unidentified bird

[PatB]

Please can someone advise me as to what this bird is. I saw it this evening at about 7 on my next door neighbour's chimney! could it be a cuckoo?

[forestwildlife]

its not a cuckoo, its a corvid of some description looks like a luecistic jackdaw to me, well partial luecism anyway.

[thebeard]

i'd agree with that, hard to tell, but i think its either a jackdaw or a crow

[aeshna5]

Strange looking bird! I would also say it's a Jackdaw with aberrant pigmentation- the bill is clearly corvid.

[PatB]

Thanks for that. I admit it reminded me of a small crow but I've never seen one other than all black. Whatever it was the other birds didn't like it - my resident blackbird was "shouting" at it for about 5 minutes (from a safe distance on my garage roof!)

[animartco]

Hope you are likely to see it again. A very interesting bird. I think that if it is a corvid it is a jackdaw. A crow would look bigger I think. But I think it could be a raptor, or even parotid because of the length of the talons and the way the tail is dropped below the narrow wings. The picture that seems to show a corvid beak, is blurred and it could be an effect of movement. So I think, not cut and dried. So hope to hear more.

[solus]

Definitely not a raptor or a Cuckoo!

As others have said, it's probably a leucisitc Jackdaw, given their liking for chimney pots!

He he - p'raps he's fresh in from Iceland with a coating of ash! No, that is not a serious suggestion!

[PatB]

I hope he returns so I can get a better picture. Despite being in a small surban garden and having a cat it's been a birdfest in the last 24 hours - 2 goldfinches on my seed feeder, a heron investigating the pond (unsuccessfully - we're prepared!) and this unusual visitor on top of my usual hoard of blue and great tits, greenfinches, robins, blackbirds, wood pigeons, collard doves and a wren

[valleyforge]

Originally Posted by solus

He he - p'raps he's fresh in from Iceland with a coating of ash! No, that is not a serious suggestion!

As it happens solus ... that's not such a bad call.

Not the volcanic ash part , but corvids do tend to enjoy dusting themselves in the ash of bonfires ... as a means of controlling feather lice and other parasites.

This does look like a jackdaw certainly, but whether the feather colouring is natural or not is hard to tell, but it does look like quite a matt finish, and not the glossy sheen that might be expected.

[Beekeeper]

Maybe i am wrong but the beak does look slightly too short to be a Jackdaw.


Ian