Skip to main content

Do You Know What This Is?

This afternoon, we had a visitor to our yard. He was a handsome fellow and not terribly shy. We first saw him when he landed on our porch railing. He sat looking at us for a while and then flew over to one of the flower beds where he sat motionless for quite some time. I was able to get fairly close to get a picture without scaring him away. We were concerned that he might be sick or injured.


Although it's difficult to tell in this picture (my camera's focus hasn't been working well), his feathers were fluffy leading us to believe he was still a baby. He was much larger than other baby birds we've had in the yard, larger even than some adult birds. We're quite curious to find out what type of bird he is because we've never seen another like him.

He was still in the flower bed when we went in the house for lunch, but he was gone when we came back out. Sadly, we found him dead on our porch some time later. He had found a spot behind our bar and quietly passed away. My guess is that he had lost his mother and was unable to fend for himself.

I would still like to identify him. I've looked at pictures of dozens of birds that are native to Michigan and I can't find any that look quite like him. He resembled a robin, but he was larger than a typical adult robin and he had very long tail feathers, almost hawk-like. Do you know what he is?

Comments

Unknown said…
Aw, that's a sad story. I wish I could help you. You might be on the right track thinking "bird of prey". The belly markings are a tad unusual, don't you think?
Heidi said…
Aw... poor baby. I have no idea what he is. He was pretty though. Hopefully you get a bird watcher on here who knows!
L.B. said…
I did a Google image search and may have found something like this. The name I came up with was "Kirtland's Warbler" which is apparently a rare bird. I didn't find any exact matches to the bird you found but some of the features of those and the pictures I saw seemed similar.
L.B. said…
Hi Willoughby!

Damn right I read your blog about nuder! It just seemed to fit when I used it, so I used it as a shout out to my blog buddy.
Willoughby said…
Thanks, everyone, for your input! I checked out pics of Kirtlands Warblers, they are close, but I'm not sure that's what our visitor was.

L.B. - Thanks for the shout out! Did you see any spanghew in the mud on your run?
it looks like a baby hawk of some kind
ChristineM said…
That's so sad... I've never seen one in real life, so I'm not sure, but google "juvenile merlin" - it does look like one!
Willoughby said…
doggybloggy and Christine - Thanks for the ideas. I took your advice and looked at juvenile hawks and merlins. They do resemble this bird. I wish I had a clearer picture!
abby jenkins said…
Hi Willoughby, I am pretty sure that is a baby robin. We had four families roost above our front door and I would watch them as their mom taught them to fly. Sure looks the same. Poor baby.
I am also quite certain that we were separated at birth.

Popular posts from this blog

Skip Breakfast And Have An Adventure

We're skipping breakfast again.  I know you were expecting Mr. Willoughby to dazzle you with his cooking skills, but he doesn't feel like cooking today.  He wants to go skydiving. Yesterday, a friend sent us a link to an article about a new place to skydive in Michigan.  When I clicked on the link, I was surprised to see a familiar face. We'll get to that in a minute. You may recall that Mr. W started skydiving by taking a tandem jump a few years ago.  With a tandem jump, having a great instructor makes the difference between a fun experience and an amazing experience and Mr. W had Josh Sheppard; one of the best.  Josh is experienced, enthusiastic and passionate about skydiving.  Mr. W had such an amazing experience that he decided to take the AFF course (to learn to jump solo) before they were back on the ground.   So back to that article, the familiar face I saw was Josh.  He and his brother Abe have started a new skydiving business in Owo...

Timeline

I made Spaghetti with Tomato Basil Cream Sauce and Chicken Parmesan for dinner last night. It's not a difficult meal to prepare, but it does require the oven and multiple burners on the cooktop so it heats up the kitchen. After dinner, it was still awfully warm inside, so I left all of the dishes right where there were and my husband and I went outside to sit on the back porch and cool off. We had eaten rather late, so it was already dark outside. Our neighborhood was uncharacteristically quiet and the only sounds were that of the crickets chirping and the faint whoosh of cars passing by on Main Street. It was a perfect summer evening, the sort that you dream about in the middle of February. I asked my husband what he thought we might have been doing at that exact moment one year ago. Had we been sitting in the same place enjoying similarly beautiful weather? Had I made the same meal for dinner? What about five years ago? How about 10, 15, and 20 years ago? I know I've taken a ...

Public Service Announcement

I'm not quite ready to come back yet, but I wanted to take a few minutes to post my version of a Public Service Announcement.  As many of you already know, I've been away from blogging due to illness.  However, what you may not know is that the illness is H1N1.  Yep, the Swine Flu. I can honestly say that I've never felt so terrible in my life.  I had heard that for most people, H1N1 is no worse than the regular seasonal flu.  I guess I'm not most people.  After 15 days, I'm only now beginning to feel slightly human.  I was unable to get vaccinated because our area ran out of vaccine months ago.  I understand that it has recently become available again, but it's too late for me.  It's not too late for you, though.  If the vaccine is available in your area and you haven't gotten it yet, I beg you to drop what you're doing and take your family to get vaccinated. If you ignore my advice and decide to develop your immunity by gettin...