ML643615403

Observation details

Put my binoculars up on a lone, long tailed sparrow and was shocked to see a sage sparrow! I puttered a few yards closer to it in my car and put it in park and was treated to this bird teed up on the fence before taking a prolonged bath in a pothole. After about 5 minutes a truck came barreling down the road and flushed the bird 50 or so meters down the road. We eventually lost it when a landowner approached us to have a friendly conversation. We were unable to refind with the folks who showed up to look for it. As for the identification, I got decent looks at the back and it appeared to have a fair bit of black streaking. My photos unfortunately don’t do a great job capturing that. The malar appeared pretty thin but I know canescens can have a thin malar. I will send these photos around but I feel comfortable with it as a sagebrush until I hear otherwise. (38.4542588, -121.0990203)