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Female House Finch??? (1 Viewer)

I can't make this into a House Sparrow. The bill is just as wrong for it as it is for the House Finch. The breast streaking shouldn't be there either if it were a House Sparrow. All the ones around here, regardless of gender or age, have unmarked breasts (as in the picture JanJ linked). I can accept that a bird could be melanistic, but for a melanistic bird to develop plumage patterns like breast streaking - which is probably a feature evolved over millions of years for camaflauging purposes - seems unlikely to me. It's my understanding that melanistic birds, like their counterpart leucistic birds, show erratic patterning, not structured and purposeful ones.*


* All comments by me are considerably uninformed and wildly conjectural - discount at your leisure.
 
I'm not happy with the house sparrow theory, but it works much better than house finch.

This first link is worth looking at, as the female on bottom left illustrates a darker female (or is she?), and the two juveniles on bottom right illustrate how much smaller juvenile bills can be, as does the next link.

http://www.irishbirding.com/housesparrow.html
http://www.arkive.org/species/ARK/birds/Passer_domesticus/ARK007595.html?size=large

Maybe a better way of phrasing it is that it is probably a juvenile sparrow, likely melanistic (or photo issues). Even with assumed melanism, if someone can reconcile a yellowish short but thick beak, light and possibly pinkish legs, breast streaking, short primaries and short tail into the same bird, I would like to see it... I just went through all the in-range sparrows, finches and buntings in Sibley, and as far as I can tell, something doesn't fit with every one of them.

:h?:
 
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Just for looking at bill size/shape on house and purple, house on the left.
http://www.westol.com/~banding/HOFI_PUFI_070804.jpg
Both juveniles July 8th.
Frankly I find it hard to see it as a House sparrow, they simly aren´t streaked below, and I have never seen one that are! I´ve seen somewhere that juv. Purple can be smaller-billed and be less strongly patterned in the face, thus similar to juv. House.
JanJ
 
Identifying a bird from a single photo can be problematic, but I believe this a hatch year Dark-eyed Junco.

The bill color and shape, the leg color, and the coloration of the feathering on the mantle, coverts, and remiges, are consistent with HY Junco. The heavy streaking on the underparts is consistent with HY Junco. To my eye, the morphological structure resonates Dark-eyed Junco.

The weakness of this ID is that no white can be seen in the outer rectrices. Because of that, I probably would not count this bird if Dark-eyed Junco was a life bird. But, everything that can be seen in the photo says HY Junco to me.
 
I'll certainly agree with the hazards in trying to ID from a single photo, but while not wanting to argue against what the bird is not, this bird looks nothing like the DEJUs who breed on our property. While the very young (just fledged) are streaky, they're gray with black streaks, not brown with brown streaks, and the bills are not yellowish but pinkish or, in the case of the red-backed race, bi-colored (dark upper, pink lower mandible). The tail here, regardless of white outer tail feathers, isn't long enough for DEJU (unless it could be argued the tail isn't fully grown out on this bird). ;)

I'm still waiting to hear back from a couple other people on the hi-rez file Bob sent me, and when/if I do, I'll post their responses here.
 
I took a closer look at the undertail coverts using photoshop. If you look closely, the undertail coverts seem to end at the arrow on the attached (has had autolevels done for contrast and colour balance) The horizontal dark line to the left of the arrow appears on close inspection to be shadow on the gravel, not the edge of the undertail coverts. If I'm right, all of a sudden the primaries DO reach past the undertail coverts and the tail gets longer. Also, if those legs are truly pink, they should look a lot pinker than that in the bright sunlight. (compare to the pink on JanJ's HOSP).

The only real problem then is the yellow bill, which is less of a problem for me than the lack of facial features, and the streaking if you try to make it a juvenile house sparrow.

By the way, what is that thing on its back?
 
