Tricky (Molting) Icterid

By Corey • September 19, 2008 • 12 comments

Sometimes an easy bird can become difficult to identify. Such was the case with the molting bird below, a species that has crossed my path hundreds of times. It is an icterid, a family that includes blackbirds, grackles, orioles, cowbirds and meadowlarks, but beyond that I was temporarily stumped. My birding partner for the day, Danny Melore, was similarly stumped. We tried very hard to make it a Yellow-headed Blackbird but there was no chance of that happening. Then we briefly considered an abberantly-plumaged Bobolink before the birds identity finally came to me like a light bulb being turned on. Do you know what it is?

Of course, it is a molting male Brown-headed Cowbird and an excellent example of how just knowing the colors of a bird’s plumage is not always enough to identify a bird. The birds shape, size, bill structure, call notes, and behaviour can all be used to figure out a bird’s identity. It is humbling to be stumped, even temporarily, by such a common bird but it served a good lesson: always think common before thinking rare!

This post has been contributed to Bird Photography Weekly #4 at Birdfreak.

Tags: blackbirds, cowbirds, identification, moult

• Camping tents - Check out our pop up tents, family tents, Vango tents, and more! •

Explore These Related Posts

...Or These Blasts From The Past

About the Author

Corey

Corey is a New Yorker who has lived most of his life upstate but has spent the last three years in Queens. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy, their son, Desmond Shearwater, and their two indoor cats, Hunter and B.B.

12 Responses to “Tricky (Molting) Icterid”

Klaus Sep 19th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Pretty cool! Probably takes a bit to get you guys off track. Not me though. I knew immediately that it was a bird. Them wings gave it away.
Cheers, Klaus
Eva Sep 19th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I had a molting cowbird give me and my friends the ID run-around awhile back. I’m glad I’m not the only one that was initially confused.
sara Sep 19th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
They are tricky when they are still in that “scaly” phase. At least now, we have clue when the structural coloration becomes evident.
Tom Sep 19th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Haha… Cowbird was my first thought.
I guess knowing the common birds well really is key.
Corey Sep 20th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
@Klaus: Ha!
@Eva: Also glad I’m not the only one.
@Sara: Exactly.
@Tom: Sure, rub it in…
Tom W Sep 20th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Great pictures Corey. A neat looking bird. I don’t get to see them like that very often.
Tommy V Sep 22nd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Great catch of the cow bird…. I love that name.
Veery Sep 22nd, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I LOVE photos of molting birds, they are so unique and can be so tricky to I.D., Great shots!
Sparverius Sep 23rd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Cool molting bird! I did guess a brown-headed cowbird. But it was mostly just a whim, and was giggling when I read that’s what it was.
Dottie Bowling Sep 24th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I live in Va. Beach and saw the same type of molting cowbird on one of my feeders. Thought I’d made a rare discovery . . . until I looked on the ground and saw 35 of his closest readily idenifiable cowbird friends!
Subito Aug 22nd, 2009 at 7:39 am
These moulting brown headed cowbirds are all over the place here in TN in August. They are not a very pretty sight, to be sure. I found out what they were because the females were easy to identify and they were hanging out together. Then a quick google image search on moulting cowbirds confirmed my suspicions. Thank goodness for google!
Katie Aug 30th, 2011 at 8:46 am
Glad I found this page to confirm. Poor guys are sitting out my window looking confused and stumped. I had to move their bird feeder since it was interfering with my finches and now they are trying to figure out where it is…