I was looking out at my bird feeder this morning, and the following bird showed up that I’ve never seen before. I can’t find anything that looks like this guy in my bird book, and I thought someone here might recognize it.
Here are some pictures I shot with my digicam, I hope they’re clear enough…the quality declines when I zoom:
As you can see, the bird is eating some suet that I have out, not the seeds in the feeder. The third picture has a house finch in the background so you have some size perspective.
http://www.birdsngarden.com/mockingbird.html
I would say mockingbird if the tail were a bit longer. The ones I have seen are brownish in color like these. But always a longer tail
Hmmm…the mockingbird is also missing the dark spot around the eye, and it has some white markings that the mystery bird lacks. Except for some shading on the wings, the mystery bird is pretty uniformly light brown, no streaking on the head or breast at all.
This is a brownish bird with a long, narrow beak, and comparing it with the house finch, it must be about 12 inches long. My vote is for a female grackle. However, female grackles are usually darker brown. It’s way too big for a warbler and the only other birds that big with such a beak are the grackles, mockingbirds, and thrashers. I’ts tail is too short for a great-tailed or boat-tailed grackle, so it would be a female common grackle. It lacks the white trim at the edge of its tail for a mockingbird. An adult mockingbird does not have streakings on its breast but it does lack the dark eyestripe; however, the color is right. I know some bird books show it as having a bluer color, but it is really a brownish bird. Check to see if you can see a white fringe around its tail.
We thought it might be a grackle, but the pictures in my book show the grackle with a yellowish/light eye and even the female is iridescent rather than drab brown like this bird is.
The other possibility is the female Brewer’s blackbird, but that would only be possible if the bird is way out of it’s range (which is normally the southwest, ranging into the Great Lakes region during summer)…I’m in northeast PA.
I’m trying to find a better picture of the female common grackle on the web…stoopid people keep putting up the male.
I was going to reply about the possibility of a juvenile grackle, but I checked my email and Dennis Forsythe, an ornithologist and expert birder, stated that it is a juvenile European starling. It sure fits that bird to a “T,” except for the size. I’ve mailed Dennis the picture showing both birds and eagerly await his reply.
The juvenile starling looks like a possibility except, as you noted, for the size (my book gives a size of 6" for an adult starling).
If behavior info helps any, today is the first time I’ve seen these bird at my feeder (which has only been up for about 2 weeks) and they arrived in a group of about 6. I’ve only seen one bird so far that could have been an adult starling, but I’m not sure…it had been raining and the bird was sort of rumpled so I couldn’t tell if it was iridescent. It could also have been a grackle.
Let me know what your friend says, and thank him for me.
It’s definitely a juvenile European Starling. The give-away is the proportions: the bird is stocky, with relatively long legs, a fairly stout bill, and a much shorter tail that any of the other “blackbirds” of North America. Your bird is starting to get some adult plumage, shown by the black feathers and white spots on the belly.
This site has some photos of juvenile Starlings. These are even younger than your bird, still showing some yellow at the corner of the mouth (typical of fledglings).
I looked again at the online field guide that barbitu8 linked to, and it gives the size of an adult starling as 7.5-8.5"…I don’t know why my field guide (Golden’s Birds of North America) gives it as 6". Considering it gives the size of a house finch as 5.25", I didn’t give the starling serious consideration. Maybe it’s time to buy a different guide book.
In any case, the pictures on the site that Colibri linked to has convinced me…definitely a juvenile starling.
That Golden Guide to Birds, if I recall, estimates the length of a bird in its natural stance. Other guides tend to give the length of a flat, stretched-out specimen. Because the Starling has a relatively much shorter tail than the House Finch, this makes their total length, especially in a natural stance, not so different, even though the Starling’s body is much larger. This is probably the reason for the discrepancy.
Well, now, Dennis has replied to my latest email with the 3d picture attached, and he said that the decurved bill makes it look more like a mockingbird. The bill in picture 3 sure looks decurved. What do you guys think?
It seems to me in the third photo the bird just has some food in its bill (as in photo 2), making it look a little odd. You can see in photo 1 that the bill is not at all decurved.
The bird is most definitely not a Mockingbird, which has a much longer tail, different proportions and stance, and differs in several plumage characters as well, in particular the white spots on wings and tail.
I am 100% sure the bird in Jadis’ photos is a juvenile European Starling (assuming the photo was taken in North America!).
Certainly the markings match those of a juvenile starling(European) very closely indeed; the bird appears to be a little longer in the leg than I would normally expect to see (and has a posture more like that of the (related)Mynah, but I’m not sure what the juvenile Mynah looks like) and It’s very difficult to judge scale, but it does look a bit on the large side to me, even(especially) with the finch for comparison).
In the third picture, the beak only looks curved because of the angle of the light…in the other two, where the picture is a more direct profile, you can see that the beak looks much straighter. Having seen them in person, I can assure you that the beak is straight and not curved.
And yes, Colibri…northeast PA is definitely in North America.
Well, it looks that way in the third picture, but the point is that it doesn’t in the other two. When you examine the thrid picture more closely, you can see that it’s only the highlight that you first notice.
