A few days ago, Anne-Marie from Dorset sent me an e-mail regarding a mystery bird she had seen in her backyard. While sitting on the back porch, Anne-Marie saw a peculiar bird hopping across the lawn. At first glance, she thought it was one of the flickers that sometimes look for ants on the lawn. But, upon closer inspection, she realized that it was not a bird she recognized.
“It was about the size of a small flicker, and had a brownish body with a few red patches and a crown. The beak looked entirely orange. In fact, as my husband Jim accurately put it, it looked like it was wearing too much lipstick.” The bird stayed in her yard for a few more days until it vanished. Anne-Marie and her husband said that the closest match they could find in their field guide was a Pyrrhuloxia. The Pyrrhuloxia is a fairly common relative of the Cardinal that resides in the Southwestern United Sates. It has a grey-brown body, with patches of red along the wings and on the crown. The face of the Pyrrhuloxia is almost entirely scarlet.
My guess, however, is that the bird they saw in their backyard was almost certainly not a Pyrrhuloxia. Instead, the mystery bird sounds like it could have been a juvenile cardinal. Often times a juvenile of any species will look so different from its adult counterparts that it appears to be a different species altogether. Though the behavior of hopping on the lawn as in search for ants or worms is unusual for a cardinal, the bird might have been driven to act that way due to a food shortage. If the mystery bird was not a cardinal, there is a small chance that it could have been an escaped parrot. I know I have definitely been confused by the calls of escaped parakeets flitting through the backyard. The verdict? The bird you saw is almost certainly a juvenile cardinal, still shedding its baby feathers for a more mature scarlet.
Have you seen a mystery bird in your backyard lately? Are there any birding or column related questions that you’d like to ask? Please be sure to send me an e-mail at chickadee@att.net with all of your birding queries.
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