Expert: Julia Booth - 3/4/2008

Question
QUESTION: on march.1 i saw mostly black bird with a lot of bright yellow marks and yellow stripes on its wings. i only saw it briefly but what i saw was very beautiful. please tell me you can ID it.thank you for your time.

ANSWER: That's a little vague, so I'm going to ask a few other questions to help steer this a bit.

Can you tell me about how big it was? (Larger than a sparrow...smaller than a crow etc.)

Can you tell me what it was doing when you saw it? (Was it on a telephone wire, in a tree, on the ground, in flight)

Can you remember what sort of beak it had? (Was it long and thin, shaped like a cone, short and hooked etc.)

Was it all black aside from the yellow marks on it's wings?

Were the yellow marks only stripes? (Were there spots or other shapes)

Did it make any sounds, and if so can you describe it?

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: the bird i saw was a little smaller than a crow, it flew through my back yard and landed in a small tree, paused for a few seconds then flew away. it was all black except for the yellow marks along the leading edge of its wing with triangle shape on its neck or lower part of its head .i only saw it for a few seconds.i hope this helps thanks again.

ANSWER: Okay, I hate to be a pain, but there are still a number of possibilities here. If you could tell me what county/state you are in, I can check the distribution for that area and narrow it down. Right now it's down to the yellow-headed blackbird and several types of orioles, but I need to know where you live first.

Thanks,

Julia

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: i am sorry , i should have told you that i live in Sacramento ca. the northern part of the county. i know we are in the flight path of a lot of migratory birds,so i hope this helps to narrow it down. again i apologize for being so vague.thanks again   Eugene

Answer
Okay, I checked the distribution for that area. You have only Hooded and Bullock's Orioles, but I'm not sure they fit.

The only other thing is a Yellow-headed Blackbird, which do live in your area, but are labeled as uncommon to rare. I don't think I can insert a picture of those into this box so. I recommend Googling images or you can go to Enature and look at their images.

It's hard to tell what it was that you saw. Birders use certain language to describe things so that we can communicate what we see. But non-birders don't think to look at the same stuff. They see a bird and just want to know what it was. Stuff that's important is beak shape and tail shape etc.

The best I can tell you is to skim those pictures and look for something that matches what you saw. That's what I spent a lot of time doing in my early years of birding.

If you are still lost after that, let me know.

Julia