Well today I met with my birding buddy to look at more photos of the
now infamous longspur. He also brought along another field
guide--something about "Old World Warblers to New World Sparrows" or
something like that. Now being armed with a perception that more
knowledgeable and experienced people than us say it's a male, we were
looking for "maleness" in these photos. Both of us think the photos
definitely looked like the guide's winter FEMALE! In fact, that
guide shows what may be perceived as a LITTLE chestnut coloration
NEAR the nape (more to the sides) on the winter female. One thought
that hasn't been mentioned yet--is there any more likelihood of a
lone male or of a lone female of this species being so far from "home"?
wjansen
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On Tue, 5 Dec 1995, M. Smith wrote:

>
> 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
>
>