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It’s that time of year. The time when raptorphiles head to the mountains, the shores of large lakes, the coastal promontories, the riverine bluffs to watch for southbound raptors. However, with a bit of luck and a lot of scanning the sky, one can encounter raptors in active migration virtually anywhere on land.

A few sparrowy things comprise this month’s quiz, so break out your reading glasses, as we may need to delve into minutiae. I can hear the cheers, now! Everyone loves sparrowy things...

This month we’ve got an apparently small bird flying overhead. Perhaps-important ID clues include the mix of buff and white below, the small bill, and the long primary projection. The final of those characters suggests that our bird is an individual of a species that is either a long-distance migrant or a highly aerial one… or both.

When looking at an unknown shorebird – or, in this case, shorebirds, the first task should be determining to which ABA-Area shorebird family our mystery bird might be referable...

This month’s quiz bird is obviously some sort of pigeon/dove thing. Certainly, those reddish-pink legs are typical of the group. While that leg color is typical of ABA-Area doves and pigeons, it does rule out...

While some of the poor aspect to this photo is the photographer’s inability to get the subject in sharp focus, much of it is due to the disheveled appearance of the bird. While we all like looking at crisp photos of birds in good nick (as Brits say), particularly of pleasingly attractive birds, not all birds can meet these criteria at all times.

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.

Raise your hands. Who considers this an ugly photo quiz? I am not talking, er, writing about the quality of the photo, which, admittedly, leaves a lot to be desired. I am writing about what is shown of the bird.

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH [email protected] 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. read more >>

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH [email protected] 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. read more >>

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH [email protected] 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. read more >>

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH [email protected] 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. read more >>

Tony Leukering Fairborn, OH [email protected] 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. read more >>

A distant bird on a treetop can be difficult to identify. Distance takes away most, if not all, of the features that we generally use to ID individual birds, leaving us with only gross patterns of dark and light, particularly on this quiz bird.

In bird ID, it is not finding a single character in the field guide that matches what you saw that enables correct ID, it is ruling out ALL OTHER species that share that character, even a semblance of that character.

What do we do with this boring brown bird? We cannot even see the head! Tony Leukering walks us through how to identify this bird.

A bird flying by… Better get the binocular on it before it’s out of sight! The bird might immediately strike one as a passerine or, at least, not any of the non-passerines – you know, all those birds at the front half of the taxonomy/field guide, many of which are waterbirds of various sorts.

This quiz bird has a plethora of useful field marks, so the fact that we are looking at the south end of a north-bound bird should be alleviated somewhat.

I find that many birders don’t really learn most of the plumage features of really distinctive species, such as American Avocet, Belted Kingfisher, and Northern Cardinal. Each of these species has quite a few features that can enable identification...

Large rocks by a water body with apparent wave action play a part in this photo quiz. The shortish, orange legs and long, white wing stripe are also important.

Relative to the small branches, this quiz bird seems small and that feature, in combo with the fact that it’s perched in a tree, probably puts us in the large bird order, Passeriformes, which houses about half the world’s bird 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.

A bird clinging to the side of a tree, right side up. Yes, there are bird species that regularly or habitually cling to the trunks of trees that aren’t woodpeckers, but the Picidae is a good place to start when one encounters such.

Is this an ugly quiz photo, or what! The quiz bird seems to have few field marks, particularly as most of the head and underparts are not depicted, but I guarantee that it is identifiable to species.