A bird between blackbird and pigeon in size. It has a red or pink head underneath shows white bars and longish tail. It's dive bombing my window bird feeder close to city centre in the northwest uk. Does anyone know what it is? It doesn't keep still long enough to photo!
I told them the bird you saw wasn’t in the photo So you don’t need to worry about that. Also we don’t actually know what the bird is yet and other people have other suggestions aside from woodpecker. we are still identifying the bird for you so don’t worry
I've been following this thread with interest and I'm just as baffled as everyone else. As a matter of interest I've got the same window feeder as Stacyl and I've see birds as large as Magpies attempting to take food from it.
Stacyl's comment about the very long tail triggered a thought. This is probably a bit left field but I wonder whether it could have been a Melanistic Pheasant trying and failing to grab food like sunflower hearts.
Probably not but you never know. It kinda matches your drawing What do you think Stacy?
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Tony
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I would dearly love it to be the scarlet headed blackbird, Chris. Its got the headline though. I'm thinking possible non native bird too because if I can't find it and all of you can't it's got to be something like that! I've not seen it today but the little birds that usually so busy I have to refill the feeder 5 times a day! There's a peregrine falcon around here and i think that's why they avoid the feeder for a day or two normally. Its eaten a couple the little birds and i saw it kill a pigeon a couple of months ago! I wonder if this mystery bird is some kind of predator? Even if it is we still don't know what it is! It dive bombed to my feeder 3 times yesterday making a loud scuffle noise as its tried to land on it similar to the falcon when it dives for the birds that are eating here. But that's all the info I have. I'm really intrigued but I wouldn't be surprised if I never see it again and it remains 'the mystery bird' forever
I was looking up the sparrowhawks and found these drawings that could be compelling, the underside looked a lot like this