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What looks like a robin but not quite?

16 years ago

There was a small flock of birds eating the berries of bittersweet this morning. They looked like fat robins with orange-ish breasts but with some striping on the top of the head and an area of white underneath the tails. I've looked in all my bird books and can't find it. I'm in Massachusetts. Does anyone know what they could be?

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Comments (4)

donald lucius
16 years ago
the first thing that comes to mind for me would be a female eastern towhee? you might try google or bing and see if thats right
birding_nut
16 years ago
What about Cedar Waxwings?

BN
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glad2garden
Original Author
16 years ago
After looking at a bazillion pictures of robins, towhees and waxwings, I think they were robins after all! I never noticed that robins have a white area under the tail that can be seen when they are flying. Also I must have confused the white area around the eyes with what I thought were stripes on the head. Just now I went out and saw some robins, very healthy, chubby robins. Must have been them.
seaflea3
15 years ago
I had a similar experience about 2 weeks ago....a flock of what looked like Robins but not quite came into my yard a long with a flock of Cedar Waxwings! These 'robins' had a white ring around their eyes and white under the tail...and they were chubby too! I wondered if they were robins migrating....but they dont look quite like robins really!

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