You should join us on the bird threads.
Our yard is currently home to cardinals, bluejays, sparrows, mourning doves, scaly quail, one extremely no-nonsense pair of mockingbirds, and receives regular visits from starlings, robins, grackles, and the occasional canyon wren. (The open field across from my wife's office even boasts a substantial population of bobwhite quail. Yum!)
The mockingbirds lord it over all, as you'd expect from our fearless and protective state bird. It's their cheerful singing, their expert flying and their dauntlessness in defending their nests (and, yes, I've been dive-bombed!) that leads me to greatly admire mockingbirds. In many ways, the mockingbird makes a better symbol of American values than does the bald eagle: in defense of offspring and home they take on all comers: cats, dogs, hawks, even people! -- yet they prey only on pests and vermin. We could all learn a lot from these exemplary birds!
My wife and I find grackles to be highly amusing, especially when the boy-type grackles do their "puffy dance". The males are respnsible for most of the mess and the noise, as the girl-type grackles (the dull brown ones) spend most of their time hunting for food. Of course, too much of anything -- even birds -- is not beneficial; when the grackles get to be a nuisance due to overpopulation, the best way to deal with them is simply to hire professional hunters to shotgun their roosting-trees late at night when they are asleep. Still, between cats, cars, owls, and red-tailed hawks, the bird populations here in north central Texas are fairly stable. Pesticide use and habitat loss due to sprawl are far more dangerous to bird populations than any other threats.
Please add me to the Bird Ping list.