Monday, March 22, 2010

Bird ID Challenge # 1


This is an easy first mystery bird. I hope to post more. Please post your answer in the comments to this post, with reasons why you decided the way you did. Thanks. Hint: the bird was seen in San Luis Obispo county recently. I will make some of future bird ID challenges harder. Let me know what you think.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
See the "comments" for the answer.

7 comments:

  1. Western Meadowlark! Immediate first impression.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Western Kingbird - yellow underparts, black tail with white outer rectrices.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Western Kingbird of course! It is flying of a barbed wire perch in an open area (Cassin's prefer trees and wooded area's and are rarer)Yellow belly, gray wings, dark tail. Can't see the head, but behavior is that of a flycatcher, and very common for Western Kingbird.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Western Kingbird no doubt

    ReplyDelete
  5. You could look it up in your WEKI-pedia.

    ReplyDelete
  6. WEKI-pedia, I like that - very funny.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Most people got this ID - Western Kingbird - correct. Western Meadowlark was a good guess since it too is a bird which sits on fences in pasture areas like this, and it too has white in the outer tail. The narrow white on the edge of the black squared-off tail is the clincher for the Western Kingbird. The Western Meadowlark has very extensive white in the undertail and the short tail is notched. The flanks and the undertail on the meadowlark have dark streaks.

    ReplyDelete