strange bird

plural strange birds

1. idiomaticinformalAn unusual person, especially one with an idiosyncratic personality or peculiar behavioral characteristics.

   "You're a strange bird, Meehan," Leroy told him. "When you find out whose house you're in, call me back."

   2003, Donald E. Westlake, Put a Lid on It, →ISBN, page 57

   3 more examples

   Jena Janovy is a strange bird—a college basketball player who is a) female and b) short (5 feet 3 inches) and, perhaps oddest of all, lets neither of those things dampen her rabid enthusiasm for the game.

   1987 June 14, Karen Stabiner, “Putting her Heart through the Hoop”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 22 Apr 2017, retrieved 29 Jul 2010

   I never saw him, but Jackie Langley told me Kerouac was a strange bird, stayed drunk, talked crazy, brooded.

   1992, Kaye Gibbons, “My Mother, Literature, and a Life Split Neatly into Two Halves”, in Janet Sternburg, editor, The Writer on Her Work, volume 2, →ISBN, page 56

   In this land, too, there dwelled a young man who was a fowler, but a bit of a strange bird he was, for he only captured his birds, preferring not to slaughter them.

   2004, Tony K. Stewart, Fabulous Females and Peerless Pīrs: Tales of mad adventure in old Bengal, Oxford, →ISBN, page 67

   Synonyms: misfit, oddball, odd duck, odd one out, queer fish, odd bird, queer duck