>All feathers fresh with no apparent damage. Slightly smaller than
>Lapland or Smith's Longspurs with tail shorter than body length.
>Striking Clay-coloured sparrow-type of darker cheek patch but with a
>conspicuous caramel or pale ochre wash over lores. Cheek patch
>bordered above and below by creamy stripes. Rufous brownish stripe
>above pale superciliary line. Suggestion of slightly paler median
>crown stripe. Dark eye. Small, darkish, bill with curved seed-cracking
>type of culmen, not your pipit type of straight bill. Perhaps a darker
>malar streak but not seen well. Underparts creamy white with necklace
>of long chestnut streaks across breast, extending to belly on sides.
>Streaks diffused rather than overly sharp, widest on the breast.
>Dorsum the typical longspur admixture of grays, browns and blacks with
>rufous edgings. Conspicuous butterscotch-hazel streaks, possibly edged
>in black, running from the "shoulders" along each side of mantle to
>rump. Tail dark with possible white edging. Legs not seen well but
>seemed neutral or dark-coloured rather than conspicuously pale. Walked
>rather than hopped.

Any chance whatever that this could have been a Grey Bunting? The
illustration in the National Geographic guide seems quite unlike your bird,
but if you look in the Japanese guide it is a much closer match, showing the
streaked breast you describe (well, the species' name is "variabilis"). I
have seen this species in Japan, and it is quite large for a bunting, with a
large, two-tone bill like a Fox Sparrow (not, I admit, small and darkish as
you describe). My not-too-thorough field notes refer to a "female Grey
Bunting, a very plain, sparrowy, streaky bird, streaked underneath, the
chief mark that we could is a black moustache stripe with a large,
cream-coloured malar stripe above it."

Roberson's Rare Birds of the West Coast gives a description on p. 474 that
is the most detailed I can find (Females are dingy in appearance, with a
streaked back and olive and rusty edgings to the scapulars; smudgy
grey-brown streaks on dingy underparts (but see Japanese guide), a rather
plain-brownish face with a paler tanmedian stripe on the crown and an
off-white malar stripe; and chestnut edgings to the rump.... Females in
winter may also show rusty streaks on the back, nape and crown.)

Note that the Japanese guide shows the female with an all-rufous tail, but
no one else does, so I don't know how reliable this illustration is.

In fact, the illustrations I have of this in different books differ so from
each other that I remain somewhat confused as to what a female Grey looks
like, and I've seen one!
--
Ronald I. Orenstein Phone: (905) 820-7886 (home)
International Wildlife Coalition Fax/Modem: (905) 569-0116 (home)
Home: 1825 Shady Creek Court Messages: (416) 368-4661
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