Tailless sparrow (1 Viewer)

So this guy showed up a few days ago, thought it looked weird till I took a closer look, it doesn't have any tail feathers. It's able to fly from the feeder to the cedar row a couple of meters away, but I don't know if it can fly normally over longer distance.

I couldn't tell if any new tail feather is growing, it's getting cold and they aren't suppose to stay here, so dunno what it's going to do.

What's the deal here, how does a bird lose all tail feathers, or do some just born this way?

Could a cat have grabbed it by its tail? Or possibly, just going through a molting stage.

Could be a cat, there are a few feral around unfortunately, and song sparrows like to browse on the ground.

Hi,

jzmtl said:

What's the deal here, how does a bird lose all tail feathers, or do some just born this way?

Click to expand...

There's a phenomenon that could be called "scare moult" - a bird in acute danger sheds its tail feathers. Supposedly, this helps him to escape from an attacker pouncing at him, and the feathers grow back normally.

At least, that's what was explained to me when I showed a photograph of a tail-feather-less female pheasant on a German forum - "It must have narrowly escaped from a fox!"

Regards,

Henning