Subject: Re: Chestnut-collared Longspur
Date: Dec 5 13:43:54 1995
From: "M. Smith" - whimbrel at u.washington.edu



Hi Tweets,

Welcome back Dennis. Regarding the longspur, I saw it the morning
Russell did, with a few others. Once Russell pointed out the 'collar' to
me, I could see it also, and others remarked that they saw it. So
Dennis, you may be right. Maybe my seeing the collar was a result of
Russell showing me it. Ha! you can doubt anything if you try hard
enough (from now on I'm going to doubt that starlings exist).
Regardless, one character I noticed (which hasn't been mentioned yet) is
the very thin light colored line between the throat and breast. In
breeding male plumage, this is white and separates the yellow chin from
the black breast. It was off-white, but much lighter than either the
throat or breast, and fairly obvious. Isn't this characteristic of only
males? There was significant area of black on the belly, but this could
be due to wet feathers being matted down and looking black. But I would
guess, based on the controversial collar, and the light neck ring in
front, that it was a male. But who am I to judge? It was a lifer for me.

-------------
Michael R. Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html