Hey! Someone, honk the horn to get that thing to pick up its head!

Does that refrain bear any resemblance to something you’ve said or, at least, thought when encountering a bird being all sleepy, thus exacerbating an already tricky ID?

Go ahead. Honk the horn, although I doubt it would do you any good here.

This month’s quiz bird is a brown bird with streaks, like so many other streaky brown birds. However, importantly, it has interesting legs; interesting, ID-helpful legs. No, not ID-definitive legs, but not too far from that.

I will provide one further hint: The photo was taken in the Lower 48 US states and is of a species indigenous to where the photo was taken.

Photos and answers are supplied by Tony Leukering, a field ornithologist based in in Colorado. He has strong interests in bird migration, distribution, and identification. He has worked for five different bird observatories from coast to coast, has conducted hawk counts in Michigan, New Jersey, Colorado, and Texas, and seabird counts in Michigan, New Jersey, and California. Tony considers himself particularly adept at taking quiz photos—that is to say, bad pictures! He is a member of the Oklahoma Bird Records Committee, is a past member of the Colorado and New Jersey committees, and was a long-time reviewer for eBird. Tony is also interested in most everything else animalian that flies, particularly moths and odonates.