April 2021 Photo Quiz

Tony Leukering
Fairborn, OH
greatgrayowl@aol.com

Click to enlarge.

This month’s photo quiz depicts one of the individual birds that was my first of this year of the relevant species. However, that bird is NOT the quiz bird. There are four quiz birds, all of the same species, and it was January in Texas. One of these four blackish birds has rusty fringes to the tertials and at least three of them have variably rusty tips/fringes to the scapulars, perhaps also on the back. One of them has thin white fringes to the median coverts. The birds are not particularly long-winged, but are also not short-winged, having moderate-length primary projection. They appear all black below and their tails are not short, but not particularly long, either. Oh, and three of them show another important plumage feature, but I will leave you to find it.

What is the quiz species?

Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist based in southeast Colorado, with strong interests in bird migration, distribution, and identification. He has worked for five different bird observatories from coast to coast and considers himself particularly adept at taking quiz photos (that is, bad pictures!). Leukering is a member of the Colorado Bird Records Committee and had been a reviewer for eBird since its inception. He is also interested in most everything else that flies, particularly moths and odonates.