What Bird is This?

Your pic didn't come out too well. Looks like a fossil fish to me. Sorry.

JimRat bird from OZ

The blue-breasted, brown-winged, muddle-headed thrush.

--J.J. Audubon

That was good!

Could be a Cordon Bleu finch.....

....or a...European Roller..

....or some sort of Bee Eater....

ARTHUR: What do you mean? An African or European swallow?

KEEPER: What? I don't know that! Auuuuuuuugh!

Was it blue or yellow?

So you think its a Robin, do you?

Robins fly south with the sun don't they, yet they are not strangers to our land?

Thats very brave indeed!

No, Robin fly to find food. It may not be a total southernly migration. The move may be to coastal swamps where the water temp helps to keep the ground from freezing. Or to areas with fruit the main part of their diet during the winter.

Submit your query here also. Birdlife Australia are very knowledgeable. You may also wish to include in your query where you sighted this bird.

Shoot it next time you see it!

You sure its a bird?

With a camera!

This could prove its a bird!

Aha!

Thanks for all the quick replys. S.E #6 has a picture that epitomizes the shape of the bird. Think that shape with these differences;

Slimmer beak,

All brown, mottled wings,

slightly larger.

Europium, thanks for the link I will send them the same query.

Jim

Some variety of blue quail?

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Or maybe a blue-breasted cordon-bleu

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or maybe a blue-breasted parakeet

All too small i'm afraid.

Perhaps a kestrel?

Any chance it could be something like a green heron? These guys are really interesting.... smart, tool using, curious, fishing-strategists. They also have the ability to look like they are some other bird with different body type and coloring by just ruffling their feathers and shifting their neck....

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An amazing bird. The text book would have to have a lot of pictures of that one. But no. We have a flycatcher called a Willy Wagtail that has a similar flight pattern and beak. It catches insects on the wing and so although I couldn't actually see it ( the blue breasted kestrel winged flycatcher ) catching insects, I inferred that, that is what it was doing.

As it walked about it didn't stretch it's neck or alter shape in any way. It would just land, walk a bit then take off and catch more bugs.

How about this one....

Looks like it, but the wings were definitely mottled like TINACs' quail

Suggest to digest this:

https://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780670072316/field-guide-birds-australia-8th-edition

Then follow the advice from here.

Happy hunting!

I have looked through that book and then again. Put it down for some time and looked through again. It doesn't have a picture of every bird but it does have full descriptions of both m & f & juvenile as well as cross country variations. That is just one of the books I have looked in. I have come to the firm belief that it is not a bird from OZ. I don't mind being wrong, just want to know.

If you see it again, try to take a picture. Male and female birds of the same species often look significantly different. Also, juveniles can look like a completely different bird when they become adults.

Yes I will try to get back to the area and see if it has survived. It may have been killed as an alien or unable to breed in our environment. There were two so I could take a wild guess that they were a pair but the markings were the same ( unusual ).

Are there any bird species native to the area that if mutated could appear that way?

We have a very strangely colored robin around here that I've seen for about 7 years now, so I suppose he/she has passed on the mutation, as they don't live that long. He/she is mostly white with black spots, like the area between the red and the brown is on a normal robin. Some of the wings and the side of the head are normal colored, but not the majority of the body. The red area is a bit smaller as well. Quite odd and obviously quite transferable during mating. And, before someone suggests it, no, this is not an immature bird, as I see it during migrations north in mid March, well before mating has started in north eastern USA, and he/she moves on to the north after a few days.

This one's dad, a lovely golden-cheeked warbler, was last seen over Fukashima.

Mutation indeed.

http://lesleybray.smugmug.com/AustralianBirds/Flycatchers-Monarchs-Magpie/i-cRzzZK9/A

The above link is the bird that very closely matches the ones I saw in size, length and habit but clearly not colour.

See link in #28. I was hoping someone here would recognize as a local bird and just be able to say "Oh yes, we call them blue peewits; or whatever. Local to Lower Spiffington on Yahtsee." Clearly this bird is more elusive than I thought.

"Clearly this bird is more elusive than I thought. "

Why the long face, mate? Look on the bright side: because it so elusive and cannot be found in any of the catalogues yours could very well be the first-ever sighting on the Australian continent. It could be native, or not, but evidently it hasn't been sighted by anyone else, or isn't known to have been sighted by anyone else.

There is an extremely rare, endangered species that can be found only within a 15-20 km radius of my home in Texas. There are people who have lived in that area all their lives, some of them quite old, and have never seen it, not even once. One nested in a tree in our back yard and even flew out of the tree and perched on my daughter's shoe whilst she stood there, watching it.

Wherever you were when you sighted it, chances are (unless it is migratory) it hasn't gone very far. If you are able, you might return to that area armed with a good camera and a telephoto lens. You never know, you may have stumbled onto something quite rare.

I was having a cup of tea as I read your post. Got to the tag line and almost choked. Missus thought I am having way too much fun in here to be doing anything serious.

I am also trying to identify a small blue snake but I am quite sure that one is local. I saw it in land that was just recently cleared for a new housing estate on the far outer edges of the inhabited area.

It would be a charmed life if I was to be the first to see two new species as an ordinary Joe. There was a local naturalist, name of Harry Butler who saw and described many new species in our neck of the woods over the last 50 yrs, so I guess it is possible. Buuut.

Your backyard must be very inviting. If that bird is so tame as to land on your daughters shoe it would probably explain its' rarity. Del if you're reading this go to bed now.....

I have a cousin on 10 acres of land in a rural area. He had a dog that was very good a getting cats to run up a tree and then bark to let 'dad' know that he had a feral treed. My cousin would then shoot the cat. In the first year he killed over 200 cats. After 2 years the small birds ( wrens, New Holland Honeyeaters and others ) would eat off the table on his back verandah as he sat there. I too used to have a lot of birds in my backyard now there are none. But I do have cats, yay!

Jim

We had menagerie all right. Javelinas, coral snakes, armadillos, racoons, Chuck Will's Widows, fire ants, scorpions (killed ~200/mo), and two donkeys, a very shy goat and even a triad of redneck dogs (Bubba, Bart and Beau) from the next ranch over.

Chuck Will's Widows look similar to the Tawny Frogmouth. http://ibc.lynxeds.com/files/pictures/195_9549.jpg

Isn't it amazing how different species find similar niches even though their diet and behavior may be quite different.

Love the dogs. I would be very wary if they started carrying arms.

No worries about the Unholy Trinity (aka the 'Bogan Bros'); even if they bore arms they'd be too drunk to use them.

'Tawny frogmouth' is certainly applicable to Chuck Will's Widows. That little beak does nothing to betray the *huge* mouth these birds have, like a funnel. Unlike bats CWWs catch insects in-flight with their open mouths (bats catch them with their tails like a baseball mitt and quickly tuck under and eat them, mid-flight. Maybe that's why they call it 'tucker' in Oz? <groan>).

Forget sugar, 'shine' is seriously bad for the teeth. Cleetus' wife/cousin told me so .

Betcha had to raise her head up outta the trough to make out what she was sayin'?

Q: What do you call 26 rednecks queued up in two rows to buy movie tickets?

A: A full set of teeth.

http://www.besgroup.org/2009/02/20/purple-swamphen-in-western-australia/