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Black bird with white tail stripe (1 Viewer)

B

BirdingDoc

BirdingDoc
I spotted a black bird with no identifiable shoulder stripe but with a white stripe beneath the tail. It was in Thunder Bay (north-west) Ontario in mid-summer. I apologize for the quality of the image, but the bird was a long way away, even with a telephoto lens. I am not familiar with this pattern on a leukistic bird, and hence its ID is beyond me. Your assistance is appreciated.
 

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Well it looks like an Icterid. Do you have any other angles or photos? I don't find the shape of the bird to be recognizeable as any normal North American bird but more photos might clear it up.
 
Thank you kindly for your thoughts. I wish I had more information, but my photos were all taken from the same (somewhat distant) location at the same time, with no different angle. And when I moved closer, the bird disappeared.
 
Interested to hear other's opinions on this bird. I know Canada has quite a few cases of escaped tropical Icterids, not that this is necessarily one.
 
Hi BD,

Bill shape looks like a crow.

I think it is just a young crow, with an extreme version of a "fault bar" - there was something wrong with the tail at a certain stage of its growth, which caused the growing feathers to be white (or lose their barbs - that looks like sky in the background, rather than white plumage) across the whole width of the tail.

(This effect doesn't (normally) appear on adult birds, because they (normally) grow in the tails one pair of feathers at a time, rather than all at once).
 
(Cross-posted with Peter C. I agree with him that a crow with damaged tail is the best bet.)

Are we seeing white on the tail, or is that just the sky shining through?

The tail looks to be mangled, but even taking that into account, I'm having trouble matching this to any familar North American bird. The beak looks icterid, or maybe corvid, but when I try to get more specific, I have problems. A grackle, for example, should show a yellow eye even in this shot against the light. Something about the posture doesn't seem right for american crow, but maybe that's just the angle.
 
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I agree there might be some tail wearing going on. Its probably just a common grackle.

@nartreb, younger grackles have darker eyes so it isn't impossible.
 
It is a common grackle that lost its tail and many coverts. The tail is growing back and the bases are in sheath. There is no white. You are seeing the black sheaths and sky behind. Grackles often molt their entire tail at once
 
And younger grackles are "sooty", not showing any iridescence. I wasn't thinking of juveniles because I missed the info in the first post that this photo was taken midsummer. With that in mind and after further inspection of the top of the bill, I'll change my vote to common grackle.
 
A second image

Here is another of my images. I am struggling with the suggestion that the background is sky, but I certainly don't dismiss it.
 

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The "white" is exactly the same pale-blue-grey as the sky, which you can confirm by moving two copies of the photo until they overlap. (Don't trust your color perception in regions bordered by a contrasting color.) Also, in the second shot I'm even more confident that I can see a shaft corresponding to each feather. It looks like you applied some sharpening to the first shot, which to me makes the pale spots look more solid than they really are.
 
phil baber said:
Why not a Red-Winged Blackbird?
Click to expand...

I don't find the bill pointy enough for red-winged. There is something about the proportions that seem off too.

Wouldn't that be a big punch in the face for all us "no NA native bird/grackle" opinioned people :t: I guess it could still happen.
 
And just a note about leucism, which, importantly, is spelled with a 'c' and it is a soft 'c.' In English (and possibly in Latin), a 'c' followed by either 'e' or 'i' is a soft 'c,' while those followed by any of the other vowels is usually a hard 'c.'

I agree that the bird has tail-feather structural problems and that it's probably a young Common Grackle. No other blackbird species found in the area in the breeding season has anything like this bird's bill shape. However, I wonder about what appears to be nasal bristles (as exhibited by crows/ravens). Blackbirds don't show nasal bristles, but that dark area on the top of and near the base of the bill might simply be the nostrils.
 
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