About a week ago on long island, I saw a strange looking bird. It was a crow-sized grackle with a white stomach. It might’ve been a mutated boat-tailed grackle, but it was too far from the shore to be one. Any ideas of what this bird was?
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Did you get any photos?
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Not likely to be an undiscovered species on such a thoroughly explored place as Long Island. What there might be are either aberrant forms (like the “mutated boat-tailed grackle” you suggested), vagrants from other parts of the world, or just a new-to-you species. Did you cross-check with a bitd guide and see if there is anything that looked similar?
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Could it be a marine bird?
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Check out Pied Crow.
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Don’t think they live in Long Island.
Escapees have shown up as far inland as Michigan.
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It might just be leucistic. Leucism (which is different than albinism) can cause white areas just about anywhere on an organism. Try looking for similar photos online by googling “Leucistic grackle”
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Yeah, I thought that too.
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In the bird collection I curate, there are examples of American Crow that exhibit leucism, and one that is albino. There are several Common Grackles with leucism.
If you think the bird was indeed “crow-sized”, my guess is that it was a leucistic Am Crow.
Did you see the bird fly? Or forage in any way? Or did it walk and if you saw that, how did it do that? e.g. walk or hop?
Someone mentioned a stray seabird, and that too is a possibility. Any info on the birds’ behaviour could help with an ID.
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I do have some pics of a similar-looking bird. This one didn’t have any white, though. It was also slightly smaller.
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It mostly walked.
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It definitely wasn’t a pied crow. I don’t believe it was a crow at all.
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That’s what I believe it was.
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That bird is no marine bird. As to how “similar” it is, we would need a better picture of your nature observing experience. Not making any assumptions about you, but seriously, I have seen observations on iNaturalist that someone (mis)identified based on one feature – for example, a plant with a yellow flower, which they identified as a different plant which it looks nothing like other than also having a yellow flower.
I can tell you, for example, that this picture is not of a grackle – its tail isn’t long enough. Its build reminds me more of a crow or maybe a starling, although a starling has a yellow bill, which this clearly does not.
Having just looked at your iNaturalist page, I see that you have observed mostly birds, and seem to be good at identifying them (assuming that the IDs on them are yours; I haven’t had time to open them all and look). So given that point, could you tell us why you do not believe that the bird you saw was a crow?
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Leucistic birds are so interesting! I hope you get to see it again.
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Because of this, I am assuming there is a wider range of possible species.
Could it be an Oystercatcher?
seems like this needs to be posted to the main site / app, not the forum. you’ll get more help identifying there.
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Looks like Gray Catbird.
If he doesn’t have a photo of it, the main site probably will be no help at all. I agree that this isn’t an appropriate discussion for the forum, though. I think the unofficial iNat discord server would be the perfect place for this question.