Good Morning everyone. I placed a call to the rescue center this morning and left a msg...waiting for a reply I checked out the pic of the bobwhite and it doesn`t match but the pic of the nothern rough-tailed swallow is very close. The differences are that it does not have the black band across the eyes and it doesn`t have the needle like ending to the tail feathers but the overall shape, size and color are very close. My initial thought when I say the bird was that it was a swallow because of the wings. I looked this bird up on google and it is on the rare bird site. We sit at night and watch these little guys dance throught the sky in groups. This year is the first year that I have seen these so they must be new to our area or the population is growing. I live in the heart of a large city across the river from Detroit MI. I will keep looking on google and will post if/when I get an answer from the rescue center. Well I just got a call from the rescue center and the little guy did not make it.....:( She said that he may have been bleeding interally...all we saw was the bleeding from his foot....may have been attacked by a cat??? She did ID him for me and he was a Chimney Swift. I google this and the pic is exactly what he looked like. Thank you everyone for helping. Louise

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

Goldfinches in the non-breeding season are very drab compared to their summer glory. Sibley Guide: The Annual plumage cycle of a male American Goldfinch Click on "play" to see the slideshow of monthly changes. Claire This post was edited by claire on Fri, Oct 17, 14 at 16:09

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!