Bird identification

[Callie]

another vote for baby blackbird - look at his tiny tail !

 

[fen_boy]

another vote for baby blackbird - look at his tiny tail !

look at 'her' tiny tail.

e2a (I think)

 

[Callie]

Why?!
I think all the baby ones are brown? Maybe?

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

Have found this:

Young blackbirds (sometimes called juveniles) can be confused with thrushes or even robins, due to their speckly brown feathers. They're often a rich, reddish brown colour, especially on their breasts.
You'll often see them following their parents around, pestering for food.
Baby blackbirds usually leave the nest before they can actually fly, and hop and scramble their way around trees and bushes.

If you look in a book, you might be fooled into thinking that birds change from one plumage into another overnight.
It's not that simple.
Here's a photo of a young male blackbird. He's getting rid of the first set of feathers he grew while in the nest, with the much darker, dull-black ones coming through from underneath. He's at that awkward, 'teenage' in-between stage, but it's a great chance for us to see how birds replace their feathers.

bollocks! Can't link the pictures but here's a page on blackbirds

http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/b/blackbird/feathers.aspx

 

[Hocus Eye.]

Aaaaaaaargggghhhhh! Another zombie thread brought back from the dead.

 

[gentlegreen]

I hope my baby blackbirds have made it to that size.
I had a terrible early morning when they fledged. There were about 4 cats in the garden, and then the male started getting worried about the magpies and making a specific alarm call.

I only saw one live baby. I had to rescue it from the woodpile and it insisted then on charging down to the middle of the garden on the ground and dived into a pile of junk. I felt afterwards I maybe should have lifted it onto the pergola near to where the mother was calling ...

I think it was the same male I saw yesterday singing from the top of his tree with the female alongside ..

 

[purves grundy]

The interesting bird on this thread though is the OP. It really does have the jizz of a young dipper...

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

The interesting bird on this thread though is the OP. It really does have the jizz of a young dipper...

Well I do apologise for putting up a mere juvenile blackbird

and it was a shit picture as well, but I got some good pictures of a sparrow (I think!) to redeem myself.

 

[purves grundy]

I didn't mean it in a nasty, dismissive sense - just in an ID challenge way
Aww, they're great house sparrow pics. It's a young bird - you've got close enough for us to see the bright yellow gape flange at the base of the beak That'll disappear in a few weeks.

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

I didn't mean it in a nasty, dismissive sense - just in an ID challenge way
Aww, they're great house sparrow pics. It's a young bird - you've got close enough for us to see the bright yellow gape flange at the base of the beak That'll disappear in a few weeks.

I know you didn't purves, I was joking

ah, the beak will change colours? I wondered why when I was googling pictures of sparrows they had different colour beaks

That's at my sister's house. There's three of them, so I don't know if they're siblings. Are parents much bigger?

 

[purves grundy]

I know you didn't purves, I was joking

yeah yeah, we're gonna have to have a long chat sometime soon, you & me grrrr

ah, the beak will change colours? I wondered why when I was googling pictures of sparrows they had different colour beaks

That's at my sister's house. There's three of them, so I don't know if they're siblings. Are parents much bigger?

Yeah, it'll darken a bit, and the bright yellow bit of skin at the base of the bill will disappear. That's just an extension of the bright yellow gape they have in the nest so parents know where to stick the food in - you know that 'in the nest' footage they have on Springwatch etc when the parent comes in with a beakful of caterpillars and you see the bright yellow mouths of the young open. Most birds, at least the smaller perching birds like spadgers, are usually around full size when they leave the nest so you wan't tell they're juveniles by size, usually just by plumage.

 

[Callie]

Heh gape flange

 

[RoyReed]

I took this a couple of weeks ago in Cornwall and had to look it up. I didn't realise we had little egrets in the UK.


Little Egret by RoyReed, on Flickr

 

[purves grundy]

Lovely photo - yep, began to establish themselves proper just over a decade ago.

And now, we can welcome great white egrets to Blighty! http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/18118985
Coming over ere, nicking our fish

 

[alsoknownas]

Cerulean Warbler

Guess what book I just read?

 

[bi0boy]

Anyone know what this is? Doesn't seem to be in my bird book

Excuse the blurriness it's a crop of a big zoom because it didn't look like it would stick around if I got any closer.

 

[Leafster]

A Wheatear?

Wheatear

 

[bi0boy]

A Wheatear?

Wheatear

Thanks. The one in my bird book looks like this which I looked at but decided was too orange.

 

[Corax]

Thanks. The one in my bird book looks like this which I looked at but decided was too orange.

View attachment 104219

Yep. That's definitely a bird.

I know because it hasn't got a fluffy cottontail, so it's not a bunny.

 

[Hulot]

Nuthatch? Most illustrations show the colours to be more vivid, but you do see pictures where the breast is more beige (as in the photo above) than the brighter yellowy colour that is often depicted. The black eye stripe looks right, anyway.

 

[Leafster]

Thanks. The one in my bird book looks like this which I looked at but decided was too orange.

View attachment 104219

I often have difficult with Bird ID books as the colours appear slightly different. It's even worse when it comes to nondescript little brown birds!

 

[Leafster]

Nuthatch? Most illustrations show the colours to be more vivid, but you do see pictures where the breast is more beige (as in the photo above) than the brighter yellowy colour that is often depicted. The black eye stripe looks right, anyway.

I did think about a Nuthatch but I don't think they ever stand so upright.

 

[bluescreen]

Looks like a shrike. I don't know about shrikes, because we don't get them where I live.
Laniidae - Shrikes | BTO - British Trust for Ornithology

 

[Sirena]

Wheatear (sorry, late to the party.....)