Are Cuervos Grackles?

The first morning of our recent stay in Mexico we were woken early by birds making the oddest sounds on the roof of our palapa; they sounded like experimental violinists one second, the next they were purely percussion. From the string of animated sounds I was hearing I was imagining the most colorful tropical birds.

Later I saw the source of the noise, birds black as oil with yellow eyes, whose bodies seemed boneless as they contorted their necks into positions far more expressive than I was expecting. When in flight they seemed held aloft more from their own flimsiness than any power of wing, their feathers scant as they flopped through the air like burned rags.

I was enchanted by those creepy birds. I kept asking people what they were in my poor Spanish. I was told they were parritos, palomas, and finally cuervos. The bartender was the one who told me this while slowly underlining the word Cuervo on the bottle of tequila he was holding. I understand that cuervo means crow, and these birds had neither the size or density of crows, and certainly a range of notes and gestures far exceeding their Northern brothers.

I kept meaning to look them up in a book but now I believe I won't have to, Daniel Meeter wrote about grackles the other day, and I'm hoping that's what they are because grackle is a good word for those strange birds. They were all over the place in the Yucatan. And now they're here.