bcintbird-pics grosbeak identification

At a trip to the mailbox (no home delivery in the backwoods), I watched birds 
enjoying some snowberries. (They must be hard up to be eating snowberries.) 
There were Pine Grosbeaks, Redpolls, and another tiny bird (whose identity is 
unknown). 

I quickly spotted a female grosbeak (first picture), but what was that grosbeak 
lookalike (second and third pictures. It looked like a cross between a male 
(its head) and a female (its breast). 

After a fair bit of digging, I learn that there is a subspecies, Pinicola 
enucleator montanus, (Interior Western) that might fit this bird. (It has 
proven problematic to learn the range of this subspecies.) 

So, I have included four pictures (the first three from today): 
1) the female, 
2) the oddball,
3) the oddball again,
4) a male Pine Grosbeak (of the plane ordinary Pacific subspecies) taken earlier

Comments? Do what did I see here? An interior western?

Alistair

Alistair Fraser
Kootenay Lake







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