Birds in the park!

We take our dog Daisy to a small local park that has a bird sanctuary with two ponds, lots of trees, long reeds/grasses and open space, plus paths to walk or ride a bike on. We have seen so many different birds there. This was a new one for us, a female boat tailed grackle. Steve had recently discovered the male boat tail grackles there, they have all black feathers and a distinctive call. 

Sometimes we record the bird songs with the BirdNet app to help us figure out what we are looking at...and this time I used the Cornell Lab's Merlin app to upload this photo and find out exactly what this bird was! Very cool. The extra photos include a different view of the female boat tailed grackle and one of Tom Bennett Park.