Hi Brenda , the mystery bird could be about 8-9 inches but in a slim way not a chunky way. It really gave my bluebirds a working over too! LOL...It seems to have taken a liking to a particular part of my chainlink fence that happens to be close to the nestbox so this upsets the bluebirds. It wouldn't give in to the blues either it kept its ground. Which usually the blues run other birds away from their box but this pretty bird wont go. The way it twitters i thought maybe a swallow but it just doesnt look right and it does look like a king bird shape. You may be right about it being a kingbird because i looked at some pics of kingbirds to see if it could be and i really think you are right. But it says the kingbird we should have has a white belly and this one has a yellow belly. It also puffs its head feathers up when it gets upset so it looks like it has a fuzzy hat on. Its really cute and holds itself very straight and perches on the fence to see insects in the grass. Do you think it could be a western kingbird that got lost? I saw it flying with the group of sparrows that are here migrating so maybe it flew here with them. I didn't see it here all summer, just this past week when all the little different sparrows started showing up. What if it got with the wrong group of migrants? I think they go to south America dont they? Maybe mine can go to Florida and keep warm. I haven't seen it today but there has been a big gray hawk hanging around all day so i haven't seen many birds at all today. I dont blame them, its a big gray hawk that i thought was an owl at first but then i seen it was a hawk. So i guess that was my bird sighting today! LOL.... Thanks Brenda Bonnie

Took these a while back and never got around to posting them, ran across them again today and thought I'd see if someone could help me figure out what kind of bird/raptor this is, some photos are in a set, but there are a few more which aren't in set that show a second bird flying in around tree, assuming it's a parent bird but idk, this bird almost looks to be a hawk of some kind with no head feathers, or does to me anyway. Any help appreciated! Thanks Here is a link that might be useful: Mystery bird pics

Hi Rachel, Sorry - I live in eastern Massachusetts, 7 miles north of Boston and I live in a suburb with a little wooded area bordering my backyard, and a wildlife reservation and ponds about 1/2 a mile away (I am very fortunate!). It has been very cold here the last few days and we got our first dusting of snow yesterday. I have seen different kinds of birds here within a mile of the house - woodpeckers, hawks, swans, geese, the common feeder birds, we even have a heron who flies back and forth over our neighborhood every day - so we do get a variety of birds. We definitely do have house sparrows, but these little guys I saw yesterday were not those. They were just about a solid brown from where I could see. No striping or definitive marks. They just hopped around eating stray sunflower seeds. I've gone through photos of species, both genders and juvenile appearances, on the internet and in my books, and I am not sure what this bird was. The only even remote possibilities I could come up with were: field sparrow; junco; and female indigo bunting. If you have thoughts on this I would be most appreciative. Thanks, Donna P.S. Your last set of photos was, as always, astounding. Congrats on your new lifer!

I think E. corollata is probably it, there is a lot of this plant growing in this area and I have photographed it often but in apparent later stages of growth; I think the unusual appearance of the flower and the overall shape of the plant is what threw me off but looking at some of my other E. corollata photos at the base of the plant, the leaf shape and habit seem to match this. I may try to confirm this later this spring and see if I can find some more plants in the same stage of growth. Thanks all.