Natalie and I took some nice shots of this bird last Tuesday, but I
was shooting with our SLR rather than the digital camera and I have
not had the slides developed yet. I should have a better idea of what
kind of documentation photos we have by the end of the week, with any
luck. I did take photos of the bird in good light, sitting in a small
tree right next to both male and female Brewer's Blackbirds...

When we were watching the bird it did indeed appear to be a female
Great tailed Grackle, although it did not match up completely with
the illustration of a female in the National Geographic guide that we
use so much to ID birds. Marv Breece was on the scene last Tuesday
afternoon and watching the bird with us and he showed us the
illustration of a female Great Tailed Grackle from the Stokes guide
that looked nearly exactly like the bird we were seeing in Auburn.

Rob

>Hello tweets,
>
>>From further comments sent to me by Joseph Higbee and Doug Schonewald, it's
>obvious the bird that Joseph photographed and called a grackle at the
>Auburn Supermall is no Brewer's Blackbird. They've convinced me it really
>was *much* larger than nearby Brewer's, so its identity is a puzzle,
>perhaps a hybrid Brewer's x Common Grackle. Birds are usually pretty
>dependable in their size, and you don't expect to see a giant or runt
>individual of a bird species, so size is indeed an important factor in
>identification. I apologize to Joseph for not taking his "1.4 x Brewer's
>Blackbird size" more seriously.
>
>Joseph changed the ID of the bird on his Yahoo photo site to "Whatever,"
>and without having the bird in hand for detailed examination and
>measurement and a DNA sample, "Whatever" might have to remain its name!
>Still, it would be great to get more photos, especially in comparison with
>Brewer's and out in the sun to show the iridescent colors, and perhaps we
>could make a case for it being a hybrid. All the larger tropical
>blackbirds that I can think of that might wander up here (however unlikely)
>have dark eyes.
>
>Dennis
>
>Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-879-3798
>Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-879-3352
>University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
>1500 N. Warner, #1088
>Tacoma, WA 98416-1088
>http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html


--
Rob McNair-Huff <mailto:rob at whiterabbits.com>
White Rabbit Publishing <http://www.whiterabbits.com>
Publisher of Mac Net Journal <http://www.whiterabbits.com/MacNetJournal>
The Equinox Project <http://www.whiterabbits.com/weblog.html>
Co-author of Insiders Guide to the Olympic Peninsula
--
As much as 70 percent of the processed foods consumed in the United
States contain some genetically altered ingredient. - Oregonian