Many thanks to everyone who helped me out with my morning's mystery
bird! The strong consensus is an adult female Brewer's blackbird, and
googling a few images, that looks to be right. It doesn't help that one
of my books shows a female Brewer's with a pale superciliary stripe, and
one shows her without, but both show her uniformly brown, as all the
female Brewer's I've seen have been. But there are some pics online of
female Brewer's that have the darker wings and back look of this
morning's bird. I wonder if that's a variation, or if it's all in the
lighting?

I had a couple of suggestions of an immature or female cowbird, but its
beak looked too long and fine to me for that. Maybe the photos didn't
show that too well from the angles I took.

Thanks again to everyone! I'll certainly know her next time I see her
:-)

Louise Rutter
Kirkland


> Apologies from the ignorant British birder, but I found a bird at
> Montlake Fill this morning which I couldn't identify at the time, and
> I'm having no more luck at home with the photos. Not many birds are
> dark all over, so you'd think I'd have a fairly short list to choose
> from, but I just can't match it up! None of the flycatchers are dark
> all the way underneath. The closest general look I can find in the
> books is an immature gray jay, but the head on this bird doesn't seem
> dark enough.
>
> It was slightly longer than the starlings in the same tree, with its
> longer tail. It sometimes wagged its tail up and down, and it fanned
> it wide like a blackbird when it sang.
>
> I've put up a few photos from various angles here:
>
> http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v475/eelpi/Fill%20bird/
>
> Other than me scratching my head, it was a glorious morning at the
> Fill, with birdsong flooding the air in the sunshine. The birds were
> mostly the routine sightings, but I managed to actually set eyes on a
> virginia rail for the first time this year, and even got one
> almost-passable photo!
>
> Many thanks in advance for any info.

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