July 2020 Photo Quiz

Tony Leukering
Fairborn, OH
greatgrayowl@aol.com

What do we do with this boring brown bird? We cannot even see the head!

We assess what we can see on the bird. The quiz bird has a long wing, with the primaries extending well beyond the tertials. That might rule out a few options, depending upon what species one has in the set of possible solutions. There also seems t be something of a black collar. Perhaps that is something; perhaps it is nothing but lighting and how the bird is holding those feathers. Then there are those white-tipped primary coverts. What is up with those? Well, those are very important.

What species is represented here?

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.