To follow up on this, here are a few photos of the 'fence bird' from Friday morning (31 July) that Andy refers to above:
7D2_3433_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3433_small.jpg> 7D2_3435_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3435_small.jpg> 7D2_3437_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3437_small.jpg> 7D2_3540_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3540_small.jpg> The bird was on the fence just before Nick and Andy rolled up, flew a circuit around my vehicle, and then landed again on the fence as Nick and Andy neared. The bird sat and sang for a bit before departing toward the ridge farther west of the road. As we all witnessed this bird very clearly singing the distinct Baird's song I have no doubt on the ID. As I departed south on CR5 about 0720 I spotted another candidate Baird's sitting on a thistle about 30 feet west of the road just south of the railroad tracks. This bird did not sing though, and shortly flew off farther into the field to the west, so all I have to go on for ID are these photos: 7D2_3617_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3617_small.jpg> 7D2_3632_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3632_small.jpg> 7D2_3674_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3674_small.jpg> 7D2_3748_small.jpg <http://www.boulder.swri.edu/~durda/birds/7D2_3748_small.jpg> There might be some Savannah- and Vesper-like traits to this bird, but other features for those seem missing. At the time I was pretty sure it was Baird's - the overall buff-colored head, buff central crown, and cheek/malar markings suggest to me that this is a Baird's. Curious to see what others here think... Hope these photos help as folks continue spotting the area. Dan Durda Boulder -- 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 cobirds+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to cobirds@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/cobirds/3ea982dd-359a-4ad2-b63d-9cb30e616244%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
