I know quite well the ID problem of juvenile cowbirds. The exact same
thing happened to my wife and I last summer at Foul Weather Bluff. We
looked at this juv cowbird for an hour without ever figuring out what it
was. Finally after perusing the National Geographic guide, we concluded
all our energy was spent on a cowbird. Oh well!
wjansen
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On Tue, 7 Nov 1995, Russell Rogers wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Nov 1995, Don Baccus wrote:
>
> >
> > >The only bird seen was a young Cowbird which I spent fifteen minutes
> > >trying to ID. How embarrassing!
> >
> > And which woodpecker were you trying to turn it into?
>
> Actually, I was trying to make it some type of strange cardueline finch!
> I am really compromising my credibility now, but it was a bit like of a
> comedy of errors.
>
> The thing that really caught me off guard was that the bird was sitting
> in, what seemed completely - the shade. Just out of my sight, and slightly
> in front of the bird, a bare branch of Ponderosa Pine tilted up. Kind of
> like a speaker and a podium. The sun was more or less in front of us
> and behind the bird. Through the trees, small single ray of bright light
> landed only on the bare branch in front of the bird. This made the breast
> of the bird look orange or reddish. I did not perceive or even suspect,
> that the color was "projected" onto the bird.
>
> Juvenile Cowbirds are difficult and very under appreciated identification
> problem, made even more difficult when you throw in a foreign color. I
> admit that I was very stumped for quite awhile.
>
> Russell
>