I have never seen this before! I was out in the back yard while ago and there was a huge flock of Grackles landed in the trees beside our yard. There were probably close to 200 of them. They made so much noise that you could hardly hear yourself think. After 10 minutes or so, they all took off at once and it sounded like a small explosion. My wife even heard it in the house and wanted to know who shot a gun!
Grackles are very noisy birds, but cannot say that I have heard them make the noise of a gunshot? I had a doe and her fawn in my pasture this morning. They come for a few licks of salt.
They congregate in trees in my neighborhood like that too. It's really bad when they settle in for the night on trees, phone lines and the lighted business signs at the intersections around here, the noise and you certainly don't walk under them. The sudden rush of air from all those wings does create quite a loud shock wave when they all take off at once.
We don't normally have that many around here. These had come through on their migration route. Normally we only see 3 or 4 at a time.
I had a large group of bluejays when we lived in the country that made so much noise I heard it in the house. We had a woods in our backyard and what a commotion. we have weigela bushes on one side of the patio and the sparrows are all meeting there and when they all start chattering it is quite noisy too. I don't know what the attraction is of these bushes but it happens every year and it seems like we have more young sparrows than ever before. You actually have to be careful or you will have a sparrow fly into you when you walk closeby..the dogs get all excited to see that many and they wait for them to come out but have never caught one. Hopefully no one was shooting at your birds when you were right there Capt Kirk....you just never know about some people.
It is a large black bird that has a bluish/purplish sheen to it. One of the larger birds but not as big as a crow. They really make a racket when there are several of them together.
