Oh, yes...I'm talking about the last three pics, of that dark bird.

Is it a Magpie?

The beak looks like a crow or crow family ... I think the white tuft is just a small patch of white. Magpies have much more white on them.

Maybe a northern variety Brown Jay?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Jay

Hmmm. Wish I'd gotten a better look at it or more pics. Definitely not a bird that usually comes here. The Black-billed Magpie in my book...well, I don't remember any slashes of white on the side of the bird. Although, the bird DID seem to have some very slight blue tinges on the body feathers. The Brown Jay, that's a possibility, but then why would it have blue tinges? I'm just confused about this mysterious bird! Hope it comes back!

The bill structure and bird�s size/shape tells me this is a Jay. For some reason it�s a very dark Jay but if you look closely you can see blue tail and wing streaks. Definitely Jay.

Jay is what I thought when I saw it, but how strange to see a jay that's just about black. We always have the scrub-jays here, blue with grayish and whitish parts. It's a bit bigger than those. Maybe it IS a Brown Jay...that does go to the Valley in Texas...could get up here to southcentral Texas.

Perhaps a melanistic Scrub Jay?

-O-

I think this is some form of a Scrub-jay, in the last pic you can faintly see the necklace of streaks on the breast. This could be a juvenile bird which are darker overall and grayer than normal adult birds. A Brown Jay would be 5 inches bigger than a Scrub Jay and would have no hints of blue at all.

BN

I'm going with Scrub Jay that has a pigment problem.

So, maybe some kind of genetic abnormality then? I've seen tons of juvenile scrub-jays here over the years and none ever looked really dark. Well, anyway, it certainly was exciting to see a bird that unusual looking! I wonder...if that one mated with one of the local scrub-jays, what the offspring would look like.