Identifying birds

[luckyeight]

I saw a bird tonight that I did not recognise and would like to identify - can anyone recommend a good site that might enable me to do so? It was fairly large, bigger than a pigeon, with a distinctive blue flash near its tail. Its colours were white and black, with this blue section above the black tail. Any help gratefully received!

[pesty]

Could be a cross magpie, seen a couple of odd ones myself recently - good id site =

http://www.noahsarkgardens.co.uk/Wildlife/Gard enBirds.htm

Best of luck..........

[SteveD]

We've been caught out by a bird-identification question before (the questioner was in India but didn't say so!).

Where did you see this bird?

If you are in the UK, you could look here:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/

[hammerman]

Was the blue flash on it's wings.....could possibly be a jay (member of the crow family)

[luckyeight]

http://www.nargc.ie/wildlife/images1.htm

Thanks for your answers! Yes I;m in UK. It looked like the magpie on this poster - I am surprised that a magpie has blue on it tho - I have only ever seen black and white magpies! (Mind you, I am new to this 'twitching' game!)

[luckyeight]

http://www.turtletrack.org/Issues03/Co09062003 /Art/black_billed_magpie.jpg

http://www.english-country-garden.com/a/i/bird s/magpie-3.jpg

Well clearly it was a magpie! Thanks all.

[RATTER15]

Luckyeight, Magpies do look black from a distant but infact ther are all a dark blue colour.