out, but grackles tend to scare other smaller birds away and grackles can bully smaller birds for more food. 

Scare Away Grackles But Keep Other Birds Around

So, you will need to take the measures to help allow smaller birds eat the seeds while also preventing grackles from getting all of the food. Specially designed bird feeders prevent the grackles (and other larger birds) from trying to eat all of the food from the bird feeder because heavier birds are too heavy for the feeder and cannot get the seeds from the tubes like the smaller birds can.

Bird feeders tend to be one of the main reasons why grackles will come around a home that doesn’t have crops nearby (many farmers are quire familiar with seeing grackles around their property).

You should clean up any spilled seeds that have fallen to the ground from the feeder by raking them up. Reduce the amount of seeds you place in the bird feeder so you can maintain a smaller amount of birds near your home.

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How To Get Grackles Out of Your Yard

To keep grackles out of your yard, you sometimes need more general strategies than simply changing your bird feeder. There are other ways to get rid of grackles that include items that will intimidate the grackles from hanging around. For crops or gardens, scarecrows can work as a deterrent. They work particularly well with other types of grackle deterrents.

You can also use Terror Eyes, which look like oversized falcon or owl eyes. Terror Eyes should be hung around your crops, yard, bird feeder area, or wherever you are trying to keep grackles away from. The appearance of these balls tend to scare away grackles. 

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Irri Tape is another good grackle prevention choice. It is a holographic bird tape that flashes the sunlight into birds’ viewing and blinds them from coming near your crops, garden, or wherever else you are trying to keep them away from. It also makes noise when it flaps around in the wind, making enough sound to make the grackles not want to come near it. A downside to Irri Tape, however, is that it will likely scare away other birds too, which you might not want to do.

Use a Mega Blaster Pro trick bird by letting out distressed calls, making grackles think that they shouldn’t go near the area because it sounds dangerous to them. By adding multi-sensory visual effects to your property, you will be able to keep grackles from coming around and feeding off your land but some of these deterrent may also scare away birds you are trying to keep around like songbirds.

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If these deterrents don’t work for some reason, then you can try making things taste bad to the grackles. Bird Stop can be sprayed on berries and other fruits to make them taste awful for grackles (and other birds). If grackles decided to feed on any of your crops or garden plants, they will likely stop soon as they will think it is something else or it simply tastes too bad for them to bother with.

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For small crops or gardens, you can use bird netting to help protect the area from these grackles. With a combination of some of or all of these items, you shouldn’t see grackles hanging out anymore. Professional grackle controllers will simply often use the same visual grackle deterrent techniques that we have discussed. Grackles may be stubborn but if you give them a number of reasons not to come to your property, they will likely disappear.

Once the grackles disappear this doesn’t mean you should immediately remove the deterrents because grackles might return to the area, and you will start all over again. Since grackles travel in large flocks, there will always be a new grackles you will need to deal with. Take all of the precautions needed to keep grackles away and keep your crops or garden growing health and your yard looking nice.

How to Get Rid of Grackles From a Tree

If you have grackles that won’t leave a specific tree, you can implement some of the same yard grackle deterrent strategies that we discussed above but adapt them to the tree that the grackles are frequenting. This means you can hang Predator Eye Balloon type deterrents, Hawk or Owl decoys, and reflective tape from your tree branches.

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Categorized as Grackles

By David Jackson

I enjoy learning about new pest control strategies and sharing what I learn at NeverPest.com. I aim to create a reliable resource for people dealing with all sorts of pest issues.

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