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What kind of bird is this?


Deerthug
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It's a STARLING !!    Probably one of the most common birds in the US... They are an invasive species from Europe, but here are literally MILLIONS of them around, and they have been here for many, many years.

 

Have you just started looking at birds, or do you live under a rock ?...

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Skipped school a few days many moons ago to shoot them off my neighbors chimney. Priorities you know.

Lol my grandmother owned a bed and breakfast in cohocton and had 100 s of them...first she asked for a bb gun to shoot them while she drank her coffee in the morning...well that didn't work so well so she bought a 22 mag and used bird shot shells and a scope to shoot them birds....funniest thing I had ever seen my 70 plus year old grandmother do.

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Deerthug, on 08 Apr 2016 - 6:40 PM, said:

Thanks do the ID. Pretty bird regardless.

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They are very attractive close up, DT...The speckling and the iridescence  are only visible with a nice close picture like the one you posted.

 

At any distance at all , even as little as 10 or 20 yards, they just appear black.  That is possibly why you had not noticed them until now.

 

They were just another "blackbird"...

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I have never seen any shotshells in .22 short or long.

 

They make the .22 long rifles and the .22 mags with the gel caps.

 

They also make all brass .22 Long rifles with a crimp on the end, which probably are the ones that Rob is referring to. They are the "old fashioned" type, and are loaded with #12 shot. I used to use them for rats in and around my barn and chicken coop. They work fairly well at very close ranges, perhaps 20 feet max.  I also tried patterning a few of them, and found that they threw more even patterns in my handguns than in my rifles.

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They are very attractive close up, DT...The speckling and the iridescence  are only visible with a nice close picture like the one you posted.

 

At any distance at all , even as little as 10 or 20 yards, they just appear black.  That is possibly why you had not noticed them until now.

 

They were just another "blackbird"...

 

Getting back to the bird here for a moment.....

 

From my summer observation stand last year I watched a flock of these things WAY off in the distance around an old farm house on the horizon.

The aerial display was really something to see. The flock moved in "waves" and spun like a tornado. Birds at the top disappeared and magically re-appeared some distance from where I'd last seen them.

It was like watching a cloud of smoke floating along the way they all just seemed to flow as one big unit!

I honestly had to look twice, and three times thinking it was some kind of funnel cloud about to touch down.

 

Of course I snapped a pic, but it was one I never thought I'd use since I've seen this before so I dumped it hoping to capture it again.

I'd imagine those iredecent feathers must play a role in helping parts of the flock appear to "vanish" in thin air during these maneuvers while other parts of the flock appear.

 

Just my last thought for the night.

Back to the bullet talk..... :scratchhead:

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