Quiscalus
The avian genus Quiscalus contains seven of the 11 species of grackles, gregarious passerine birds in the icterid family. They are native to North and South America.
The genus was named and described by the French ornithologist Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot in 1816. The type species was subsequently designated as the common grackle by the English zoologist George Robert Gray in 1840. The genus name comes from the specific name Gracula quiscula coined by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus for the common grackle. From where Linnaeus obtained the word is uncertain, but it may come from the Carib word Quisqueya, meaning "mother of all lands", for the island of Hispaniola.
The genus contains six extant species and one extinct species:
Image | Scientific name | Common name | Distribution |
Quiscalus major | Boat-tailed grackle | Florida and the coastal Southeastern United States | |
Quiscalus quiscula | Common grackle | North America | |
Quiscalus mexicanus | Great-tailed grackle | northwestern Venezuela and western Colombia and Ecuador in the south to Minnesota in the north, to Oregon, Idaho, and California in the west, to Florida in the east, with vagrants occurring as far north as southern Canada | |
Quiscalus nicaraguensis | Nicaraguan grackle | Nicaragua and northernmost Costa Rica | |
Quiscalus niger | Greater Antillean grackle | the Greater Antilles | |
Quiscalus lugubris | Carib grackle | Colombia east to Venezuela and northeastern Brazil |
Slender-billed grackle extinct †