The full yellow malar on this bird indicates that it is a western meadowlark. The song should have corroborated that. The excellent photos you took a few days ago showed just a little yellow extending onto the malar of the Lillian’s. There are plenty of sound files uploaded to eBird for this bird, so I recommend listening to the song to learn the difference. The most significant plumage difference is the amount of white in the tail. Lilian’s has more white but I have not seen that feature documented on the Loveland bird. It would be good if someone could photograph the spread tail and post to eBird.
Nick Komar Fort Collins CO > On Jun 2, 2020, at 4:05 PM, Derek Hill <[email protected]> wrote: > > > The yellow malar region indicates Western Meadowlark I thought. > Derek Hill > Loveland > >> On Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at 3:52:43 PM UTC-6, Daniel O'Donnell wrote: >> Here are two photos of the eastern meadowlark at the northern end of Bud >> Mielke reservoir taken this morning. This bird looks a little different to >> me from the bird I photographed on May 29. The cheek looks a little more >> white and the yellow on the breast seems to extend a little further down and >> on the side. So could this be the Lillian’s meadowlark that was observed in >> the same location earlier in May? I’m not good at determining the subtle >> differences between subspecies, so any help would be appreciated. >> Thanks, >> Dan >> >> Dan O'Donnell >> [email protected] >> >> >> >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Colorado Birds" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/73861501-22e6-470e-a2e1-b5ab7aa41191%40googlegroups.com. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Colorado Birds" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/8826E5BC-C3BA-4FF9-BF8A-960B45052F8E%40comcast.net.
