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I seen this lovely little cutieby the feeders today

size between a house sparrow and a blackbird (red wing) about half way between the two.

Here are 3 pics to help

thanks for the assistance

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Birds high above in the trees Serenade the flowers with their melodies

brown headed cow bird... ornery little fellows....

Uh, a female Blue Grosbeak maybe. The beak reminds me of one at least.

 

But I don't know, the beak is really close though.

 

 

Birdseye is right, female Brown-headed Cowbird. Never heard them describes as cuties, though.

Hi,

 I believe that it's a female brown-headed cowbird.  Female grosbeaks are a brown color. I think cowbirds have that thick bill.  Also, in your pic you can see the brownish colored head in relation to the grayish body and the slight streaking of the chest area.  It's hard to see the tail in this pic but grosbeaks have that little notch in the tip of thier tail where as corbirds have a straight across, squarish tail.  I don't have the highest opinion of cowbirds but that's only because I've seen so many flycatcher nests fail when they are parasitized by this lovely female.

 

Hope this helps!!!!
 

I ain't cute either but my wife thinks I am guess it is all in the eye of the beholder

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Birds high above in the trees Serenade the flowers with their melodies

I think the female blue grosbeak has a faint wing bar which I'm not seeing here. I'm not sure what it is....

I posted about the same time as birdseye, and I went and looked at google images of female Brown Headed Cowbirds, and I must recant, the body and colors match up much better with BHCB.

 I didn't see till now how close the Brown Headed Cowbirds beak is so very close to a Grosbeaks. I wonder if they are close cousins.

Ok I have done some reading on the brown headed cow bird and they behave the same way as cookoo's lay there eggs in other nests and then take off and leave the raising of there young to the poor foster parents..

The shinning cookoo does that to our native birds in New Zealand and it seems they are the small birds they do it too

 

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Birds high above in the trees Serenade the flowers with their melodies

Cowbird, AKA warbler nightmare.

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Don't cry because it's over, smile because you were there.

I don't consider many birds pests.

I find these birds adorable every time I see them! Great pictures, Kiwi. 

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~Makachoa~

I once saw a baby (very big baby) following a house sparrow - the "foster parent"  in my dad's back yard.   It was flapping its wings and chirping behind it.  The baby cowbird was almost twice the size of the poor little house sparrow.   I think that was the only time I ever felt sorry for a house sparrow!

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Sharon Calahan

I don't consider many birds pest either...especially not native ones.  But, after three spring/summers of seeing migratory nesting passerines that had traveled 2,000+ miles from central/south America to the U.S. for a 3 month breeding period leave without fledging any young because each nesting attempt was parasitized by BHCB....kind of biases me against the lovely cowbird.  They are only doing what comes naturally to them based on their evolutionary history...it's man/woman's alteration of the continent's ecology and uses that has permitted BHCBs to expand their range and their numbers to grow so much.  Believe me...I don't blame the bird....but it's still heart wrenching to see what their growing numbers can do to the presently precarious population numbers of some sensitive migratory/nesting passerines.