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Help with unidentified pair of brown birds in back yard

katiedidcottage

15 years ago

Yesterday and today I have seen a pair of smooth brown birds in my yard. They are perfectly colored light brown with no white in their feathers. The smoothness of the feathers and the size reminds me of doves, but their heads do not look anything like a dove. They may even be a little larger than doves.

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Comments (14)

grinder12000
15 years ago
Well - THAT narrows it down a little! LOL Shape of the head? a crown? Anything around the eyes? What was it doing feeder? berries? on the ground?

Where are you? I saw a Cedar Waxwing for the first time this year yesterday but that's not it.
katiedidcottage
Original Author
15 years ago
So I'll try to be a little more descriptive. It's hard because these birds just flowed through my back yard like royalty.

As they came from somewhere in the front of my house to the back, one was about 20 feet ahead of the other. They were about 30 feet off the ground and flew into the 30-40 foot tall trees in back of my house. I only saw them for a few seconds so its hard. They went from tree to tree heading slowly south from where they first landed, and then left the area a couple of houses down from my yard. They stayed high in the trees and did not come near the ground. Their flight was very elegant, gliding, and fast. They seemed to be about their business and were not swayed by anything that was going on around them.

I looked up cedar waxwing, and their bodies were similar to those. Their bodies were smooth and powerful looking and they didn't have the bellies like doves have. Their body was more like the cedar waxwing than the dove, and they were larger than a dove. The smoothness of the body feathers was identical to the way the cedar waxwings appear in the pictures I found online. They were identical to each other. One color only all over their body with no variation that I could see and the color was the color of coffee with a medium amount of cream.

I do not remember the shape of the head exactly, but just that it did not look like a dove and it did not look like the jay type head the way the cedar waxwings look, and it didn't look like a bird of prey.

I would guess that they were 10-12 inches from head to end of tail.

We dc not have many plain brown birds around that I can see. All that is in my area are bluebirds, chickadees, woodpeckers, cardinals, goldfinches, several other small finches, and then there are the blackbirds or crows and a hawk which just came into our area this year, and I saw a bluejay for the first time in this area since I moved here 3 years ago. There are also robins which are a darker brown, but not in this neighborhood.

The area I live in is the northwest corner of Georgia near Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Thanks for trying to help. That is all that I can come up with.
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renee_2006
15 years ago
Maybe a juvie starling.
zaffisc
15 years ago
Brown headed Cowbirds?
dandelion_2009
15 years ago
Sounds like a cow bird their brown large birds. I read that a long time ago cow birds followed the wagon trains. It's said that cow birds have their eggs in other birds nest and they let them feed and raise them.
katiedidcottage
Original Author
15 years ago
This is what the birds looked like. Its hard to believe that they would be in northwest Georgia, so it must be another kind of bird that looks like them.

Here is a link that might be useful: Abert's Towhee
bandjzmom
15 years ago
Hi there katiedid! I live in Ringgold, so I must be very close to you. My first impression, based upon your description, was female or juvie Cowbirds. Check out the Google images photo below and see if that looks like the bird.~~Angie

Here is a link that might be useful:
katiedidcottage
Original Author
15 years ago
Angie, that does look more like them than the pictures that I found which were more bi-colored. Are they big birds - close to 10 inches long from head to tip of tail? Are they dangerous to other songbirds? You do live near me. I'm in Flintstone.
bandjzmom
15 years ago
No, they aren't too large. 7.5 inches is what I am finding. They are parasitic brooders and lay their eggs inside the nests of other birds. That can cause some issues for the host species brood as the Cowbird chick often hatches first and therefore gets more food. They are federally protected birds though.~~A
renee_2006
15 years ago
Maybe a juvie cardinal. They look like female cardinals but have dark beaks.
katiedidcottage
Original Author
15 years ago
Haha, thanks for trying Renee, except you must have missed the part where I said that they are bigger than doves, and probably about 10-12 inches. They were definitely bigger than all of the other songbirds.
bandjzmom
15 years ago
Could they have been juvenile Starlings?

Here is a link that might be useful:
toomanysquirrels
15 years ago
How about a female Grackle
ga_karen
15 years ago
How about summer tangers or even brown thrashers? Those are both bigger birds and they sometimes fly thru here.
I've had a brown thrasher visiting my bird baths & feeders since we are in a severe drought area....they are coming out of the woods.

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