Houston Texas USA (1 Viewer)

[peterbats59]

In trees and shrubs along Buffalo Bayou this morning I saw a flock of small mostly very dark passerines with very obvious white rumps in flight, and I cannot figure out what they were. They all had the same plumage -- bright white rump, nearly black all over. Maybe sparrow sized. I thought Dark-eyed Junco but cannot find anywhere that shows juncos with that bright white rump. Any ideas?

 

[nartreb]

Dark-eyed junco is the first thing to come to mind - the white on the tail shows up suddenly when they fly away (they keep their tails folded the rest of the time), and it's easy to get the impression that the white is from the rump. Small, likely to be seen in flocks, mostly dark until they fly.

 

[peterbats59]

Dark-eyed junco is the first thing to come to mind - the white on the tail shows up suddenly when they fly away (they keep their tails folded the rest of the time), and it's easy to get the impression that the white is from the rump. Small, likely to be seen in flocks, mostly dark until they fly.

As I said, that was my first impression, as well. But, alas, I was with a walking companion and we agree that we both clearly saw a bright white rump, both in flight from one shrub to another, and when the birds were perched and at rest, as well. We are both completely stumped; we've looked through several books of Texas birds and have yet to see anything that looks right. So far, the closest -- at least from a top-looking-down view, would be a Common House Martin. But the birds we saw were uniformly dark -- not with the white chin, throat, belly or legs of that species. Also, I think the habitat was all wrong for martins, deep in the thick shrubs and low shrubby trees.

 

[nartreb]

I'm stumped too. It's not likely you saw a whole flock of northern wheatears, or got confused by a bunch of yellow-rumped warblers or northern flickers. You're on the wrong continent for Common House Martin, and even though Cliff Swallow has a paler (but certainly not white) rump you're in completely wrong habitat, they have obvious white bellies, and a remarkable swooping flight style. There's probably some common Texas bird that I'm forgetting, but if so somebody should have chimed in by now. How many birds were in the flock?

 

[peterbats59]

I don't know many were moving about, but I saw at least 4. They were moving very quickly from twig to branch in the thicket. I have to assume we both failed to see some other major feature because we agree on what we saw, and it makes no sense. The Northern Mockingbirds are EVERYWHERE right now and are asserting their dominance, as usual, and one flew right into the group (and was clearly larger) and they scattered and were gone, not to be seen again.

 

[kevinsl06]

Dark-eyed Juncos would be really early for Houston.

 

[peterbats59]

MYSTERY SOLVED!!! A small resident population of non-native Red-vented Bulbuls has established itself along Buffalo Bayou here in Houston. We saw the white rumps but not the harder-to-see red vents.