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Need ID

15 years ago

My sister and I were birdwatching yesterday (mid-state Illinois on the Mississippi river) and we saw this bird. It was feeding on the ground, it was with some grackles (common) but it didn't fly away when they did. It has a gold-colored eye and unusual stripes of different colors on it's head/face. Not sure if this is an immature grackle or not. Here are some photos. Can you help?

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Comments (7)

alan_la
15 years ago
It looks like a Brown-headed Cowbird to me.
jeanner
15 years ago
It's a rusty blackbird in non-breeding colors, probably a female. They are in decline, Audubon has them on their "watch" list. There's more info at the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rusty Blackbird
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terrene
15 years ago
How exciting! Apparently this species has declined 85-95% over the past few decades.

I had a pair of Rusty Blackbirds come through my back yard this past fall. They were rustling around in the leaf litter, flipping leaves. At first I didn't pay much notice, but then realized this was a black bird I'd never seen before, because they had a smaller pointy beak, rather than the big sort of hooked beaks on grackles and crows.

It's not a great pic, but I did manage to snap one of the pair -
ginni77
Original Author
15 years ago
Wow...thanks you guys. I'm going to go read that link now. I'm thrilled that it could be a rare bird. The pic in that link sure looks exactly like the one we saw.

After seeing Alan's ideas, I looked up brown-headed cowbird (I've seen tons of those, they are very common around here) and it did look like it but there were "similar looking" birds on the Audubon site and I was almost convinced it was a Brewer's Blackbird. But the female didn't look nearly as much like this pic of mine as this Rusty does!!

Thank you all so much! I can always count on the good people here for ID's. You guys really know your birds!!
alan_la
15 years ago
I agree It's a Rusty Blackbird, I've only ever seen one and it was twenty years ago in Malibu.
terrene
15 years ago
Definitely not the Cowbird, they have bigger beaks. In my 2 pictures, the male has his head in the leaves, but I distinctly remember much smaller and pointier beaks than any Blackbird I've ever seen. The beaks were what made the birds stand out.

Yes yours does look a bit like the female Brewer's Blackbird, but I had ruled out the Brewer's because they are not resident in the northeast US (Massachusetts).
janie_may
15 years ago
Cowbird was my guess but how EXCITING that it's a rare bird and a lifer for you (and NOT a cowbird!!). Very pretty bird.

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