I spend a lot of time on the computer sitting at the dining room table in front of sliding glass doors onto the deck and the ocean. I put oatmeal on one of the pillars on the deck for the grackles. It takes them about 1 day to figure out I am back and start showing up for the free food. If I don't get it out there quick enough they sit and yell at me, I've had guests who said they woke them up in the morning yelling for oatmeal.

Grackles are funny birds, they are flock birds that are rarely seen alone. Yet, they don't get along very well at all. They fight all the time and when another one lands nearby they stick their noses in the air and pose. It's some kind of dominance thing and the males do it more than the females. If sticking your nose in the air doesn't make the others leave the food then a fight happens. It doesn't seem like they really hurt each other but it looks pretty fierce sometimes.

I'm endlessly amused by their antics. The males will all be standing on the food with their noses in the air while the females sneak around under them and eat. The females are smaller and brown not blue-black like the males. In the top picture you can see one female sneaking in for some oatmeal while the others are nose up.

Yesterday Mimi came running up from the beach to get a picture of a Mexican navy ship that was passing by. We don't know what that big thing is on the front of it, we guessed a lot. Maybe they stand on it and lower it over the drug dealer's boats, who knows? The Mexican navy spends all of its time looking for the boats from South America dropping off bales of dope. They have helicopters as well and sometimes there are army patrols that walk down the beach.

This is a picture of pelicans flying off at sunset. Beautiful, no?