What species of bird is this

Where did you see it?

In my garden. England

recently?

This afternoon

Looks Thrush like i'll check further

Yes. It does look like a blackbird with thrush.

It is a Cuckoo, i wonder?

quote:

Originally posted by fatcat:
What species of bird is this. It's the size of a blackbird

It is probably an ( partial ) albino blackbird. A few years ago, I saw a completely white chaffinch, albinos are not so rare among the birds.

Best wishes

Manfred

It's a young cuckoo, male I would say looking at the plumage.

Tim

This is a song thrush

Another vote for a cuckoo.

quote:

Originally posted by Timbo:
It's a young cuckoo, male I would say looking at the plumage.

Tim

Hi Tim,

the cockoo does not stay in England until late November, it is a migrant, which is now in Africa.

I am pretty sure, this is a blackbird ( albino ).

Best wishes

Manfred

Thanks for the comments.

I think blackbird may be correct. It may be juvenile male, still brown, but its beak changing to yellow.

Partial albino birds are seen from time to time. Yours looks like a juvenile. Send the picture to the RSPB.

In the above photo, the body shape and beak is definitely more Blackbird.

fatcat, it probably is a blackbird so should be around every day at sometime...
An easy way of telling is to note the body-language. Blackbirds like to ground-feed where they often dash about running with head down and suddenly stopping with a raised tail movement. They are the only garden birds to do that.

I’ve seen blackbirds with an odd white feather or two but not one so mottled as this. The poor thing will have a hard life being less camouflaged and find it more difficult to hide from predators.

Earlier this year I’m sure we had a Cuckoo chick in the garden getting very well fed by a Blackbird, the chick was a fair bit larger than the surrogate mother bird and far too grey to look like proper offspring!

I also had a nice treat earlier this year by watching ( quite a few times ) a great spotted woodpecker feeding food from my nut hanger to her male fledgling.

Just wish I’d got photo’s too! : )

nymph

We have a fairly tame blackbird that looks much like this.

We also had a totally albino crow around for a while. it looked really odd, we kept seeing it and thinking it was a white dove or something but it started roosting with the other crows and we realised.

Bruce

Kill it. It'll only contaminate the pure Blackbird bloodline if you don't!

(Deffo looks like a Blackbird to me)

quote:

Originally posted by tonym:
Kill it. It'll only contaminate the pure Blackbird bloodline if you don't!

(Deffo looks like a Blackbird to me)

Tony, you hartless Ba**ard

Listening to it would tell the difference. Blackbirds are distinctively different from thrushes.