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Katy Penland said:
this bird looks nothing like the DEJUs who breed on our property. While the very young (just fledged) are streaky, they're gray with black streaks, not brown with brown streaks
Katy Penland said:
See Sibley page 500

Hatch Year Dark-eyed Junco in my experience always shows brown tones and could not be called a gray bird with black streaks.
 
I suppose Katy know the difference between grey and brown, so what´s up with that.
Sibley also mention "all populations basically similar". How different can they be?
http://www.geocities.com/tgrey41/Pages/DarkeyedJuncop.html

The juvenile in the link above certainly looks "Sibley". I don´t think the suject bird is a Junco, just look at the bill shape in a Junco, with straighter culmen, longer looking not so high at the base, making the Junco´s facial expression look "content"
JanJ
 
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maitreya said:
See Sibley page 500

Hatch Year Dark-eyed Junco in my experience always shows brown tones and could not be called a gray bird with black streaks.
It will depend on which race of DEJU you're talking about. Gray-headed and Red-backed are mostly gray birds with fine black streaking and a brownish wash on some wing feathers and central/upper back, the latter of which will turn into an unstreaked cinnamon triangle as the bird matures; the wings will lose all brownish wash also as the bird ages.

However, even the races whose juveniles have more overall brownish tones (on a dark charcoal or black background, not brown), such as Oregon and Pink-sided, the streaking on the understide is on the flanks and upper breast. This bird of Bob's is full-on rufousy brown and streaked all over with no white on the ventral side at all, which is not typical of any DEJU race.

Sorry, shouldn't have gotten into this as I'm sure we're debating the ID merits of a species that won't apply to the bird in question. Now watch me have to eat a corvid when others chime in. ;)
 
JANJ said:
Sibley also mention "all populations basically similar". How different can they be?
All due respect to Sibley, the different races do look different when you become familiar enough with them. E.g., the illustration of a juvenile Oregon distinctly shows the burgeoning "hood" that the adult bird will have. This is not seen on the juveniles of the Red-backed or Gray-headed races.

I'll see if I can dig up some shots I have of the Red-backed and Gray-headed juvies we've had in the yard. Not sure in which of the 11 cases of slides they are, but I can try to find them if anyone's that interested. ;)
 
Katy,

You are going to hate me for this. I have 13,500 slides plus 8000 digital photos. All of them are cataloged in a database and within 5 minutes not only I can tell you on any subject if I have a photo, but where it is stored (exact bin and slot for slides and which CD for digital), and have the slide in hand or the digital file up on the computer. Yes, I am a little bit nuts on the organization thing.


Katy Penland said:
All due respect to Sibley, the different races do look different when you become familiar enough with them. E.g., the illustration of a juvenile Oregon distinctly shows the burgeoning "hood" that the adult bird will have. This is not seen on the juveniles of the Red-backed or Gray-headed races.

I'll see if I can dig up some shots I have of the Red-backed and Gray-headed juvies we've had in the yard. Not sure in which of the 11 cases of slides they are, but I can try to find them if anyone's that interested. ;)
 
Hate you? No way, more like green with envy. ;) Of course, yours are undoubtedly all good shots. When I do get around to cataloguing mine, a severe cull will take place and I will shoot myself for all the $$$$ getting binned. One of these days, digital...
 
No way do I take all good shots. The above numbers are after culling. An example is on my last trip I took 100 shots of a Gray Hawk in Big Bend NP and only 12 photographs survived the cut. Now, everyone thinks I only take good shots but that is because all the losers hit the circular file long before I let anyone see what I photographed.

Last week I was at my youngest daughter's home and took quite a few photos of my eight month old grandson. My daughter wanted me to download the photos directly from my camera to her computer before I left. No, no, I took the photos home and culled and photo corrected them. Then I e-mailed her the "improved" ones that were left after culling.



Katy Penland said:
Hate you? No way, more like green with envy. ;) Of course, yours are undoubtedly all good shots. When I do get around to cataloguing mine, a severe cull will take place and I will shoot myself for all the $$$$ getting binned. One of these days, digital...
 
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