CLOSED: SW Montana mystery, teeny pics.

I photographed this bird only once, in company with common starlings and Brewer's blackbirds, all ages & both genders in both cases. Photos were taken 9-15-09 in Hamilton, MT. As the included image shows, it appears to be smaller than the starling. It had a distinctly yellow eyebrow streak and throat and was shades of flat brown everywhere else. I'm a little hard up for current bird ID guides on paper, but it doesn't match anything I can find in what I do have. I actually didn't notice it at all until I was editing the several hundred shots I took that day of activity in the freshly-planted lawn across the street. I'll try to post a second image if I can find one that's even halfway distinct...

Here's a second image showing the extent of the yellow throat. Sorry for the quality--was shooting w/digital zoom.

Not sure why the pix are so teeny, you might want to try uploading again. Looks like you uploaded a thumbnail.

Tried to blow it up a bit…

Mrs_Ed, sadly, those are as good as I can get. The bird was in the background of a large flock several hundred feet away, and I'm still learning how to coax the best from my camera.

I understand you had the digital zoom, and think that's the problem…

But if your camera has ANY megapixels at all, it should be bigger. sometimes when people upload a thumbnail instead of the original, it looks like that. I can't pull off any camera data from the file to see what kind of camera you have.

I really can't make out enough from the photos to know if this is likely or not, but you might try comparing to female yellow-headed blackbird.

I would say it is a female Yellow-headed Blackbird.

Greg

Ditto to female Yellow-headed Blackbird

Resin

Mrs_Ed, the entirety of the photo from which I cropped those images is just over 3600 x 2400 pixels--there are forty or fifty birds in the entire frame sometimes. I was on a second-floor balcony about half a city block away, which is why I didn't notice the odd bird out until I was checking the photos. Admittedly, at the moment I have only the Golden Field Guide to Identification Birds of North America (blue cover), but their female yellow-headed blackbird has a white throat and breast/belly band and yellow face, where Ms. Mystery has brown cheeks and no white at all. Icterids were my first thought because of the size and shape of the bird along with the common presence of both Brewer's and red-winged here in the 'Root, but it doesn't match anything in the aforementioned bird guide.

Not sure how well white would show up in a pic from that range, it would smudge together with the darker surrounding colours. But immature males have a yellower throat, so that's a possibility if there was definitely no white.

Resin

I have the best results when I resize so that the widest side of 800. For yours I would divide 800 by 3600 to get 0.222222222. Then multiply 0.22222222 by 2400 to get 533.3333333. The new size would be 800 x 533.

Hope that makes sense.

Hack.

I got me some metaphorical crow to eat. I got a better bird guide. It *is* a female yellow-headed blackbird, which matches the PHOTO bird guide I just got as a gift perfectly, where it did *not* match the PAINTINGS in my old guide. Apparently they're pretty uncommon around here, and I apologize for doubting y'all based on what turned out to be inaccurate info on my end!