Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What Kind of Bird

Midget rightwing peasant?

If you'll use the stick in front of the cat as a frame of reference for size, you'll see that the bird is much larger than the typical thrush/jay size.

Exactly what I was thinking Paul.

Geno

Birdy, do grackles get way up there in MT?

Geno

Of course. Do you doubt my LBJ MFF identifrabrication skills? Sheesh.

Rufflegged grouse harrier?

The ones in the front look kinda like Martin's but not sure.

Some kind of Thrush is up front...

Ifn yu wurr a bettir fotografer,

weed not bee havin this diskuscion.

Geno

PS, thrushes of some sort, maybe mixed with some blackbirds? But the bills on those front ones are too long for most blackbirds, no?

Common Grackles breed across most of Canada, winter mostly in the Eastern half of the US but the photo is early November, not too late for migration. I took a second and third look at photos of common grackles, they do not have the apparent facial pattern of the front bird.

Here's the thing, the front bird looks like a dark image of a brown thrasher, down to the eye color....

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Brown_Thrasher/id

...which is even more unlikely than a common grackle, dependent upon where in the West the photo was taken.

A brown thrasher out in a parking lot with blackbirds would have to be an extremely hungry brown thrasher, usually they stick to brushy cover.

Likewise those smaller birds look a lot like winter-plumage rusty blackbirds, but rusty blackbirds are fast becoming the rarest of our blackbirds, in the midst of a steep and mysterious population crash, and they are found mostly in wet brush edges and the shores of ponds and rivers...

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Rusty_Blackbird/id

Ok, it's a really small cat?

Next time I go out there I am going to put a beer can (12 oz not 40) in the frame.

Cock bird.

birdy,

thrasher was one of my first guesses, but out in the open and in MT but I didn't think of them being that far north. Sibley map show that as summer range though.

But, in looking through the thrasher pages...................what about sage thrashers?

Might be more likely to be found in the open?

Geno

PS Boomer, no ground truthing now ..............migratory bird act and all that.

There, I fixt it for you.

Proper campfire printing and all , you know.

Geno

Geno, I might have shot three or four COCKS grand total so far this season.

Not cheap either, $100 for a Rez cock license AND another $100 for upland(sharptail, huns...etc..)....

Spent $200 to get maybe 6 birds.
(but by God I was legal.....)


Haven't been out hunting in weeks.

Sam, your cockshots even look good upside down.

Had to look it up, local tribe gets $125 for pheasant, non-Indian. ($5 for tribal members.) That's tribal land on former res and not very productive for pheasants. Deer costs $300. In other words non-Indians not wanted. Unless they're stupid enough to pay way too much.

It's a grey area.


I only hunt cocks on deeded ground(aka private property) and might not even need a license(IMHO).....

Could be, seems more of a stretch for a lighter colored bird like a sage thrasher to look that dark tho.

No sage thrasher, another familiar to me.... But BHCBs are for sure here. And this summer I was certain I had others pegged as grackles. They're sure plump!