Re: Try this mystery bird

[Mark Stackhouse <mark at westwings dot com>]

Hi Carol,

Looks like you have a set of nice photos of a juvenile Grasshopper
Sparrow. At first glance, the shape, especially the large, heavy bill,
round body, short tail and rather flat head (or at least a low forehead
profile - especially visible in the third photo), all suggest a
Grasshopper Sparrow. Really, given that the "large-billed" Savannah
Sparrow is resident in coastal southern California, you could identify
this one by bill size, shape and color alone - all of our other
grassland sparrows have bills that are relatively smaller. But to
eliminate the other contenders, Savannah, Vesper, and Lark would all
have a dark malar stripe that this bird doesn't, and would probably be
more heavily streaked in the juvenile. Brewer's Sparrow is at the
opposite end of the shape spectrum, being slender, long-tailed and
small-billed. In case you're thinking of something really rare, the
head markings (especially on the auriculars) are not right for
LeConte's, Henslow's, Baird's or Sharp-tailed - these all have more
distinctly patterned and/or less pale facial markings.

Nice puzzle!

Mark

Mark Stackhouse
mark@westwings.com
801-487-9453 (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)
011-52-323-285-1243 (San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico)

On Aug 21, 2005, at 7:10 PM, cldavis@xmission.com wrote:

> I took these photos of a bird on Antelope Island on July 4 and would 
> like to hear your opinions as to the possible species.  This will be a 
> good test of your knowledge of LBB's (especially after checking out the 
> site recently suggested by Lu Giddings.) Here's the link:
>
> http://xmission.com/~cldavis/whatbird.html
>
> Carol

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