ML39335191

Age and sex

Adult, Unknown sex - X

Observation details

I was watching a flock of Harris's and White-crowned Sparrows when I saw a small pale tan sparrow with a very short tail weakly fly up from the weeds by the edge of the wheat field and drop into a small patch of tall native prairie grass near the bridge. My first thought was that it was obviously a Le Conte's, but then as I approached it flew up and perched in a young American Elm providing great looks through binoculars and a few pictures before flying again, after which I couldn't find it. I had several minutes of looking at it through binoculars in which I really tried to find the markings of Le Conte's but simply couldn't. The breast and sides were clean buffy with absolutely no streaking, and no dark lateral throat-stripe. Also noted lack of purplish nape(gray instead), gray lores(yellowish instead) and auriculars, white edged tertials and bold stripes on back. Also saw that this bird had a bold complete white eye-ring, large tanish bill(not gray), two dark auricular spots, white median crown stripe and overall non-contrasting markings. I zoomed in and examined each one of these photos and am very confident of the identity of this late migrant.

Technical information

Model

FinePix S8600 S8650 S8630

ISO

800

Focal length

162 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/6.9

Shutter speed

1/150 sec

Dimensions

4608 pixels x 3456 pixels

Original file size

3.73 MB