Grrrr - grackles

My yard has been covered with flocks of grackles today.  I couldn't get a good picture of them because every time I crept to the window with my camera they sensed my presence and flew away.  You can see a few of the braver ones who didn't leave in the the bad photo above.

Evidently, this is a migrating group that stopped for a break in my neighborhood.  I'm not talking a few grackles, or a dozen, or a hundred.  Hundreds of them.  Covering the whole yard.  Eating my feeders clean and making a racket.  What a nuisance.

This is what they look like:

In a way they're kind of attractive, with that irridescent color.  But they're pushy, mean and commandeering birds who take over the food sources and run everything else away.  They seem to have moved on for the evening, which makes me happy.

But however many I have at this house, it's nothing to the autumn migrating flocks which used to drive the residents to distraction in the last town I lived in.  My subdivision was a couple of miles down a road that passed in front of the high school.  There were several subdivisions off this road as well as many houses fronting on it.  Every fall enormous flocks of grackles would descend on Harrison Pike and cover every wire, tree, bush and yard.  It was surreal, like "The Birds" movie come to life.  They made a terrible racket, pooped everywhere and drove the residents nuts.  Then, suddenly, they would be gone.  It happened every year.

The grackle gangs will probably be back tomorrow.  Where are the feral cats when I need them?